My IT 101 Class Roundup

The take home message that I recieved from my IT 101-X class was that there are many possiblities on the web, many uses and creations are still to be found/discovered. Also knowledge of the web, and use of it are essential tools for a sucessful modern buisness life. Google has many powers and if you google your name and things show up that you do not want people to see, you cannot delete this content.

I learned many things in this class, more than I could have expected. I learned much more about the web, some more programs, and learned that no matter how extensive your knowledge of the web is, you still don't know the half of it.

Learn about the CIS Major and Minor

CIS Presents:
Learn about the CIS Major and Minor

This CIS presents was the most fun, and most entertaining of all the presentations I attended. Not only did I get some free pizza and soda after the event, but I also enjoyed what some of the alumni had to say about the jobs. The event showed the diversity of the major and I am planning on signing up for the Minor. I am not sold on the Major but the Minor does seem like a good idea.

del.icio.us

del.icio.us is a program, that liek twitter, is something that I do not think about. In these past few weeks my life has had very little time to browse the web and find random websites. If I found the time to browse websites and stumble upon cool things, the last thing to come to my head was to de.icio.us it. The bookmarking tool has great potential for some other people who want viewers to only read certain websites, but just like twitter I feel as though this application has little use for me.

Twitter

I feel as though if you had a job or some sort of interesting hobby this website may be of use. However, for a student like me who rarely has time to sit down and type a post over the last six weeks, this website was not for me. I found it hard to remind myself to post interesting things I might be doing with my life. I guess I may havejust never got into the twittering mode, but I found it to not fit in with my life. I feel as though this has some serious potential, but I am just not in that area of my life as of yet to fully enjoy and use Twitter.

The Intersection of Marketing and IT

With Louise Rijk of Advanced Media Productions

Louise Rijk was clearly well versed in her field of work. She discussed thouroughly the different aspects of online marketing and demonstrated sincere insight into the field.

To me this was one of those times where she would say something to me, and I would instantly think that what she was saying was common sense. The only difference is that I would not have ever thought to account for those certain issues.

A major problem I found in her presentation was the single slide she used in her slide show. Having a single slide with copious amounts of information attracts the listeners to read the slide and not listen to what is being said by the speaker. Chris Penn's slide show featured a lot of fast slides that contained pictures relating in some way to what he was saying.

Overall I feel as though I have learned from her presentation, but did not feel as though the the presentaion was very relevent to my life.

CIS Presents: Chris Penn (The Financial Aid Podcast), The World of Podcasting

To start off here are some of Chris Penn's links and contact information

FinancialAidPodcast.com
ChristopherSPenn.com
MarketingOverCoffee.com
PodCamp.org

206-350-1208 (the number to his podcast)
financialaidpodcast@gmail.com

I felt as though Chris Penn thinks he knows a lot more than he actually does. While listening to his presentation I felt as though he was trying to force his thoughts on his audience. However, I can see his podcast being very sucessful and enjoyable to listeners who agree with him. He kept trying to push the point that everyone needs to be podcasting and blogging or else they should "get in the unemployment line" or you will be saying "you want fries with that". I just felt as though not having a blog or podcast would not have that drastic of an effect at all on your future. They are fun to keep, but not a lot of people find it fun to blog/podcast on accounting and finance.

Overall I thought that his presentation was very well put together. The slides matched perfectly with what he was talking about. Also, when talking he would use a picture to convey a word rather than the word itself, this I feel gave the presentaion more flow and focused the listeners attention to what was being said rather than what was typed on the slide. He was very organized and appeared to have thouroughly prepared for his talk.

So although I do not necessarily agree with Chris Penn, I feel as though his podcast would be VERY interesting to people who were interested in the subject matter.

Wardriving and Jumper

This Sunday I took the shuttle, provided compliments of Bentley, to Harvard Square in Boston to see the movie Jumper. The plot on the movie was terrible, the character development was awful, and you left the theater with a lack of accomplishment. However, I brought my laptop with me. While taking the T we switched from the red line to the green line at Park Street. I noticed there was a shop that had a neon sign that read "free internet access". I was curious if it would actually work, but I was on a tight time schedule, so I promised to try on the way back from the movie. On the way back, after paying to enter the T heading in the wrong direction, I tried, and sure enough, it worked.





The Internet, was slow, and very splotchy, but I was able to load up my Google homepage.

Man's Search For Meaning

This is a story/post that I wrote for another one of my blogs.

People want life to have meaning. Webster defines meaning as "the end, purpose, or significance of something." I'll start with the end. If something has meaning, it is not discovered until the end as stated by the definition. Nobody knows what the meaning of their life is until life is at its end. Everyone’s life has some sort of meaning. Any person living for the average time span of life will have purpose or significance in some way. Every single person on the planet affects at least one person in a positive or negative way. For some they will have saved a life without ever knowing it, others will be known as heroes. And yet still others will inadvertently hurt someone indefinitely and others will hurt someone on purpose. So if meaning does not come until the end, why does it feel like everyone is searching for it? People tend to fear the end, yet they want to know the meaning of their life which, as defined, cannot come until the end. Kind of selfish mind set to want to know how your life will pan out before ever living it. Before people try to find the meaning of their life, maybe we should not be worried about the end, and be worried more about the present. Meaning comes at the end and nobody knows when the end will be. Live life to the fullest because life was made for living, so why not take the glass of life and fill it to the brim until it overflows and becomes meaning that every person’s life inevitably will become.

By: Chris Murphy

Spybot S&D and CCleaner

Adware and Spyware are two terms that I am sure you have heard of before. Adware is software with advertising functions integrated into or bundled with a program. It is usually seen by the programmer as a way to recover programming development costs, and in some cases it may allow the program to be provided to the user free of charge or at a reduced price. The advertising income may allow or motivate the programmer to continue to write, maintain and upgrade the software product. Spyware is computer software that is installed surreptitiously on a personal computer to intercept or take partial control over the user's interaction with the computer, without the user's informed consent.
Spyware is the more dangerous of the two. Adware is more of a way for the creator of software to make money from his work, whereas spyware is a way for the creator of a program to steal information of some sort from the user. Spyware might be completely harmless and just want to know information on what sites are most visited in order to advertise better, however, this is violation of privacy.
The most common ways for your computer to get spyware and adware is by downloading a program which contains them. A lot of peer to peer programs will contain these as well as some other seemingly harmless programs such as WeatherBug. In order to check my computer I used Spybot Search & Destroy. And in order to clear my computer's history of me I used CCleaner.

Spybot Running it's search


Spybot found 2 different types of spyware. I am not suprised because i have downloaded a few programs that seemed a little fishy.


CCleaner after it has finished.


After running CCleaner once, the second time around deletes alot less files.

Charlie!

One of the funniest videos I have ever seen.

Intro

Hello all and welcome to my newest blog. This is not my first blog, nor is it my only blog. I have quite a few for various reasons. I have not kept an updated blog in quite a while, however, and It has been around two months or so since my last post.

I was born in Winfield, Illinois on June 24 in the wonderful year of 1989. Two months after my glorious entrance to the world I moved to Sugarland, Texas. I lived there for five years when my parents informed me that we were to be going on a very extended vacation to Singapore. I lived there for three years, possibly the most adventerous years of my life in which I traveled around the world. My next destination in my life was Geneva, Illinois where I spent the next four years of my life. Now I am currently located in Yardley, Pennsylvania. I have lived there for five years and am moving to the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. I am a freshman student at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.

And here is a funny video.