Collaboration systems are tools that support the works of teams. They are IT based and they do this by sharing the flow of such information. Businesses can solve a number of tasks they may have with collaboration. Some of these may include but are not limited to: telecommuting, online meetings, deploying applications, and remote project and sales management.
A popular term and one of the most dominant collaboration applications, is eamil. More specifically, instant messaging allows people to communicate in “real time”. Private chat rooms are created in real time over the internet to allow communication between two people. (Baltzan,Phillips,p. 384)
In the CNN.com article titled “Facebook unveils instant messaging feature”, it describes a brand new instant messaging service called Facebook chat. Friends on Facebook will actually be able to communicate with each other in real time, back and forth instantly. This differs from the normal built in email messaging Facebook offers. When users click online friends, they will see who is available to chat and they will have the option to move their chat book and clear their history.
One interesting idea the article mentions is the idea that Facechat could possibly be serious competition for AOL’s instant messaging client AIM. They are currently the number one instant messaging service in the United States. This is because Facebook is becoming so popular, even passing up Myspace, which is something no one saw coming!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/08/facebook.chat/index.html
This article pertains to the drop in MySpace web traffic. According to Eliot Van Buskirk of wire.com MySpace’s parent company stands to lose approximately 100 million because it can meet its web traffic (advertizing) quota with Google. This is bad new foe News Corp because it covered its 580 dollar acquisition of MySpace; on the up side News Corp generates 85 percent of its revenue from movie studio and cable channels. MySpace has changed its focus from a site “that bring friends together” to one that specializes in entertainment. According to Chase Carey, “We’re not trying to beat Facebook. We’re not trying to beat Twitter and many aspects of the business are changing, including when movies can debut on platforms other than theaters, the value of syndicated reruns, and the growth of video-on-demand.” (www.wired.com).
This is note worthy and correlate to chapter 12 because it says that business use social networks for passive employment searches, boomerang searches, and marketing networks. At stated above Myspace plans on focusing on entertainment and has become a useful tool in adverting and marketing music, movies, and videos.
By Eliot Van Buskirk
November 5, 2009
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/11/myspace-traffic-drop-costs-news-corp-about-100-million/
Social Entrepreneurship: Going Green
I tired to find a decent article which talks about globalization but an article about green energy found me first. This article was published few months ago and talks about billionaire T. Boone Pickens’s plan of building the world’s largest wind farm.
Pickens is a billionaire who earned his treasure from the oil industry and trading. He was named the 117th richest person in US with a net worth of about $3 billion in 2007.
Pickens’s plan of building the 667 wind turbines named the Pampa Wind Project was put on hold due to tranmission issue and capital market issue. Pickens said that he will not forfeit the project and claim that he will definitely find a place to place his 667 wind turbines.
The wind farm project proposed to supply 4000 megawatts of electric energy and should supply electric energy for 1.3 million homes. The project will cost $12 billion and is now postponed to be complete by 2014.
Pickens had been advertising his wind farm plan by TV commercials and lobbying even since last summer. Unfortunately the credit market had been holding Pickens back from completing his plan. Pickens tried to get into energy supplying industry as oil price had been unstable recently and forecast to be unstable in near future.
United State became the world leading provider of wind energy in 2008. Wind farm is visioned to be the leading electric energy supplier in the future for US.
Wind farm is in many way more environmental friendly than many electric energy generator. Wind farm uses renewable energy, wind, to generate electric power and propose near no treat to the environment. With the existent of wind farm, more environmental unfriendly power generator can be replaced.
Oil boron’s wind farm project hits doldrums
CNN Technology, July 8, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/07/08/pickens.wind.farm/index.html
This article pertains to the Goggle’s open source Android operating system (for mobile phones) that was released last year. Priya Ganapati of Wired.com says that while the system had a slow start it has become increasingly popular but has run into a few problems. Mainly the problem is that there are three version of the operating system on the market (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0). This became a problem because application developer has had to make much correction to there program in order for them to run successfully on all three systems. That is while an application will run perfectly on one OS system it will not function properly on anther. Another problem is that certain application will not operate on certain phone that it is the phones do not have the proper hardware to launch these applications. “Ultimately, developers will have to start making tough decisions on who they want to target and versions of the operating system they want to support” ,says Gilligan (www.cnn.com).
I found this to correlate to chapter 11 because chapter 11 discusses the importance of project planning and development. This article shows a perfect example of a poorly planned project because time, scope, and Cost (triple constrain) where not balance effectively. Both cell phone manufactures and OS developers need to coordinate their activities to produce a quality product. The iPhone is a perfect example of such coordination.
Article By: Priya Ganapati
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/android.wired/index.html?iref=allsear
November 17, 2009 5:06 p.m. EST
This article is a review of the features offer by in Genesys Meeting Center software. It is inexpensive web conferencing software that cost approximately 33 cents per minute per user. This provides a nice alternative to purchasing an allotted time of service. Once you create an account you are give a “credit Card” of sort with your information and PIN number. To access the service you simple go to www.genesys.com and enter your PIN number (only the moderator needs to enter a PIN number). The Moderator has full control of the session and software allows display live video and shows the transitions and integrated audio and video on our test PowerPoint slide show. The moderator can also set up private chat sessions and decide when other can communicate.
this correlates to the text because the text defines groupware as software that supports team interaction and dynamics including calendaring, scheduling and videoconferencing. The text also say that that they are used to coordinate to solve problems, compete or negotiate. I believe this software is becoming increasingly valuable because it allow people to communicate from vast distances. This semester I used collaboration software in my MGT software it felt somewhat like an instant messenger but also had the capability of recording session. I however would have preferred web-conferencing software that allowed use to actually see each other. I felt the lack of interaction non-verbal communication hinder our work and would have been easier with a visual experience.
