Blogging Experience

Well, I have not really learned very much from blogging this quarter. This is because I currently have 6 blogs (across different sites) that I maintain and regulate. Having this background with blogs, I can personally tell all of you that all blogs are not like blogger. I am letting all of you see my Tumblr blog. This is a very informal blog that I frequently am on. I do not post too often on this though. When I do post something that is original, I am expressing a more poetic side of me. This sometimes will reflect how I am feeling, but has no relevance to my overall life. I follow a few of my friends on it and mostly will browse photos on this site. Many different blogs on this site have some "inappropriate" images though. I also have another blogger account that I use for communicating with many of my gaming friends. I do not wish to enclose this hyperlink because there are some pretty nasty comments on there about and from me. Some people (including myself) will get very involved in a video game and take it very personally.

The one thing I have learned through doing this, is how to use a blog for business purposes. This is my only blog that I have used for research and educational discussion. I do not see many of you keeping your blogs or keeping them up to date, but I would actually advise you to do this and to post something once a week about what you learned about your career path. This will build a small reputation (if it kept professional) and also be useful to other people that may be researching a topic included within your blog. This is why (or at least why I believe) that Mrs. Dalley had us go and research professional blogs. You can also use another professional blog (with a reputation) to give you pointers or advice on what you are posting about. This will also help build that small reputation I was talking about. If you are really proud of your professional blog, you may even use it as a resource to make yourself stand out to potential employers. Many of you will not see this and probably think I am nuts, but a professional blog may provide an employer with the knowledge of knowing how much you are capable of and what you are already comfortable with in your field of study. I will probably keep this blog up to date, but I may change the address of this blog (and of course notify my followers on a post) for professional purposes.

I hope that many of you have learned many things in this class and will do great in your future,

Cody

My Computer Tips

As a computer information systems student, I have to know a lot about computers. I wish to tell the non-tech people reading this some tips of advice and some free pointers to help them with some common error problems. 

The most important thing (in my opinion) for computers is safety. Most of you probably purchase your anti-virus through Norton or some other company. Many people do not know of two free anti-virus programs offered on the internet (that are not viruses or malware). They are Microsoft Security Essentials and Avira (This does not go to Avira's site, but this is the site you are directed too when you go to download the free version). Just to inform you, do not install both of these programs onto a single computer. They will interfere with one another and make each other useless. The one offered by Microsoft is user friendly and completely free. Avira is a little more complex, but also is a little better than Microsoft Security Essentials. If you are going to install either of these programs, download the file, disconnect your computer form the internet, uninstall the current anti-virus, install the new anti-virus, and then turn your internet back on.

I also use Spybot-Search & Destroy (also free on the link I have provided here) on my computer as a file scanner. Having this program in addition to an anti-virus ensures even more security on your computer. This program is maintained by people working off of donations provided to the website. This program does a scan of every file on your computer for anything that is harmful. There are other programs like this one out there, but I trust this one and I am very familiar with it. This program will not interfere with your anti-virus, allowing you to simply install it. This program will occasionally run itself upon startup, and temporarily lock you out until it is finished.

Now I am going to talk about how you may receive a file that would harm your computer (and the reason why you need an anti-virus and other programs). Simply going onto the internet and browsing at random websites will likely get you a virus. Whenever you go onto a website, a small file called a cookie is stored onto your computer. A website may encrypt (hide) a virus inside of the cookie. It could be thought of as biting into a chocolate chip cookie and finding a raisin inside of it. Most people today communicate through e-mail and text messages. A person can also send you a file encrypted with a virus or the actual message itself can have a virus on it. A computer virus can be sent to a cellular device because of e-mail and SMS messages. It is important that you only open e-mails from people you know and from sites that would be sending you an e-mail. And if you notice that someone else is going onto your e-mail and sending people messages, you should inform your friends and get a new e-mail and get a new e-mail address.

