Project: Social Media on Enterprise Rent-A-Car

brafton.com

Social Media is a huge part of the business world and their communications. Through this course, Computing in the Business Environment, I have been part of a team working on the social media aspects of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Within this project, I have been made aware of several types of social media outlets that I did not even realize were out there. Along with the company’s official website, and the ever popular Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Bing, and YouTube there are several others that offer a great deal of information; Google Alert, Twitrratr, Flickr, and Instagram.

This is a link to our finished social media project on Enterprise Rent-A-Car:

http://ism3004.wikispaces.com/Enterprise+Rent-A-Car

The research on Google Alert fell into my hands during the project. The site offers not only news updates about your specific topic that you are searching for, but it also brings up web alerts that could include job offering to reviews, or any information that has been posted with relevance to the topic. Wikipedia is the other social media search engine that I searched for information on Enterprise Rent-A-Car. This site is highly utilized and fairly frequently updated. Because this is an open site, it can be edited by a variety of people, including those who do not work for the company; because of this, it is very important that the company keep a close watch on the editing history to make sure that all changes are up-to-date, and correct.

designbuzz.com

As Laura Roeder, founder of lkr, states “Leveraging social media marketing is just plain smart if you’re a small business on a budget. How else can you reach thousands of customers and prospects all over the globe without zero advertising costs?” Social Media allows a company to express their personality, “talk” to the public, answer questions as well as ask them, and post important information about them. Pinkberry states, on the Business Insider, that “We definitely believe that you have to build and encourage trust with your community instead of going straight to the hard sell. And the only way that we can do that is by not hiding behind the logo. We have to be an authentic and very real voice, and really what that comes down to is just being yourself and making that human connection.”

staticmedia.com

http://ism3004.wikispaces.com/Enterprise+Rent-A-Car

http://www.lauraroeder.com/social-media-marketing/

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-09-12/strategy/30155690_1_pinkberry-yogurt-industry-social-networks

Thank you to the following websites for the use of the copyright free images:

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=importance+of+social+media+for+companies+copyright+free&um=1&hl=en&biw=1755&bih=909&tbm=isch&tbnid=mYO43iMuIeIikM:&imgrefurl=http://www.brafton.com/news/study-more-than-one-third-of-cmos-plan-to-boost-social-spending&docid=vv1jK0vwWPjP3M&imgurl=http://cdn.brafton.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/many-business-see-social-media-marketing-as-an-essential-means-of-reaching-consumers_3333_800547729_0_0_7074829_300.jpg&w=300&h=206&ei=-qrSTtS3FI2utwfYqNHFDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=1472&vpy=617&dur=5491&hovh=164&hovw=240&tx=135&ty=96&sig=104016934987409539032&page=1&tbnh=126&tbnw=184&start=0&ndsp=44&ved=1t:429,r:43,s:0

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=importance+of+social+media+for+companies+copyright+free&um=1&hl=en&biw=1755&bih=909&tbm=isch&tbnid=klPl4MK4RFHwWM:&imgrefurl=http://www.designsbuzz.com/index.php/resources/40-rounded-social-media-icon-sets-for-free/8662&docid=HWPCrstqrVW48M&imgurl=http://www.designsbuzz.com/wp-content/themes/LondonLive/thumb.php%253Fsrc%253D/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/rounded_main-500x211.png%2526w%253D340%2526h%253D192%2526zc%253D1%2526q%253D100&w=340&h=192&ei=-qrSTtS3FI2utwfYqNHFDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=833&vpy=574&dur=5001&hovh=153&hovw=272&tx=164&ty=81&sig=104016934987409539032&page=2&tbnh=120&tbnw=212&start=44&ndsp=31&ved=1t:429,r:12,s:44

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=importance+of+social+media+for+companies+copyright+free&um=1&hl=en&biw=1755&bih=909&tbm=isch&tbnid=ejxI2bBNmVsa8M:&imgrefurl=http://www.staticmedia.com/blog/&docid=faLpoFNhM5D18M&imgurl=http://www.staticmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/socialmedia1.jpg&w=480&h=290&ei=-qrSTtS3FI2utwfYqNHFDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=644&vpy=492&dur=4297&hovh=174&hovw=289&tx=171&ty=85&sig=104016934987409539032&page=3&tbnh=129&tbnw=213&start=75&ndsp=31&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:75

Week 13: Clear- Social Media

Social Media

compliancebuilding.com

Social Media is the term used to categorize web and mobile technologies in which the concept of communication is at our fingertips and can now be an interactive dialogue between peers, businesses, consumers, fanatics, and anyone who wishes to make their voice heard. The concept of social media is easily understandable however, the branches of this huge tree are continuously growing expanding.

thefuturebuzz.com

Social media takes many forms and seems to be growing by the second with new ways of communication. Wikipedia categorizes social media into six groups: “collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual social worlds”.

