Final Assignment

Definitely this class has been interesting.  To be honest I knew a lot of the stuff we talked about coming in but what I enjoyed the most was the Access and Excel projects we did.  By doing those I was able to increase my knowledge more than just knowing the basics.  Especially with access and only using it once or twice it was nice to have someone actually sit down and teach it to me.  Excel I knew a lot about but some of the things we did do were new to me and it just increased my knowledge that much more.  Graduate on Saturday, trying to find a job most place ask about whether or not you have worked with different technology and now I can actually say I have and I'm good at it.

I enojyed this class for the most part and everyone made it entertaining from what it can be.

Samantha Claridge

Homework #9

5 Tech Jobs and What They Pay

This article is written about 5 jobs that deal strictly with technology. I was very interested to learn about them. The 5 jobs are Virtual Concierge, Mobile Application Developer, Online Reputation Management, Online Store Owner and Multimedia Content Producer. They all are very interesting and make me feel like you have to be very intelligent to do any of them. However one sticks out to me the most and that is Online Store Owner.

I think it sticks out the most because we go to business school where we are learning how to run or manage a company; I always assumed that meant a physical place. However, according to this article that company could be 100% online.

I also think that the Online Reputation Management is an interesting job that has potential to a lot of people. It’s almost like being a detective in a way. You are constantly monitoring the Internet making sure someone’s reputation stays clean. If any “dirty laundry” comes out you have to work fast to fix it.

Finally, I like the Application developer because they have the creativity to explore whatever they want and come up with ideas that no one else could. Ideas like twitter and Facebook apps didn’t come from the company; they came from people who thought it would be a cool idea to use these sites on the go. It doesn’t surprise me that Apple is the leading producer of mobile applications, considering they basically run the market for phone apps. 

The best thing about these jobs is how much money you can make from them. They are all at least 50,000 AT LEAST per year. Most being much higher. Playing on a computer all day and getting paid for it? Sounds good to me.

Microsoft AX 2012

The article I choose to talk about today is the article from information weekly and in this article it talks about how Microsoft just released a product called the Dynamics AX 2012 and it is a type of product that many retailers will benefit from very much because not only is it an industry specific version for vendors flagship ERP system that is designed to elimate barriers that many realtors are held back by but it does a lot more like  it eliminates data silos by combining point of sales, inventory, supply chain, and financials into one application but you can customize it to your specific type of business whether it’s a vendor or a big chain store. Another thing it can do is give current economic conditions so then realtors can make it easier for customers to buy whether that’s in store or online or even by mobile device. So basically what this does is it makes it easier to monitor customer buying habits and behavior and have the ability to manage inventory across many channels so then you’re not stuck on one channel to work with. Another thing that this does is it eliminates back end silo problems and provides built in intelligence capabilities that you can then analyze and change what is needed   so then you can sell more to the customers everywhere. http://youtu.be/XQK1sZGkgvg

The AX 2012 for retail multichannel management capabilities ensure that promotions delivered through mobile devices or social channels will be recognized and redeemable through the in store POS system which would be similar to the option of ordering in store and have it shipped or same day pick up from a purchase online. Now I think that this new technology is one of the most innovative and creative and smartest things I have heard of coming out in a while because I think not only will it make shopping less of a nightmare for the customer whether it be online or in the store but I think it will also make it a lot easier for the company to keep up with the demands of their customers because now with this software they can keep track of inventory better but also they can sell more stuff to more people because now they have a much wider customer base. 

Hw 9 IT Salaries

IT Salaries 2012: $90,000, 1% Raise Typical

By Chris Murphy   InformationWeek
April 16, 2012 08:00 AM

As Technology soars through the roof, we realize that the job industry is changing drastically. Those nerdy tech geeks in your high school will be making $$$$$ while were making $$$. Trying making fun of them now! The average IT staff is making about 90k yearly, generally with a 1% raise. Their managers are making roughly 116k with about a 1.8% raise! I now know i should have picked IT instead of Finance!