Next, I want to talk to you about passwords. If your password is "password", "12345" or a family member's birthday, name or middle name, someone else has probably read or is reading this article pretending to be you. So you better go and change your password before continuing to read this (this will still be here once you get back). The Libyan government recently lost countless confidential files because they used the password "12345". People also will download this “nifty” software called a password generator. These allow for a person to input around 6000 password combinations per minute (roughly). This is why internet sites use the captcha boxes (that we all love) after you have incorrectly input 2 passwords. The captcha boxes are unable to be read by a password generator, allowing for the site to have some security. There are certain websites out there that use an algorithm that will hack and retrieve your password (sites will usually charge about $10-50 to do this for you). To avoid something like this from happening (when you create a password), use 1 letter from a foreign language to insure safety (I personally use a combination of characters from 3 languages on most of my passwords). This will interrupt most of these algorithms. This allows for the algorithm to read your password incorrectly and insure it to be secure. The character from the other language can still be an English character, but the data is read differently by the algorithm, causing an error in the reading. I am yet to find a program that can accurately retrieve my password. My old password (it is no longer in use) was “butterfly” The second t was a character from the Spanish language, but the input was the exact way it normally would be in English.

The last security thing I am going to rant about is something you may not notice when you are on the internet. When you go to a website and look at the HTML address (the place where you might type in “www.yahoo.com”), you will notice that it turns into “http://www.yahoo.com/” instead of “www.yahoo.com”. This is the full web address of the site. Now most of you probably don’t know this, but if you go onto “www.google.com”, it turns into “https://www.google.com/”. The little “s” at the “http” stands for secure. This ensures that the site will not have a virus encrypted into its cookie and not give you a virus for going to the site (but many of the sites you get form Google probably will). Blackboard also has this little “s” in its HTML address. Facebook also has the little “s” on it, but some of the games may give you a virus. This is because the actual game will store a cookie on your computer on top of the one given to you from the website. This is the case with many games on the internet. They will store a cookie on your computer so you may continue from a previous save or even play it on another site without losing your progress. This is much more common with MySpace, so you should not use ANY of their applications they may offer.

Now I am going to talk about maintenance. A computer should be routinely dusted every year. This will help the computer maintain a cooler temperature and prolong it’s lifetime of usefulness. You do NOT open your computer and spray it with pledge. You can go to most stores (like Meijer’s, Wal-mart, auto stores, or computer stores) and buy a can of air. You use this to spray the dust out of your computer parts. If you are unsure how to do this, you should take your computer to a computer specialist or someone you know that knows how to do it (like me) and have them do it for you. Laptops also may need to have cooling gel applied every now and then. This gel allows for heat to be absorbed and safely removed from a certain part of the computer. This process is more complex than dusting, and should always be done by a professional. My brother tried to do this task by himself, and it resulted in his laptop constantly overheating and causing it to malfunction. I (as a tech student) will take my laptop in for this to be done in about 6 months. This job should be done about every 2-3 years. Doing both of these simple things can greatly increase the life of your computer and are very inexpensive (even if you have someone else do it for you). I hope that you all will walk away from reading this and have learned at least 1 thing you can do to avoid simple computer problems.

Internet Securities

For my post this week, I have read over the article Information systems security and safety measures: the dichotomy between students' familiarity and practice  from Academy of Information and Management Sciences Journal  by Ewuuk Lomo-David and Li-Jen Shannon at and the blog of www.safetyweb.com and have noticed several similarities in the blogs. They both go over simple security for computer users (to try to avoid viruses, malware, etc.) and also how to make your documents more secure.

The article goes over many questionnaires and research done over the years on the subject of computer safety. It goes into farther detail on passwords and security problems. I know many things on these two subjects and am extremely glad that I do know what I do, or else I would probably have encountered over 500 viruses and hackers by now. It shows what the studies have shown and what the researchers expected to find while researching. I believe that this article is for the more advanced computer user, but many of the statistics shocked me, so maybe some of you may want to go and read it.

The blog is targeted for the common computer users. It is actually oriented towards parents and teachers and ways to ensure that their child or student is using a computer securely and not letting out information that may haunt them. They have posted many different articles on the subject, but this allows for the blog to appeal to a more diverse amount of people.

Both of these articles are not intended for business purposes, but I think basic computer security is essential for most people to know (regardless of job occupation). Most workplaces will hire a tech person (so someone like me) to make sure that all of the computers have a firewall, antivirus, etc to make sure that the computer is safe, but if the user is not aware of how to avoid viruses, malware, etc then it would make my job  SO MUCH EASIER. I am not kidding, the most common problem and reason for viruses is the user giving a program or download permission to change firewall (or privacy) changes on a computer. If a company allowed for a seminar on computer safety, it would honestly make a computer technician’s job much easier. I do not think I can emphasize this enough.

I believe that the blog is more effective because it uses much less science and common words within the articles. This article goes over how a parent or teacher can learn to practice computer safety and how you can show other people about it.

