Friday, September 28, 2007

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 5.


Good afternoon. From Mobile Communication and Database lectures the most interesting and unknown things for me were: 1) New possibilities of connecting PC and TV work and Iphone structure and features; 2) Existence of different database types and their drawbacks. I was also surprised that Microsoft Access can not be classified as database at all.

Article 5. Cell Phones of the Future

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/08/cellphones/index_01.htm

Please, notice - there are different 8 slides in the article - each on separate page).


The article shows us that future cell phones add more and more different functions and, in my opinion, they loose the possibility of being called the “phones” at all as their main function becomes unknown. You can watch movies on them (see the last slide), use as the jewelry investment or wristwatch, etc. Soon anything available in our imagination will be performed in these small devices. It is very interesting and exiting. Especially if we remind ourselves that 20 years ago most of the people could not even imagine that they would use phone connection without wire attached to it. With such technology development speed we just forgot about these times with great pleasure.





Saturday, September 22, 2007

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 4.

Hello. The two new things from Software and Networking lectures for me were: 1) I didn't know that the device, which transforms analog signal into digital, is modem. What about when modem is used with digital phone lines? It still has to be present there. Does it have some other purposes then? 2) I knew about existence of client/server model of software communication, but never knew about other types possible.

Article 4.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201808208&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News
From the first sight this article does not seems to have a lot in common with our Internet topic. But let's take a deeper look on it. 20% of people claim that "they spend less time having sex because they're too busy online". Is not it horrifying? These simple data show us how deep Internet has penetrated in our life. Most of modern people even don't see any difference between online and offline life. Moreover some of them even replaced their offline life - they do most of the reading, shopping and even communicating online. I agree that it is easier. I do it by myself. I talk with my parents online, but I can't do it different way as they live in Ukraine. I'm really scared that in close future this "piece of hardware" can replace all the real human communication. Does it really have such abilities? For me - it does not. I do and will always believe that nothing can be better than sitting with your close friends together at one table and talking. It is the most valuable thing for me. What about you? Have you already exchange sex for Internet? :-))

Friday, September 14, 2007

Individual Assignment no. 1


Google AdWords is a quick and simple way to purchase highly targeted cost-per-click (CPC) advertising, regardless of user’s budget. AdWords ads are displayed along with search results on Google, as well as on search and content sites in Google’s growing ad network, including AOL, EarthLink, HowStuffWorks, & Blogger. With more than 200 million searches on Google each day and even more searches and page views on our ad network, exact Google AdWords ads reach a vast audience.
When user creates a Google AdWords ad, he chooses keywords for which his ad will appear and specify the maximum amount he is willing to pay for each click. The user only pay when someone clicks on his ad.
There's no minimum monthly charge -- just a $5 activation fee.

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, text-based, un-obtrusive Google AdWords™ ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on user’s site, he'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance his content pages.
Simply put, Google provides the user with AdSense HTML ad code to place on the web pages on which he wants to display AdWords ads. Then, Google takes care of the rest by leveraging award-winning and proprietary Google search and page-ranking technologies to deliver relevant AdWords ads to those content pages.
The user gets paid whenever someone on his site clicks on one of the AdSense ads. Advertisers can also bid to appear on user’s site on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. Both CPC and CPM bids compete in Google’s AdWords program to ensure that user optimizes his ad revenue.

Google’s income from Advertising:
($ in thousands, except per share amounts)

Revenue 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007Q1 2007Q2
(unaudited)
Total ads. revenues 410,915 1,420,663 3,143,288 6,065,003 10,492,628 3,627,450 3,838,341
Y/Y Growth rate 514% 246% 121% 93% 73% 63% 58%
Q/Q Growth rate NA NA NA NA NA 14% 6%


Source: http://investor.google.com/fin_data.html
P.S. Sorry tried several times, but can't import chart here.

My opinion is that both these programs are the most beneficial for small and middle-sized companies. One if the reason is: the search for the products usually is done per key word, which is the name of the product – not brand. So companies with unknown brands (small and middle-sized) and not expensive products are searched. If people need product of a big sized company they go straight to its website as its repeats the name of the company and usually well-know.

The most important difference from TV advertising is in customer orientation of the services provided. The users will be offered the only type of advertising that they are looking for (not the whole range of different products like in TV advertising). The second advantage is that advertisers can limit their target auditorium to specified location (state, city, etc.) when is much harder to establish in TV advertising.

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 3.


Good afternoon! Today I would like to mention 2 new things learned from my classmates Hardware presentation and Software lecture. The first term I heard first is Virtualization, which "includes making a single physical resource (such as a server, an operating system, an application, or storage device) appear to function as multiple logical resources; or it can include making multiple physical resources (such as storage devices or servers) appear as a single logical resource." (Wikipedia source). The second new thing for me was the difference between machine languages of first and last generation, namely that you can understand the languages of last generation as they consist of plain English words.

ARTICLE 3.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9035459&intsrc=hm_list
As you can see from the article a new edition of Sports software - MagicSports 4.0 - was introduced targeting especially sports fans, who are too busy to watch every game, but still want to know all the details of favorite events. The software can analyze 4 types of games - football (new), soccer, baseball and sumo wrestling and using several special techniques (like four-star classification) creates 20 minutes final video. It offers number of convenient options like watching the game from the favorite point or moving back and forward, editing the game and creating own video, which can be shared with friends. The program is user friendly and easy to install.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Comments on the classes and ARTICLE 2.

Hello! Today I would like to share my impression on the two last classes and tell you what was the most interesting for me. The first thing that I found new and pretty simple is the approach of solving of every kind of the problem from IT side. In the beginning it seems for you impossible to solve some sorts of issues, but if you classify them first as per categories given and then just apply one of the possible solution choices it becomes much easier. The second thing, which was new for me, is availability of different types of computers (huge classification) even though some of the names mean almost the same and you can't see the difference between them from the first sight.

ARTICLE 2.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multimedia/display/20070904234014.html

You can see the direct connection of this article with class topic "Hardware" as it is one of the "input" devices as per general rule. But if to take a look on this keyboard I believe we can also say that it is "output" device as well: "Specially designed software will be able to change images on the colour screens depending on the program running." So it will give you some information depending on the task. This keyboard has already found its place in the market, but I personally don't see a lot of application for it. And what about you?