Leon Erlanger
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1418513,00.asp
January 20, 2004
Why are there no Mac Viruses
In this article Philip Elmer-Dewitt discusses the reason for the lack of Mac OS X viruses. He argues that there aren’t any viruses capable of infecting the Mac OS X system. He defined a virus as a program that infects a computer and has the ability to spread to other computers. He argued that spyware and Trojan horses, and spam are not considered viruses. He state that many people argue that the reason Mac OS X has a lack a virus is the lack of consumers. He argue that the real reason lack of viruses is hackers’ lack of interest, due to low consumer base, to some extent, the UNIX base file system and kernel is more difficult to infect, and viruses are going out of style.
He closes by stating that apple my just be lucky, or that it could infect offer better protection for its customers and that Windows 7 may offer similar protection. I like to believe the latter from, what I have heard is that since Mac builds programs specific to one type of computer they are better able to work out all the litter bug that may hinder the systems capabilities, whereas Microsoft develops programs for a wide array of computers e.g. Toshiba, Dell, HP, etc. This correlates to Chapter One in the sense that a company must decide what type of operating system to use the need to weight out what they want to accomplish and other issues such a security within that system. The Company I work (BestBuy) uses Microsoft I believe it’s because it offers a greater compatibility with external aspects of the company.
Posted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt September 2, 2009 10:53 AM
http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/09/02/why-are-there-no-mac-viruses/
“Company Offers College textbooks for free”
This particular article informs the public of the website flatworld.com, a website where like the title suggests allows students to obtain their college text books for free. There are a few more details than that of course the website also offers printed versions of the texts book for up to sixty dollars and offers PDF versions of the text for $20 but students always have the option to read the books on a web browser for free. Another interesting fact is that they offer the books by chapter. According to John C. Abell Flatworld.com started by being patronized by 1,000 students at 30 colleges and now more than 40,000 students at 400 colleges use this website.
“Eric Frank cofounder told WIRED (Abell) that the key buy in has been from the teachers who make the assignments and this can attributed to the economy” (cnn.com, 1). Frank believes it will come down to price especially after new formats are developed for the Sony’s e-book reader and Amazon’s kindle. The Company still aspect the PDF copy to be the package of choice e-book and similar devises are capable of reading PDF formats.
I found this to correlate with Chapter three because it offers a new option for students to use the internet and is a perfect example of how the internet has evolved to facilitate the needs of different individuals.
John C. Abell Sept. 8, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/08/21/free.college.textbooks/index.html
“Cybercrime: a secret underground economy”
This article denounces the stereotype of geeks creating and sending out viruses and maintains that it is a growing industry. Cyber criminals steal one’s personal information such as credit card numbers or bank account numbers by way of malware, spyware viruses, Trojan horses etc. And then sell that information online to a third party. David Goldman describes this as a “multi-billion dollar business” and goes on to that if every stolen credit card was wiped clean last year that would have totaled some 8 billion dollars. One must ask so what is the government doing to prevent these crimes? Well the FBI is currently going undercover in IRC (internet relay chat rooms) and posing as cyber criminal. Once a criminal is caught they offered deals in order to get them to help turn over more cyber criminals although Goldman cites Albert Gonzalez in saying that doesn’t always work one can always look at the TJ Max situation. A situation where a cyber criminal was working for the FBI in order to get vital information that helped his friends evade detection (cnn.com, 1). According to eh article Rowan Trollope the senior vice president of product development at Symantec the current anti-virus technology is not enough one must perform personal step to educate oneself in order to say safe from cyber criminals. This directly correlates with this week’s text because it involves the technological aspect of protecting vital information but also states that one must also encompass an educational aspect to the technology in order to have information lost due to human error. In a discussion with one of my co-worker I discovered that Norton and McAfee antivirus systems were not that great because they are the most popular antivirus programs used and thus make it more attractive for hackers to get breach. My co-worker a computer technician recommended AVG and various other antivirus programs as alternative.
David Goldman, CNNMoney.com staff writer
http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/16/technology/cybercrime/index.htm?postversion=2009091613
On Tuesday September 1, 2009 Gmail, the email service provided the Google search engine, experience a widespread outage. Ben Treynor, a Google vise president said, “it was a big deal and that Google is working identifying and correcting the errors that lead to the outage.” The immediate cause for the outage was that a few servers were taken offline for routine maintenance and while they were offline Google experienced experience an unexpected surge in internet traffic.
Eric Kuhn goes on to mention that at one time users would consider that the problem was stemming from their own internet connection but with social network such as Twitter that old ideology went out the door. People knew exactly why they weren’t getting any serve. According to Kuhn “Gmail problems were a top trend topic on Twitter” (cnn.com, 1)
This article directly correlates with this week’s chapter, chapter five, because two of the main topics in chapter five were backup and recovery. An organization needs to plan how often to backup information and those they also need to plan when and how minimize down time and improve recovery time. One particular method was fault tolerance in which a system has a component embedded in the system that takes over the main system in the event of an outage. Another method is failovers in which a separate duplicate system takes over while the main system is down. According to Treynor, “Google plans to increase router capacity well beyond peak demand to provide headroom” (cnn.com, 1) with 36 million users in the US alone Google should have planned better maintenance schedules.
By: Eric Kuhn
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/01/gmail.outage/index.html
By John D. Sutter October 15, 2009 E:\Disney debuts do-it-yourself thrill ride – CNN_com.mht