socialmediaheaven.com

The collaborative projects are the wikis. Wiki.org describes a wiki as “a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using and Web browser”. Through this course, I have joined the social media bandwagon and created a wiki with other students, as well as started a blog. Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing explains that “blogs first emerged almost a decade ago as a medium for posting online diaries”. This is an example of the blog that I am writing on now; it is a sort of diary that I have been adding to with the addition of new information learned throughout the course. Microblogs are messages such as Tweets; instant messaging where a consumer can praise a company for their customer service or respond to something that has just happened and they feel the need to share with the public at large. Content communities would be considered YouTube where they have reached such a high capacity that there are “over twenty hours of video uploaded each minute” according to Information Systems. Facebook has a new competitor in the social networking sites. Google+ has emerged in this section of social media and although it will take a long time for them to gain the amount of loyal fans that Facebook has, they are seeking out new opportunities to spread their wings such as the Android OS. According to PC World, “It's a genius idea that will inevitably result in more Google+ users, since many people have no experience whatsoever with Google+ thus far. By encouraging Ice Cream Sandwich users to sign up, the social network will be getting exposure to millions of people who don't know what it is or how it works. And some of them are going to like it.” World of Warcraft (WOW) is the best example of virtual game worlds; 12 million people according to worldofwarcraft.net have taken up this online role-playing game. Second Life was listed as an example by Wikipedia for virtual social worlds. It is like a new world in which a person can create their own avatar and socialize with others and create their own virtual property such as in the real world with housing and jobs. I personally do not have any experience with this form of social media, however my 12 year old daughter does in Littlest Pet Shop. In this site she takes over the identity of the stuffed animals that we purchased, they are then able to buy things for their rooms, grow gardens, and interact with other “friends” that they have accepted on the site.

socialmediamarketingmadeeasy.co.nz

It seems hard to accomplish anything without coming in contact with some form of social media. The last class that I took at UF required me to have a Facebook account, in this class I now have a Blog, Google+, and a wiki. I am extremely interested in seeing what will come next and in what way it will be threaded into my personal, scholarly, or professional life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media

http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/1.0/information-systems-manager%E2%80%99s-/199456#web-199487

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/pub/1.0/information-systems-manager%E2%80%99s-/199456#web-199486

http://www.pcworld.com/article/244340/google_could_grow_thanks_to_new_feature_small_change_in_android_os.html

https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/

The following websites have offered their images as copyright free:

socialmediaheaven.com

compliancebuilding.com

thefuturebuzz.com

socialmediamarketingmadeeasy.co.nz

Week 12: Clear: Internet and Telecommunications

There are many aspects to consider when addressing the Internet and Telecommunications. Through our course website, we have discussed many such as: Privacy, Time spent online, Online Gaming, Net Neutrality, and Security.

http://technorati.com/technology/article/how-the-internet-and-telecommunications-industry/

The Internet is described by dictionary.com as “the Net the single worldwide computer network that interconnects other computer networks, on which end-user services, such as World Wide Web sites or data archives, are located, enabling data and other information to be exchanged”.

Not only is the Internet constantly changing, but the way we are able to communicate has been evolving as well. A soldier, on the other side of the world, is able to make a “call” to his wife and children here in the United States and not only talk to them, but also see them as if they are in the same room. As stated in the article How the Internet and Telecommunications Industry are Changing Each Other, “The freeware model for software delivery is a proven method for quickly creating a large user base for your product. In the software space, WinZip is an example of a software product that quickly garnered huge market share due to zero dollar entry prices. LinkedIn, Yahoo mail and Gmail have had huge success in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) space.” The more the Internet advances, the more the communications technology will advance with it; and with all of this advancement, comes more opportunity. With so much change and advancement, there are bound to be countless debates over issues such as the issue of government and the Internet.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/senate-net-neutrality-vote-.html

With opportunity and advancement comes the possibility for those to seek to run things. What should the government’s role be in the Internet and should the government be limited by neutrality on the Internet? There are a great many things that the government offers to us and there are some things that should remain neutral. FCC.gov posted the Digital Tornado: The Internet and Telecommunications Policy. A key point made in this paper on the role of the government is: “Government may influence the evolution of the Internet in many ways, including directly regulating, participating in technical standards development, providing funding, restricting anticompetitive behavior by dominant firms, facilitating industry cooperation otherwise prohibited by antitrust laws, promoting new technologies, encouraging cooperation between private parties, representing the United States in international intergovernmental bodies, and large-scale purchasing of services. The question then becomes how much authority we will give the government to control the Net. "Over the past 20 years, the Internet has grown and flourished without burdensome regulations from Washington," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Two US senators were quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying: "Net neutrality is not about a government takeover of the Internet, and it is not about changing anything," said Sen. Al Franken "Net neutrality and the rules the FCC passed are about keeping the Internet the way it is today and the way it has always been."