The people who can blend their business & IT skills are the most successful. A few niche job functions are making a good amount of dough. These jobs being; Wireless infrastructure ($115,000) and Cloud Computing ($110,000) are at top of the medians.

There is however some skills shortages in the industry. Business analytics specialists, basically being statiticians that are "deep into data modeling". these positions are in high demand and will continue to be into the future. With roughly 7000 people in the industry taking a survey, 88% thinks that their job is secure verses the other 12% that think their position is insecure.

Being in this technological industry, there is a lot of pro's and some cons to go with it. It is a constant learning environment, where you either "learn or be left behind". With the constant upgrading and advancement of tech, you have to constantly learn the new things happing in the tech world. So people in the IT work world diversify their skills, which can lead to promotions and even pay increments.

So if you like playing with computers, and want to earn a good salary, this career is for you!

Hw 3

The article I chose to read was "10 security trends to watch in 2012" by Mathew J Schwartz. He goes into detail about how specifically companies are going to keep an eye on the top 10 security trends. The first one he discusses is how business says that breaches are now inevitable. companies such as Verizon say that hacking occurrences are up by a factor of five in a 5 year span. They are now worrying about when they will get hacked rather than if they will get attacked. Another topic he talks a lot about is Mobile devices and how they now have antitheft protection as well with malware on mobile phones. Everyone  has a mobile phone, and the android smartphone run through windows is a easy target to hack. Companies are now trying to put tracking systems into company mobile phones so they are easy to track if lost. Now that almost everyone is on a social network, and with this you can bet that social-engineering is going to occur. More and more hackers are going to try to hack into people accounts on sites, like Facebook and even Twitter. This containing personal information, can really hurt someone if fallen into the wrong hands.
All this talk has gotten me thinking that in a 5 year span, a lot of hacking has increased. Where will it be in 10 years from now? Who's going to create that ultra system to prevent any hacker from using information that isn't theirs? The biggest threat to the world is the hacking of cell phones. Everyone has a cellphone, more and more people are using mobile-pay where you pay your bills from your phone. Checks and the Postal service is outdated, we don't have time for that anymore, and its getting to the point where credit cards are becoming a nuisance. we carry all our information on our mobile phones, use it at the register, they scan our phone it pays it like a credit card payment. This is becoming more and more risky, mobile hackers are increasing a lot which is very scary. As well with social networking increasing as well, hackers are going to be spending all their time trying to hack into accounts. Why not? there are upwards to 800million people now signed on to Facebook, with those numbers, they will have success breaching peoples accounts, gaining knowledge that is private!

Microsoft CRM Embraces iPhone, iPad, Android HW#9

Microsoft CRM Embraces iPhone I pad and Andriod

by Justin DaRosa

Microsoft says they will support the competitor’s mobile platform with service updates of Microsoft CRM application. Microsoft is slowly moving embracing cloud computing services such as Azure and Office 365. The new service will be a cloud based mobile CRM service called Microsoft Dynamics CRM Mobile. It will be available for many mobile users like on the IPhone, Blackberry, android markets as well as the windows 7 phone. “The mobile service will be $30 per user, per month with support for up to three devices per user. The apps will be initially available in 24 markets and 10 languages” the system will support many browsers like Google chrome, Firefox, and Safari running for both PCs, and Mac products.

The second quarter updates will be expected to be coming out sometime in May. Also the upgraded Micro blog and activity social collaborating capabilities introduced in Microsoft Dynamics CRM service update that last came out in November. The next coming upgrades will allow users to be more interactive allowing them to socially like or dislike things so that other people can see and do the same. Possible find common interests, and get other people to try things that you like or stay away from things they people dislike. The posts will also be filtered so that you can find the topics that most interest you. It will allow management to view all posts that the employees post in filtered sections whether the boss follows them or not. This will allow management to see what employees are up too, and see what they think and feed off their ideas for the company.

