Email Security Project

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20013451-266.html?tag=mncol;txt

http://sify.com/finance/rim-confident-of-resolving-security-concerns-news-technology-klvakeehbjc.html

One difficulty international companies face is complying the different laws and regulations in the countries in which they do business. Recently Research In Motion, the developer of the popular Blackberry smartphones, has had trouble in India regarding their communication security.

India threatened to ban RIM's email and messenger unless the government could gain access to the encryption of these services. India claimed that unmonitored communications posed a security threat in their country. RIM's enterprise service has global security policies, and does not have custom encryption policies for individual corporate or government clients.

The threat of the proposed ban was avoided and according to RIM in a customer statement a mutual agreement is in the works. India is the fasting growing market in mobile communications.

Database Project

I am proud of myself for getting this project done early. Especially since It looks like I will be installing a garage door on my house instead of working on school this weekend.

I was introduced to Microsoft Access in the Intro to computers class I took as a prerequisite for the Online Business Program. I learned more about what a powerful tool this could be in business, especially in the hands of a database specialist. I learned about the different delimiters and text qualifiers of text files and how to import them to Access. I had been familiar with the Query, Form and Report Wizards from the last class. During the database project I familiarized myself with manipulating these objects in Design View. I found that it was not very intuitive, but with some trial and error I improved.

As for how the database could be made more functional, Iwould use lookup fields for all of the data that has a specified number of responses. In my project I formatted the Gender and Membership types only, but the State Field could be done as well. This would enable new records to be entered with less keystrokes.

Presentations and Web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfuX78xgYCY

Well that was interesting...

I used an idea I had for an entrepreneurial venture that supports funeral homes with staffing and other services as needed. I used PowerPoint as my presentation software and uploaded to the web via YouTube. The intended audience is funeral home owners, managers and funeral directors.

To critique myself on this project I filled the same rubric form  that I filled out for my peer:

Presentation Evaluation Rubric

Name of Presenter: Courtney Charvet

Your Name: Courtney Charvet

	Missing or lacking	Meets the minimum but could be improved	Excellent
Is there a logical flow and sequence of content? How could it be improved?		Should have paused speech between some slides
Does the presenter anticipate questions and answer them in the right place? At what points did you have questions that were not answered?			I think I did. I didn’t go into pricing so as not to bore the instructor
Did the presenter grab your attention in the first 30-60 seconds?		Luke warm on the intro
Did the presenter ask questions and spark your curiosity?			I tried to make the listener think about the important  aspects of the job.
Did the presenter set the context with a concise explanation? Is it clear what the presenter is trying to share?			I think this would be very clear to a Funeral Director which is the intended audience
Did the presenter validate any claims?			I supported claims with logical explanations of benefits
Did the presenter avoid inconsistencies and errors, typos and unbelievable claims?			Yes
How well did the presenter avoid clutter?			Kept slides simple
What did the presenter do to ensure readability?			Large Print, Simple bullets
Did the presenter say it, and then show it or did he/she read the slides?		Slipped a few times

In critiquing my peer, Stephanie Howick, I realized how different each and everyone of our presentations must be. Stephanie's project was very well rehearsed, and she used the slides to support what she was saying. She did not read a single item off of a slide. I wish I could say the same for myself.

Rehearsing and listening to yourself in a presentation is very difficult without feedback from the audience. I am comfortable talking and making presentations to a crowd in person. I found myself studdering a lot, something I am not really used to. I wish I had more time to devote to this project. Powerpoint is one of my favorite programs.

This was not my best project. I hope to improve on whatever is next.

Excel Project

I completed the Excel project today with little problems. The centering and bold instructions were very straightforward and simple. The first challenge that I came to was selecting the areas to paste the relative formulae to. When using the shift/control.down arrow keyboard shortcut, the entire column was selected, well paste the data. I used the mouse to scroll down while holding shift, selecting the first and last cells in the column with no issues.

The printing preferences in Excel 2010 are slightly different than in 2007. I feel it was even easier to do these steps with my new desktop than with my laptop running the older version. The headers and footer and footers were very intuitive and I did not need to use the help functions.

Before this class I had no experience with Pivot Tables. The first one gave me a little trouble, but once I realized I was not giving the program enough information to make the table, it went just fine. I really like this feature and can see using it very soon.

Here is the screenshot of the AvgIncrease Pivot Table: