A cool Web tool is Jing from TechSmith corporation, this software is free and can be used for personal need, education, work, etc… The software allows capturing screen and sharing them with others. Professors and students can use this sort of visual communication to improve understanding, clarity, efficiency and it can be very much fun. The beauty about Jing is that it is free and you can capture images, and can create videos (also called screencasts) and it’s easy to use for none computer savvy. It also has a professional version which cost just $14.95 per year which is still pretty cheap compared to camtasia . Another advantage of Jing is that it is compatible to PCs and Macs. One disadvantage of Jing is that the videos length is maximized at 3 minutes. I love it personally and I use it very much when teaching online courses, it helps my students very much to follow the instructions to do their homework.
Reference:
http://www.techsmith.com/jing/
Friday, August 13, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
SDP Case Study
How People Harness Their Collective Wisdom and Power to Construct the Future in Co-Laboratories of Democracy textbook is very interesting in the way it present the Structured Design Process. The book contains many case studies that are very interesting in exposing various steps on how to examine and complete projects in a very simple way.
Case study in chapter 17, “International Boundary-Spanning Dialogues” “Project-Successful Cypriot Women” was very interesting to me. I am familiar with the ongoing problem in Cyprus. The objective of the case study is to put together from different parties (Marios Michaelides and Antigone Petropoulos) woman from both countries (Greece & Turkey) in a bi-communal workshops in a neutral zone separating Greece & Turkey. The goal is to bring a vision of peace, which might not solve the issues but might a least open their mind and hopefully bring peace in the future.
Political, economical and cultural forces affected the outcome of this activity. Greece was colonized by Turkey (Ottoman Empire) for more than 400 years. Of course, this was not the first nor the last time that Greeks and Turks came head to head in armed conflict. From the 14th century until the most recent Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus in 1974, the two countries have battled over and over again. Now that open armed conflicts have subsided, Greeks and Turks have found a new area of conflict to focus on; being the country of primary investment importance in Southeastern Europe.
From an economical point of vu, of course, one might consider this an easy call since we read of Greece’s financial woes every other day. Greece’s problems are deep-rooted and these issues have directly spelled out as gains for Turkey. This trend will likely continue, despite Athens’ promises to shore up their financial situation since these problems are much more fundamental than what can be solved by sound governmental financial policies.
Greece and Turkey both rely heavily on agricultural exports, with olives, cotton, and tobacco being main crops. Both countries also harvest dairy goods, fruit, and fish. Many of these good are exported throughout Europe and the world. Both counties are also heavily involved in the textiles and mining industries as well, also major exports.
From a cultural stand point, both nations have a lot of things in common. Traditional clothes, traditional dances and music, food culture, language even the physical appearances of the people are so much alike that it is hard to distinguish one from the other. Unfortunately, the citizens of these two countries are prejudiced against each other. It is always imposed on people that “the other” is “the enemy”.
Applying the SDP the woman created 106 qualities of success and selected 24 as the main questions. From these questions and Influence tree for successful women qualities (Successful Cypriot Women) was created (shown in Figure 17.1 on page 117 of Christakis book). From the tree a video was created, and built a relationship between Greece & Turkey in Cyprus. I strongly believe that what was accomplished is extraordinary for the circumstances and the time available, I think many other meeting can be built from this one and hopefully will bring peace between these countries.
Case study in chapter 17, “International Boundary-Spanning Dialogues” “Project-Successful Cypriot Women” was very interesting to me. I am familiar with the ongoing problem in Cyprus. The objective of the case study is to put together from different parties (Marios Michaelides and Antigone Petropoulos) woman from both countries (Greece & Turkey) in a bi-communal workshops in a neutral zone separating Greece & Turkey. The goal is to bring a vision of peace, which might not solve the issues but might a least open their mind and hopefully bring peace in the future.