The new features will help Microsoft beat out other competition by going through multiple platforms to obtain their target audience. “The new Dynamics CRM social features and cross-platform mobile and browser support might help Microsoft step up the competition with Salesforce.com, which remains the largest provider of cloud-delivered CRM applications.” Going multi platform Microsoft hopes to do a lot better than its competitor salesforce.com that receives much more customers than Microsoft now. Late last year Microsoft said it has more than 30,000 Dynamics CRM customers (versus more than 100,000 customers of Salesforce.com). Microsoft's count includes both cloud and on-premises deployments, but the vendor says two out of three new customers are opting for cloud-delivered CRM app.”

IT jobs pay well

Information Week

IT Salaries 2012: $90,000, 1% raise typical

By: Chris Murphy

Ever since I can remember I have been told that IT jobs reel in the big bucks. After reading over this article, I definitely believe that is in fact true. IT remains a well-paying field, with median total compensation of $90,000 for staffers and $116,000 for managers. A few niche job functions, such as wireless infrastructure ($115,000) and cloud computing ($110,000), reach even higher, but the sample size for those specialties is quite small. With the addition of new management systems, I think there will be more jobs just like those and many talented computer technician.

Median total pay for business analytics managers has climbed 11% since 2010, and 8% for staffers. Companies are drowning in data and looking for business-savvy technologists to help them make sense of it. Among our 23 IT job categories, BI managers rank fourth in total compensation, earning $135,000. BI staffers are more middle of the pack, tied for 13th (with telephony and unified communications staff), earning $95,000. Data integration and data warehousing managers rank sixth in total compensation, at $131,000, while staffers are eighth, at $101,000. Each of the compensations are higher than most other “Average” compensations of other business jobs.

IT pros are reasonably satisfied and secure in their jobs. Sixty-two percent of staff and two-thirds of managers are satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs, nearly identical to the levels of the past five years. There's been a slight rise in job security, with 40% of staffers feeling highly secure, up from 34% in 2010. Just 12% feel insecure in their jobs. Job security is a huge factor in choosing a career. You want to make sure that you won’t be used for 3 years and ditched to the side because the company you work for decided to down-size. Usually most IT jobs aren’t something a company wants to let go because of how technologically inclined many of them are. There aren’t many great computer people out there so for the ones that are, they have job security as long as they stay with their job and don’t give any reason to get fired.

homework #9

The article that I decided to use this week was Five New Tech Jobs and What They Pay from the IT Jobs tab. The article caught my eye because I don’t know anyone who has a job in IT, but more importantly I wanted to see what some people might be getting paid in the field. For a lot of people, what they could potential make at their job or in their field is a big deal breaker in their decision making.

The first job that the article talks about is Virtual Concierge, and how new current technology is assisting a profession and taking to something that it could never have been before. Now someone can work from home and be someone’s personal assistant as a part-time job and make around $30,000.

The second job that is talked about is a mobile application developer. The article says that this is another job that can be done from home or could be a position at a company. To be successful you need to knew how to program for the iPhone and Android phones. But if you can then you can make between $61,000 to $67,000 a year

            The third job is an Online Reputation Manager, their sole job is to search the internet for stuff that is posted about their client online and decide if it is going to stay up or not. I think that this is going to be a big job in the future because of the popularity of the Internet, but people want their privacy. This can bring you $50,000 to $65,000.

            The fourth job is an online store owner. This now allows people to start a company with less money and to also reach more people. It can be used for just about any company to help them in their business and has an unlimited amount of earning potential.

            The final job that is talked about is Multimedia content production or in other words, as newspapers are making their way to the internet they are using all forms of  technology like video’s and blogs and everything else. This job can bring you from $35,000 to $54,000.

