Secure Email Project

http://smallbizresource.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/making_secure_e.html

Jay Campbell, owner of Joseph Campbell Realty, communicates with his clients mainly through email. Confidential and important emails containing documents and data are exchanged through email between him and his clients. Campbell was in need of a secure email sharing process, but one that didn't confuse his clients, as most of them are not computer savvy.
After further research Mr. Campbell chose Voltage Security Network, which enables his clients to open a secure email in their regular inbox, click on the envelope to open the secure message, and are quickly authorized allowing them to read and send back an encrypted email.
Secure email provides Campbell with greater credibility and peace of mind to his clients knowing that their confidential information is protected.

Database Project

Before reading the instructions for the Database project, I had never heard of Microsoft Access. I am familiar with Word, Excel (obviously) and the software suite Microsoft Office...but not Access.

Once I opened Access I browsed around on my own to get somewhat familiar before I embarked on the project. I watched the first lecture, completed the first portion of the project (creating the table), and everything was fine. I felt like I knew what I was doing. I watched the second lecture (importing tables) and thought "this might be a little tricky, but I'll manage." But once I attempted to complete the importing tables section of the project, it took me HOURS to figure it out. Trial and error over and over and over again. I was furious. I read the discussion board posts, browsed the Web, searched every resource I could. I was so livid to the point where I didn't want to do it. That was until I came across a discussion board post that was directly related to my problem. After that obstacle, everything else was extremely smooth. It was such an accomplishing feeling when I finished the project.

There is not just one key thing that this project taught me. This project taught me EVERYTHING that was entailed in the project. It was helpful for the lectures to compare certain aspects of Access to Excel, that definitely enabled me to grasp concepts easier...

If I could enhance the functionality of this project I would have allocated specific information to certain tables. I would have enabled relationships among tables so that if I created a table of individual members there was a link that provided access to those individual members that joined a certain date, or lived in a specific city/zip code.

This project opened my eyes to the many options that I would have been able to organize a business that I owned. It enables one to strategically organize and categorize specifics of a business that is necessary to continue to grow and profit from a business.

Excel Project

Throughout my educational career I have used Excel for many projects. So, when I saw that we had an Excel project I thought, "Oh that shouldn't be too bad. I know how to use Excel, it'll be a piece of cake." Boy was I wrong...

After watching the lectures for week 10/this project, I felt like I had been hiding under a rock. Why had I not been informed of all the magical tasks that Excel is capable of?! Also, how in the world did businesses manage/edit/track/format data before Excel?

This project entailed data from 500 subjects. The data pertained to their gender, sex and heart rate during a 15 minute workout and a 5 minute cool down. Specific functions in Excel enabled me to find the subject's maximum heart rate, a certain desired target heart rate, the highest heart rate achieved, IF the target was achieved, the percentage of each subject's increased heart rate from the start of the exercise program until the heart rate was reached, how many subjects reached their target heart rate during the 15 minute exercise window, and which demographic group got the most benefit from the exercise program.

Finding answers to all of the questions proposed by the owner of a fitness center required knowing specific formulas for Excel to compute, as well as formatting the data. I learned a plethora amount of skills from this project...skills that were necessary to complete this project. These skills included knowing and understanding the formulas for absolute and relative addressing, finding the average of a large amount of data, the =IF() function and simplifying data to its count rather than sum. I was most impressed with the fact that Excel was able to perform an equation with two numerical factors and present the product as text! (for ex: the "Yes" or "No" response relating to if the subject's heart rate was greater than or equal to his/her target heart rate.)

I am still amazed by the "intelligence" that Excel embodies in order to carry out such amazing tasks. In my opinion I feel as though I am pretty techno-savy and up to date with today's technology...but this project definitely made me feel like I was born yesterday.

Web 2.0 Project Skiing in Montreal

I am going to be honest...I was very intimidated by this project. First off, I had no absolutely no idea what "Web 2.0" was...and furthermore, I had no clue what this project was asking. Was I supposed to upload random pictures to a Web site? What type of story was I supposed to tell? After reviewing projects of other classmates I was able to gain insight into what was expected of me.

The first step was deciding on a story that could be interesting to other viewers, but also a story of mine that told often. And through that brainstorming process, I was led to my trip to Montreal, Canada. My best friend Lindsay had asked me to go skiing with her in Montreal the winter of 2008 falling into the beginning of 2009. Not only was this a general vacation to go skiing and have fun, it was an opportunity to go skiing in a country other than the United States of America. I am an avid skiier...and before my trip to Montreal, I had only skied in multiple cities in Colorado, as well as North Carolina.

I hope that that through my Web 2.0 project viewers are able to experience the excitement and awesomeness that I encountered.

I am not going to lie..I went through several different Web 2.0 tools before I settled on the right one for me. I tried "one true media" and "slide.com" but both sites were not compatible with my computer. Through this project I learned a great deal of patience. I had to weed through several "Web 2.0" tools until I found the right one for me. This project also taught me the importance of organizing and specifying data so that a story/situation/presentation presents itself in an effective and orderly fashion.

For my interaction method is a link to "polldaddy.com" that allows you guys to vote on a question that I proposed. I hope that individuals that take my poll will allow me to gather a sample data of people who view my blog that have skied/snowboarded in a different country versus people who have not done so.

Through this interaction I hope to gain insight from the amount of people who view my Web 2.0 story and if they have ever skied/snowboarded in a different country.


So here is my Web 2.0 project, enjoy :)

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/kZ5RG8DR


And for interaction I would greatly appreciate you to take this poll:

http://answers.polldaddy.com/poll/2665945/