Political, economical and cultural forces affected the outcome of this activity. Greece was colonized by Turkey (Ottoman Empire) for more than 400 years. Of course, this was not the first nor the last time that Greeks and Turks came head to head in armed conflict. From the 14th century until the most recent Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus in 1974, the two countries have battled over and over again. Now that open armed conflicts have subsided, Greeks and Turks have found a new area of conflict to focus on; being the country of primary investment importance in Southeastern Europe.
From an economical point of vu, of course, one might consider this an easy call since we read of Greece’s financial woes every other day. Greece’s problems are deep-rooted and these issues have directly spelled out as gains for Turkey. This trend will likely continue, despite Athens’ promises to shore up their financial situation since these problems are much more fundamental than what can be solved by sound governmental financial policies.
Greece and Turkey both rely heavily on agricultural exports, with olives, cotton, and tobacco being main crops. Both countries also harvest dairy goods, fruit, and fish. Many of these good are exported throughout Europe and the world. Both counties are also heavily involved in the textiles and mining industries as well, also major exports.
From a cultural stand point, both nations have a lot of things in common. Traditional clothes, traditional dances and music, food culture, language even the physical appearances of the people are so much alike that it is hard to distinguish one from the other. Unfortunately, the citizens of these two countries are prejudiced against each other. It is always imposed on people that “the other” is “the enemy”.
Applying the SDP the woman created 106 qualities of success and selected 24 as the main questions. From these questions and Influence tree for successful women qualities (Successful Cypriot Women) was created (shown in Figure 17.1 on page 117 of Christakis book). From the tree a video was created, and built a relationship between Greece & Turkey in Cyprus. I strongly believe that what was accomplished is extraordinary for the circumstances and the time available, I think many other meeting can be built from this one and hopefully will bring peace between these countries.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Cool Web 2.0 Tool
Need help with your search for documents for your dissertation; you can use the “Ultimate Research Assistant”.
It is a different type of search engine, different from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc… How it works: you can type the name of any subject you’re looking for and choose different search options such Wikipedia, Government, Military, Non Profit, Educational, of just basic Internet Resources. It doesn’t give different documents, it actually reads the underline document and extracts key concepts which kind give you a better organization to the research. I really liked it and I am positive I’ll be using this search engine for my thesis.
Refence:
http://ultimate-research-assistant.com/
Youtube link:
It is a different type of search engine, different from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc… How it works: you can type the name of any subject you’re looking for and choose different search options such Wikipedia, Government, Military, Non Profit, Educational, of just basic Internet Resources. It doesn’t give different documents, it actually reads the underline document and extracts key concepts which kind give you a better organization to the research. I really liked it and I am positive I’ll be using this search engine for my thesis.
Refence:
http://ultimate-research-assistant.com/
Youtube link:
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Future Technologies in Our Everyday Use
After reading the Horizon Report 2010 I am feeling pretty confident that in the next couple of decades hard copy textbooks will be way gone and if someone has a copy people will ask are you OK!
It is weird how there’re still many people (students) that prefer very much hard copy textbooks instead of electronic copies. My wife one is one of those people, she can’t study and comprehend the material from an electronic textbook, she must have a hard copy textbook. I am totally the opposite, I prefer much more electronic copies, it help me focus much easier when reading and we can save a lot or trees :).
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf
It is weird how there’re still many people (students) that prefer very much hard copy textbooks instead of electronic copies. My wife one is one of those people, she can’t study and comprehend the material from an electronic textbook, she must have a hard copy textbook. I am totally the opposite, I prefer much more electronic copies, it help me focus much easier when reading and we can save a lot or trees :).
http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report.pdf
Friday, July 16, 2010
Why do we need security in industry!
The main reason we have an IT security industry is because IT products and services aren't secured by default. If workstations were pre-secure against viruses, then we won’t need any antivirus products. If poor network traffic couldn't be used to attack workstations, there will be no need to purchase a firewall. If buffer overflows didn’t exist anymore, there will be no need to purchase products to protect against their effects. If the IT products when purchased had built in security, there’re won’t be need to spend billions every year making them secure.
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