5 New Tech Jobs and What They Pay

I am writing about the article “5 New Tech Jobs and What They Pay.”  The five jobs listed are Virtual Concierge, Mobile Application Developer, Online Reputation Management, Online Store Manager, and Multimedia Content Producer.

            Virtual Concierge is about taking care of clients that are visiting a specific website.  Customers are given a section where they can ask a question and get a response instantly from a real person on another commuter who is overlooking the comment section.  This also includes people who take care of other people’s lives through scheduling, including managing schedules, setting up meetings, and even managing someone’s shopping list by purchasing groceries online.  I don’t think this would be a job for me.

            Mobile Application Developer sounds like it would be most favorite out of all the job options listed here.  It is all about being creative and using interactive software to develop new ideas that appeal to consumers.  This would be a pretty cool job, especially if you were able to say that you worked on something as popular as “Angry Birds.”  This is a job that you would easily be able to do from home, or even as a side job, which I am sure is what some people do. 

            Online Reputation Management is all about making sure your client’s online reputation.  You essentially make sure that when someone is googled only the good things come up, or at least the good things come up first.  Plus, you have to try to sway the negative comments and turn them into more favorable opinions.  This is probably a job I could manage because I can be persuasive, but I don’t see myself ever doing this.

            Online Store Manager is exactly what it sounds like, its sites like eBay and Quibids where you create exchanges between people and sometimes you don’t even have to touch the product.  Actually with sites like eBay and Quibids, they probably never touch the product. If I didn’t have to deal with mailing and receiving any packages, I could do this job, just monitoring sales and collecting commissions?  Sounds too easy.

            Multimedia Content Producer is essentially new age journalism.  This is old school journalism + technology.  Essentially these jobs are just blogging experts.  Not for me.

The article I chose to read was from CNN and it was titled “Where social networking is headed next.” This article describes how social networking can be implemented into companies and the workplace to make them more productive and efficient. LinkedIn, Facebook, and twitter have already been installed in some business places but they are not reaching their full potential. On the other hand these social networking sites are reaching their full potential outside of the workplace and are very successful. Some of the reasons why these social networking sites are not reaching their full potential is because of the cost that comes along with implementing them into the company. It cast a large amount of money for many companies to do this and many companies do not think it is worth the money. Some companies believe that the current operations are running smoothly without these websites, but they are missing out on a great opportunity if they do not take advantage of this resource. If implemented in day to day business these social networking sites can make any company more efficient and productive. These websites will do what email and internet have done for business but on a grander scale. Using facebook and twitter would allow for information to be transferred faster than ever. You could let employees know what times meeting are and you could send information from co-worker to co-worker in an instant. Also many employees are already used to these social networking websites and use them in their social life. This would allow for companies to not have to train employees on how to use these websites therefore saving money on training seminars. Due to the fact that these social networking websites are so successful outside of the workplace I can only imagine what it would do for the working world. I believe that because this is so successful outside of the workplace it can only help the workplace and businesses need to take advantage of this and make it their own. Also I believe that just about every company will eventually be implementing this in their day to day operations in the near future.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/03/05/where-social-networking-is-headed-next/

