Research Posters

Well the last blog is finally here! The research poster project was OK.

Here are the pros:

*I think it's really cool to learn about new technologies
*It was different to have to create a poster rather than do the same old power point or speech
*It was cool to see everyone's different artistic abilities
*I liked using Twitter during the presentation as well as seeing what my classmates had to say about my poster

Here are the cons:

*The assignment should NOT have been given the day of the research pitches. We were already stressed enough about that and in that mindset. I literally was given the assignment 5 minutes before giving my pitch. I also had to ask questions at that time. It was way too much.

*The day off to research should have been given later in the semester closer to when the project was due.

*The posters took a long time to make, and the people grading it saw it for maybe 2 minutes each. I understand they had to look at a lot of posters, but those things took a long time to make!

*Having to do the poster and pitch both on essentially on the same thing (emerging technologies) was a little redundant.

*You might want to consider having some ground rules as to what you can give out during the poster presentations. Of course the posters with candy, food, and drinks are going to get more attention, but that doesn't mean that they are the best posters!


All in all it was a decent project, it just needs some tweaking!

Graduation = lame

I graduate in May, and as you may have realized from the title of this blog, I'm not happy about it. I don't love the actual school part including projects, papers, exams and yes, even sometimes these blogs, but I do love being here. One of the reasons I think that I am so not looking forward to graduation is the fact that when I leave here, I will be doing a job that isn't so ideal. Yes, it's with a good company, hopefully making decent money but it has nothing to do with what I've been learning for 4 years. Why not just look for another job? Easier said than done, I use the internet for job searching every single week. I'd say on average I am applying for 4 jobs a week and usually don't hear much back.

So I started thinking about how I can use technology, as many of our guest speakers have, to do what I want to do. I've always had a knack for organizing events, people and coming up with themes. Over the past few years I've realized that I could use my talent for something that's pretty popular today... wedding planning! However, you don't just "make it" as a wedding planner, you have to show that you're good at it and lucky for me the majority of my friends will be tying the knot within the next decade or so.

Going along with what some of the speakers have done, I've decided to use technology to help this wedding planning idea come along. I'm going to create a website with all the information people need to know when wedding planning. By doing research, I have started organizing information based on location as to bakeries, florists, venues, wedding dress shops etc. and plan to put it on the website. Once I start actually planning the weddings, I will create websites for each individual wedding and place them on the website so future brides and grooms can see my work and hopefully ask for my business.

My best friend got engaged this past summer. I plan to make her and her finace a wedding webpage for their family and friends to keep up with the wedding, give ideas, well wishes and overall be able to see the process of the wedding. It will also give me a chance to try out my web design skills. She doesn't know about it yet so SHH don't tell her ;)

Black Friday

This last break I decided not to participate in the Black Friday festivities. I've never gotten a "great" deal when I have gone in the past and would rather pay the $10 extra that I end up saving in order to not deal with the crazies that come out for this day of shopping. I found it interesting this year however, that I received more than 40 emails, that's right, 40, with Black Friday deals that you can buy online.

Some stores that I have an account with like Amazon, Target, Best Buy, even sent out emails with specials that were only available online for Black Friday, the day before the actual sales started. So I started thinking, with all the internet deals, will Black Friday eventually become digitized?

Think about it, would you rather get up at 4 am, stand in the cold with the other million shoppers and then push and shove your way into a store to try to get the DVD player, TV, video game, etc. that the store really only has 3 of or would you rather get up at 4 am in your pj's boot up the ol' computer and do your shopping without the crazy soccer moms running you over for the last Tickle Me Elmo? (yes, I know that it was only cool a few years ago).

I'll take the second option as I'm sure the majority would. See ya later Black Friday!

Life with an iPhone

OK, so as you all know I am a new owner of an iPhone. It's only been a few weeks and although I LOVE the phone, I have one issue... it takes an actual effort for me to not let it take over my life! Ok not my entire life but it really is a huge distraction because it's so cool and does so many things. Bored in class? Check your email with one click or go to the App store and download just about anything you could imagine to keep you occupied. Don't feel like studying? That's fine, your phone has enough capabilities to keep you interested for the next 5 hours :)

Besides the whole distraction thing, my only other gripe would be that the battery sucks.

That's all for now. Stay tuned!

ReCell

WE WON!!!


Sorry I just had to brag a little bit ;)

Congratulations to all my team members!

I caved ....

If you recall my previous blogs, one was about getting another blackberry or getting an iPhone. Well, today I finally decided. I wasn't planning on getting a new phone when I went to the store. My plan was just to go and check the phone out some more and get some pricing. Although I wasn't planning on getting a phone that day there were 2 things that just absolutely pushed me to get a new one.

First, I realized that you can open powerpoints and word doc's on the phone. I can't even go into detail how convienent that is being a college student. Forgot to print the slides for class? No problem! Just pick up your phone and go to blackboard and download them! Need to review a group paper but don't have time to get to a lab or your personal computer? Easy! Just open it up right where you are!

Second, I actually ended up with a good, non-pushy sales woman. Nothing irritates me or makes me less inclined to by something as when I feel like I'm just being told sales pitch after sales pitch to buy something. Not only was she informative and relaxed, she informed me of a discount that I qualify for. If you have a Purdue email address, whether it be faculty or student, you get 20% off your monthly bills (excluding any text messaging packages). No, I'm not kidding, that's $15 dollars off of every bill, and in light of the economic times, I'd be making a poor financial decision not to get one. My bills are only $6 more than my previous ones, and I get the internet on this phone.