 Thank you to technorati.com and latimesblogs.latimes.com for their copyright free images.

http://technorati.com/technology/article/how-the-internet-and-telecommunications-industry/

http://www.fcc.gov/working-papers/digital-tornado-internet-and-telecommunications-policy

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/senate-net-neutrality-vote-.html

Week 11:Clear- Data Asset

http://shareme.com/screenshot/mysql-data-access-components.html

Business Intelligence is the most important aspect of running a successful business in today’s world. To capture data and transform that jumble of entries into usable information is the knowledge that businesses depend upon to continue running their companies. As stated in our text, Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing, John Gallaugher explains the difference and relationship between Data, Information, and Knowledge. “Data refers simply to raw facts and figures. Alone it tells you nothing. The real goal is to turn data into information. Data becomes information when it’s presented in a context so that it can answer a question or support decision making. And it’s when this information can be combined with a manager’s knowledge—their insight from experience and expertise—that stronger decisions can be made.”

http://www.assetmanagesoftware.com/?keyword=asset%20manage%20software&gclid=CL-YkI6fm6wCFY2b7QodTXBqLg

The software that is available to businesses and persons around the world, makes the process of transferring data into information that much easier. Microsoft  Access is the software that we have been using for the past two weeks in which we were acclimated to the basics of the software and encouraged to explore these boundaries of its capabilities. One very costly problem that many companies run into is that their operational data can’t always be transferred into additional software because of compatibility issues. This has proven to be extremely costly when the company needs to update their systems or introduce new software programs that will grow with the company and manipulate their data into forms that they are requiring. 

With how quickly the computers and software programs are evolving, it is no shock to find a great multitude of query, database, and reporting tools available. These tools include OLAP, online analytical processing in which data is summarized throughout several dimensions. Dashboards are another example of tools available in which alerts or, as our text states, “heads-up display of critical indicators, letting managers get a graphical glance at key performance metrics”.

Thank you to the following website for offering copyright free images for us to utilize and share with others.

 http://www.assetmanagesoftware.com/?keyword=asset%20manage%20software&gclid=CL-YkI6fm6wCFY2b7QodTXBqLg

http://shareme.com/screenshot/mysql-data-access-components.html

Project Database

In preparation for this project, I learned several formatting skills to create databases in Access. In this I have learned how to manipulate the data into usable forms, queries, and reports. This type of manipulation is useful when you need to dissect a large set of data and turn it into useful information. For this project, we needed to narrow down the list of 1000 members into a section that included those members who let the company within the last six months. In the business world, this is a very helpful tool to have in order to keep track of inventory, customers, shopping tendencies, etc...

The hardest aspect of this project, for me, was to ensure that the data was entered in the correct format; this being text, date/time, etc. An additional problem that I encountered was trying to enter in the correct language to get the software to do what I was looking for. An example of this was trying to narrow down the data by the dates between 5/6/2011 and 11/6/2011.

One way that this software could be enhanced would be to have a “cheat sheet” if you will of the proper structure to input for different types of criteria and validation. When a person spends more time trying to properly enter in the criteria then they have with the entire database, the helpful aspects of the system are lost. Within this software, there are help functions that cover some of the issues that you might run across, however the wording within this help box is much too tech driven and the average person can run into difficulties rather than actually being helped.

In elementary school we all used the marble notebooks and inside these notebooks, there were tables for conversions and times tables. This is the sort of ‘cheat sheet” that I am referring to that has formatting techniques clearly written. Within Excel, there is the function key to help get you on your way, to enhance the Access software; the writers should implement the same type of function key.

Week 10: Clear- Skills Track

office-2010-access.blogspot.com

Microsoft Access is wonderful software that I have just had the pleasure of introducing myself to this week! I have to admit that I had never even heard of this software prior to this course, and after watching the lectures, I feel that it will be extremely helpful in future courses as well as the work environment.

The formatting of this software is fairly similar to Microsoft Excel, so with a little practice, I will be able to create databases for myself rather than simply trying to follow along with the instructor. The lectures that we watched this week took us step by step of the main points of Access. The scavenger hunt that was a part of the week’s exercises was not only helpful but also imperative in my opinion. Without knowing exactly what can be done on this software, you really don’t know what to look for or where to look.

databasedev.co.uk

The four sections of study for the week has been Databases and tables, queries, forms, and reports in Microsoft Access. Many of these concepts were pretty straight forward once you got your hands in there and began to work with this program. I particularly like the validation and criteria that can be set so you are able to narrow down all the data into usable sections. The hardest part of this aspect, for me is to find the correct language to type into the criteria in order to achieve what it is that I’m after.