Homework 9

Have you ever wondered how much companies like Apple, Amazon or even Face book are worth? What if I told you those companies are worth more then places like Sears and Wal-Mart and they don’t even have a place where you can physically shop at?  What I am saying is true. In a recent showing or just in this article it says Recently Apple’s value peaked at $600B.  Yes, that is an astounding number; for it reflects not only 50% greater value than the oil giant Exxon/Mobil (~$390B), but more than the entire value of the stock markets in Spain, Greece and Portugal combined! Think about it apple a computer company is worth more than three countries combined. How mind blowing is that? In the world we live in times have drastically changed, maybe for the better because think about it over three hundred years ago people who were rich earned land. Now its how big your computer company is.  Think about the incredible shift that has happened in retail.  America’s largest and most successful retailer from the 1900 turn of the century well into the 1960s was Sears.  In an industry that long equated success with “location, location, location” Sears has had, and continues to control, enormous amounts of land and buildings.  But the value of Sears has declined like a stone pitched off a bridge, now worth only $6B (1% the Apple value) despite all that real estate! What surprised me the most is that Wal-mart one of the world’s biggest stores doesn’t have more income than Amazon a internet site. By becoming a tech company, Amazon is clearly well on the way to dominating retail, as Sears falls into irrelevancy and almost surely bankruptcy, and Wal-Mart stalls under the overhead of all that land, buildings, inventory and vast number of minimum-wage, uninsured employees. We now must realize that value is not created by what accountants have long called “hard assets” – land, buildings and equipment.  You have to ask yourself is this how the world is going? The fact that face book bought instagram shows this because everyone wants pictures an market price for just instagram shows how much money Facebook will make.  To be honest at the rate things are going I wouldn’t be surprised if stores that sell food soon will be like this. But ask yourself is this just making society lazy, losing interactions with others, or does it benefit it?

 

homeWORK #8#

Isiah Prosper

The Even Spookier Side of Data Analytics

Government intelligence agencies are some of the biggest buyers of low-cost technology to track users' moves on the Internet

Businesses today need to have an aggressive edge with their strategies regarding products and services, but they also need to be competitive in hiring the finest personnel. A growing number of well-known businesses, such as Amazon.com, Capital One, Proctor & Gamble and Best Buy, are using analytics for increasing the speed of product improvement, classify customers that are the most lucrative, reach the greatest pricing for supplies, and using the best employees for the business to reach its goals.

Data storage became easier as the availability of large amounts of computing power at low cost is the cost of processing power and storage is falling, made data cheap. More businesses are using analytics to make this happen. Over the past two decades companies have been using complex databases causing remarkable increases in the amount of information/ data being stored in electronic format. It has been estimated that the amount of information in the world doubles every couple of months, in size, and number of databases are increasing even faster. The number of businesses increasing their usage of analytics for decision-making continues to grow. All the improvements in statistical marketing strategies are pretty amazing, but unfortunately have a slew of ethical issues. Do I think they have been doing a great job with all of these technological advances? Yes, but they seriously need to consider certain personal information as private to stay private.

MasterCard, Visa Moving U.S. Credit Cards to 'Chip-and-PIN' by 2013

  Author: Mark Hachman 2/2/12

The addition of the “chip-and-pin” system by MasterCard as caused visa to enable there own advanced system, EMV which is meant to ensure the security of individuals as well as the global interoperability, the ability for different organizations to be able to work together to come to a single agreement.  With this new technology being spread throughout a multitude of countries, there is numerous beneficial outcomes that can come from this agreement that is being made. 

According to the article by Laurie DePrete, “Chip-and-PIN Credit Card Technology Introduced In the US”, this new technology that the US has now accepted will allow individuals to be able to use there cards outside of the country.  This technology has been used in outside countries for the last several years, and the US is finally catching up to date.  

With this new technology applied to there cards, US individuals will be able to use there cards in any countries that accepts this new technologies, including most European countries.  Although this new technology may seem minute, it does cause an enormous impact on many nations.  With the ability to use the cards within many different countries and thus many different currencies, we are allowing for the bondage between locations.  In a way, the ability to be able to communicate and agree on a system in order to ‘unify’ the countries, we are in some ways coming together and creating allies.  

In addition to the agreements being made between these countries, it also allows individuals to be able to travel without the concerns of having to convert American dollars to other currencies and vise versa.  With tourists almost being forced to carry large quantities of money with them while they travel, there is also an increase in crime factor.   Most individuals that are traveling to another country are usually there for business or for pleasure, but regardless of the purpose of their stay they do plan on purchasing items specific to the location that they are in.  The ability to be able to use a credit card as opposed to having to carry around large sums of cash is an advantage in more ways that one.