Wi-Fi For All?

I am subscribed to Popular Science. Last month’s issue had an article by Stewart Wulpin titled Stringer Signals. The article is about the predictions of where Wi-Fi will be in the future. I think this article effects us all, but I will have to learn how this entire works as a computer student. 

The article starts out talking about cell phones and how the speeds have increased (3G to 4G is one example). It then goes on to expect that cellular traffic will increase 26 fold in the next 3 years, making cellular tower technology inefficient. They predict that phones will start using an internet signal for everything, which this will end up being Wi-Fi (cause someone is going to attach a cord to their cell phone and only be able to go a limited distance from their house). Wi-Fi is approximately 15 times faster than 4G LTE.

The problem that many of you might think now is “People put passwords on their Wi-Fi and I would have to continually connect to new signals.” Using the IEEE 802.11u protocol, the Wi-Fi Alliance is going to release a passport, allowing a person to automatically connect to a preferred hotspot, connect to them, enter passwords and authenticate security credentials, all without user input or notification. It will do all of this automatically.

When I continue to read this article, it says that they are going to convert Wi-Fi to Super Wi-Fi (about 4 times stronger than normal Wi-Fi, and also has about 4 times more range). A town in Virginia uses Super Wi-Fi, and allows the whole town to receive the signal (the town mentioned is about 25 square miles, the average Wi-Fi signal is about 100 feet).

It is predicted that people will get a dual Wi-Fi/Super Wi-Fi router in 2014 and cell phone manufacturers may start putting Super Wi-Fi chips into cell phones and other products. A person could then use Skype to make all of their calls and their Facebook or IM service to text their friends and stay on top of things, without any lag (slow speed of internet).

This information will change a lot of the things I have to study and know, but I am familiar with Super Wi-Fi, so it shouldn’t be too dramatic. With all of these super routers installed, most workplaces will not need to have their own internet connection (one less thing I will have to worry about) and allow for phones to have much more speed.

I think this article is much more professional than the two blogs I have read, and this article uses many terms that most common users will understand. All of these blogs have pretty decent credibility (first one used to be a hands on experience with computer problems, second blog is from Microsoft, and Popular Science has been a very good source in many of my research papers, and seems to be pretty unbiased). I personally liked this article more because it was a much easier read, and made many things much clearer for readers.

Intune Blog Response

I found a blog at http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsintune/archive/2011/05/09/firewall-and-proxy-server-settings-for-client-computers.aspx under the name of The Windows Intune Team Blog. As a computer major, learning about firewalls and other forms of security are essential (this link goes to a post about windows firewall). If you click on the name of the blog, it will take you to the main blog page. When I overlooked this blog, the whole blog appeared to be steps and changes to Windows Intune (a feature Microsoft offers to help the common user with technical difficulties). This blog is written for whoever wants to read it (not full of confusing acronyms), but there is a few minor things that I personally think that the common user would not know how to do. I personally really like the content of the blog, but i wish that they would have used a different layout than the Microsoft website, it looks a little bland with all the lighter blues. I personally would use this blog over the one that I previously mentioned in the last blog post. Both of the blogs deal with computers, but yet are completely unrelated. This blog is about one program that Microsoft now offers and the other is about general computer stuff and using it in the real world (business settings, repair, etc.).

As a tech student, I am overall impressed with the content of this blog, but I wish they would have changed the layout of the webpage. It makes me think that Microsoft is sponsoring or using this blog page. I did not pull very much information to relate to my future blog posts, but I have also been blogging for quite a while now.

Blog Post 1 - Cody Jacobs

I found a blog about computer repair information at http://computerrepairblog.com/. This blog mentions many different ways to fix a computer and several other useful computer info.  When looking over the latest entries, I am noticing that the posts are more related to general computer information than to repairs (what the blog was originally made for). I know this blog from past years and finding it while repairing another computer in my spare time. Some of the entries are to long for the posts on the page so there is a small [+] button at the bottom of the page in case the reader would like to continue reading about the post.

I believe that this blog was originally intended for a tech type of person, but has since been changed to appeal to a wider audience to gain a bigger fan base. The blog is still meant for the tech people out there, but is also appealing to businesses and the common computer user.

Looking at this blog (going into the tech field), i think that i could blog about my personal preference on computer software and how to overcome some computer mishaps that I may encounter so that other "techies" don't have as hard of a time as i did.