As for the typing issue....I'm actually getting much better at it and am not having nearly as much of an issue with it as I originally thought I would

All in all, my only complaint with the phone is that it's so easy to become distracted while I should be doing other things, which really isn't too much of a complain after all

:)

Milo shouldn't be your only friend

So in class we saw an ad for this video game that really reminded me of a Nintendo Wii without the controllers. It looked really cool and I was curious as to how it worked.... and then I started thinking. I have a little brother who loves video games and he is not anti-social by any means but I feel like this video game business is cutting into kids socializing with real people. If this Milo character can really interact with it's user it'll make kids think that Milo is their friend. Why would a kid want to be with real kids who can be mean, rude and everything in between when they can talk to a screen who won't talk back in a mean way? It's going to mess kids up...seriously. Although the times in elementary school or middle school when kids weren't particularly nice aren't always pleasant, they really do teach kids important lessons. Lessons on being nice to others, when to defend yourself and how to problem solve in general.


Parents of the future... do your kid a favor and help them to make friends...real life ones.

Funny things.

These next few weeks of school are going to be like scenes out of the exorcist when the girl's head is spinning. Absolutely awful. So I decided to use this post to show you all one of my absolute favorite things to use the internet for... funny videos! Enjoy!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkdcYlOn5M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk-1mla0LeU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkpAO0f0oN0&feature=fvw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E63ExmhOk8g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SX998rQxv0

Photoshop Ruins Memories

This weekend I went to the Sears Tower Skydeck. For those of you who don't know what that is... It's a trip up to the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower (Yes, it's still the Sear's tower, not the Willis Tower... no one will ever call it that). When you get to the top there's a great view, unlike anything you've ever seen. Along with being able to see the view there are three plexi-glass boxes that hang off the side of the buidling. You are allowed to go into these boxes and have a full view of what it is like to be hanging off of the Sears Tower. We happened to go up at night, which in my opinion was even better. Athough it was cool at night, it proposed another problem. Without a high speed camera with the right settings, getting a good picture without any reflections from the glass is pretty difficult. After finding this out it was relieving to know that you can get your picture taken by one of the employees with their fancy-looking camera. Fantastic! Problem solved!

So we waited in line for about a half an hour until we got close enough to see what was actually going on. What we thought was a real picture at the top of the Sears Tower in "the ledge" box, was actually just a picture of you super-imposed on a pre-made photoshopped, fake picture of the scenery you were actually experiencing. I was not happy. Is is that important to have a perfect-looking picture that you may not even be able to remember what it was really like years down the line becuase you got the fake picture? Needless to say we got out of line and got some real pictures. Were they perfect? No. Were they way more unique and special than some pre-made picture? Absolutely.

The Facebook obessed

Once again I have another pet peeve....

People who post their entire day and sometimes life plans on Facebook for everyone to see. There are literally people out there who post statuses like " Tanning for 20 minutes, working out doing cardio and lifting weights, going to Starbucks, going to class until 415 and then homework allll night" I'm sorry but if I wanted to know what you were doing for the entire day I would probably ask you. I understand it's everyones right to post what they want on their page but it's not when it pops up on my "newsfeed" and I am forced to look at it when I sign in. Not only that, but doesn't that create some sort of security issue? It's not like there aren't enough crazy people in the world who could stalk you, but now, they have it really easy since they can go on your Facebook and see exactly where you are at any point in time. I believe that the lack of security is going to get out of control with all these new technologies that basically give other people the right to invade your technology without the added risk of you voluntarily putting your life on your Facebook. REMEMBER PEOPLE, anyone you are friends with on Facebook can read what you have on there, and most of us don't need to know what Jim from high school who we haven't talked to in 4 years is eating for lunch today.

Virtual Dating....just say no.

Ok.. so I'm not sure if anyone else was as creeped out as I was about that virtual dating site we saw in class, but I hope they were, because it's beyond weird. Chances are, if someone who wants to do one of those types of dates when there are services such as Skype that would make it a virtual date, except with the real person, they are hiding something. You're only going to attract freaks...

Now thats not to say that online dating is all bad. I think it's okay if you're over 35. Harsh as it may be, I don't think there's a reason for it when you're young. Go out there! Socialize! It's not hard when you're in the under 30 crowd.

And although I'm sure there are situations when this happens with the older crowd, I feel it's dangerous to do online dating when you're young. Unfortunately, not all of us have the instinct to know when something isn't exactly safe. When you're older, I think it becomes easier to know when a situation could be really dangerous.

Overall, stay away from virtual dating. You want people to know, like, and date you for the real you! NOT a pre-made cartoon character that you pick out for yourself or a virtual location for your date!

Ads on Pandora

If any of you have been on Pandora recently you probably have noticed that Pandora now has 15 second commercials in between songs. I was not aware until the other day about this change and was pretty annoyed. Yes, it is free, and yes, they need to make money-but if it's commercials now, whats to stop it from having membership fees and essentially being the same thing as satellite radio. Another thing I was curious about is why they didn't send out an email letting it's users about the changes. It may have prevented some of the confusion when you heard talking coming from the computer when you thought you were playing music. Personally it scared the crap out of me when I heard a man's voice out of no where :) Oh well, I guess it's becoming more and more true that nothing in life is free... or advertisement free.

link to blogs

link to Zeynep

Blackberry vs. iphone

My phone contract is up at the end of this month and I am not sure whether to go with another Blackberry or an iphone. I'm a little concered with being able to text on the iphone.