I would like to thank these following websites for the use of their copyright free images that I used in this post.

databasedev.co.uk

office-2010-access.blogspot.com

Google+



mashable.com

I really like Google+ networking site a lot better than Facebook. The appearance is much cleaner and there is not so much chaos going on that the user’s attention is being pulled in several directions at on time. Facebook just has way too much stuff going on to enjoy the site. I do not use these types of sites very often and when I log back onto Facebook, I always have way too much stuff to wade through before I can even do what it is that I logged on for at that time. I am not a gardener and I do not want to have farms and such that I am supposed to take care of on-line as well.

analoghype.com

The article, 50 Percent Will Abandon Facebook for Google+, Poll Finds, has comments as I am stressing that will undoubtedly cause more and more users to switch from Facebook to Google+. I completely agree with the article. I am not a big social media networking fan, I do not have the time or patience to spend hours on these types of sites, however after looking through the Google+ site, I can easily log on and contact my friends and search for the things that I am looking for and log off again without wasting time. At this point, the only people that I have been able to locate on Google+ are a handful of fellow students.

My personal friends and family have not joined this site yet. I will be contacting them to encourage them to join Google+ and use this site as one of their main networking sites if they do not want to switch completely.

I would like to thank mashable.com and analoghype.com for their copyright free pictures.

mashable.com

analoghype.com

Week 9: Clear- Moore’s Law

The future of technology is in constant change. Where will it lead us to next?

Investopedia describes Moore’s Law as “An observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965. He noticed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention. Moore’s law predicts that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Although the pace has slowed, the number of transistors per square inch has since doubled approximately every 18 months. This is used as the current definition of Moore's law.”

We have all noticed several changes in the amount of information that can be stored in our computers, the size of the computers, as well as the accessories that can be used as personal computers. The technology has been steadily changing, and shrinking by the year. The article, Moore’s Law and Knowledge Management has a clear understanding of the changes that have taken place with the development of technology in the computer industry. Beginning in 1970, and continuing over the next 30 some years, ‘the processors have become ten thousand times faster, have ten thousand times as many transistors, and the transistors used have shrunk by a factor of ten thousand…”.

As with everything else, all things must come to an end; but when will the end of Moore’s Law be?  

http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/02/moores_law_ends_in_2010_cadence_

This is the website to a great video explaining what the techs think about the conclusion of Moore’s Law, how far they believe it will continue due to the ever approaching limitations. As stated in Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing, “the shrinking can’t go on forever, and we’re already starting to see three interrelated forces—size, heat, and power—threatening to slow down the Moore’s Law gravy train.” It will be interesting to see what will be the new “Moore’s Law” once we have pushed Mother Nature to the limits of size and capacity.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/mooreslaw.asp#axzz1bMoGqWmu

Physorg.com

Computerhistory.org

Cmg.org

http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/pcheung/teaching/ee4_asic/notes/Lec%201%20Moore%20Law%20and%20Knowledge%20Management.pdf

cartoonscrapbook.com

Project

Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool to utilize in school, home offices, and work. The Excel Hunt that we performed brought back many of the skills that I learned during a course that was taken awhile back. This is definitely something that should be practiced and refreshed regularly in order to use this service to the greatest extent. All of this information aided in the completion of our Excel Project in which we were to organize data on heart rates during exercise intervals and with that information acquire additional data as to which gender and age bracket of participants were able to achieve their target heart rates.

With even the basic knowledge of excel, the workbook structure, data basics, and printing are easily followed and transferable to many of the other Microsoft Office programs. This would include turning the page to have it view as landscape, ordering certain pages to be printed, navigating the worksheet, and other such information. The other information, such as creating formulas, absolute vs. relative cell addressing, functions, and pivot tables were all in desperate need of refreshing. Without constantly using this program, you will negate the positive effects of such programs. For example: when creating a function; as long as you know what you are asking for, and can put that into mathematical terms, the computer program will do the job for you, such as finding the average of a group of cells, or the greatest or least value in a large group of cells.

One of the functions on Excel that I learned during this project was the pivot table. I had no experience with this function prior to the Excel Hunt and Excel Project. PCA explains that the “Pivot tables summarize data into rows and columns of summed up (aggregated) data. Excel spreadsheets are most often designed as flat, one-dimensional tables, consisting of data elements organized under column headers. This often makes it difficult to get summarized information, particularly when data needs to be grouped and sub-totaled into any number of categories or dimensions. Pivot tables overcome this obstacle by quickly aggregating (grouping) and summarizing large amounts of flat data, giving it depth and the desired aggregate values.”

The process for creating the Pivot Tables in the Excel Project took a bit of time. After understand exactly what I was supposed to be looking for and how you enter data into the tables, it became fairly easy to use. On top of that, the pivot tables allows you to break down a large amount of data into easily readable and understandable charts or tables with a lot less information in front of you to have to wade through.

Logotypes101.com

http://www.pcapps.com/business-intelligence-analytics/pivot-tables-and-pivot-charts.aspx