ISM 3004 Computing Portfolio Project 2008,
for Brittin Dwyer
 | | About MeMy name is Brittin Dwyer. I was born in California and currently live
in Clearwater with my husband and four week old baby girl. I am 30
years old. I currently work full time as an assistant for an
orthodontist. I have been assisting for eleven years. I received my
A.A. degree from Saint Petersburg College in 2005. I am working
on my B.A. in business administration, and upon graduation I plan to pursue
a career in the dental product sales field. I feel that my dental
experience and knowledge, as noted in my resume, will make me well suited for this type of sales position.
Click here for my Resume |
Web Page Project:
Why do you think a Web presence (site) is an “essential” for business of all sizes?
Web pages are essential for all businesses whether large or small. A business web site communicates to customers that they exist, what product or services they have to offer, or can allow feedback from potential or existing customers. A well-organized, well-designed site can convey to the entire world a message about a business. These days employees and students spend hours surfing the web, making a web presence particularly important. When I look to purchase a product, I always compare prices and specifications on the web. An attractive easy to navigate web page, makes me have more confidence in a business. Ultimately a web presence is a relatively low cost means for any size business to reach a wider market.
Podcast:
A short essay about podcasting in the business environment
The first podcasts were introduced in 2004. Although not invented by Apple, the name podcast comes from the combined words iPod and broadcast. Podcasts can be viewed or listened to on personal computers or audio devices, such as iPods, cell phones or any mp3 player. Podcasts can be intellectual, informational or pure entertainment. Commonly podcasts are talk show format, but can include a variety of different styles. What makes podcasting unique is the freedom of content and how the podcast is delivered. Mainstream radio has to appeal to a wide audience and conform to media regulations, while podcasts can be more specific and unique. Anyone (the podcaster), can create a podcast at a relatively low cost with just a computer and a microphone. A user subscribes to specific podcasts of interest. The podcast is then loaded onto a listening device, which can be played when convenient. Listen to what you want, when you want, where and how you want summarizes the popularity of podcasting.
The use of podcasts by business is relatively young and still developing. As podcast listening gains popularity, marketers will further seek to utilize this advertising tool. I feel that marketing through podcasting has its strengths and weaknesses. A positive aspect would be the use of advertising to a specific niche of listeners. For example Nike could sponsor a podcast about cross-country running. The advantage to the business is that consumers subscribing to a specific podcast are more likely to have an interest in their product. The problem I see with advertising on a podcast is much like the problem seen with the emerging popularity of DVR’s. Customers have the ability to skip or fast-forward the commercials. Marketers will need to strive to make their advertising either useful or entertaining to the subscriber.
Secure E-mail:
A short essay about secure email
Encryption is used to send secure emails that can only be read by the intended recipient. Encrypted email allows senders to feel confident when sending private emails. This proves useful in many cases, for example the sending of personal information such as address or social security number. When sending financial information such as account numbers or details. It is also important for businesses that need to send private information externally or within the office between employees.
There are different variations of encryption, but the use of keys is the most common. Sending secure encrypted emails is relatively simple if you properly set up your email to do so. You must first start by having an email client that supports the set up of keys. Keys come in pairs, the public and private key. The public key allows people to send you encrypted email while you need a private key to decode it. The same holds true for sending or receiving an encrypted email. An algorithm is used to scramble the message, and is unreadable without a key.
While encryption is an excellent source of security, as with all new technology it is not without controversy. There is some debate about encryption allowing terrorists to communicate via the World Wide Web. Some believe that it will be necessary for all keys to be disclosed to the government, which poses a privacy issue.
All in all it seems to me that encryption is positive technology. It allows personal and corporate information transmission to remain private, which gives confidence to many. Although the technology is complex it is easy to use and available at a relatively low cost.
Collaborative Computing:
A short essay about Collaborative Computing in the business environment
Collaboration in the business environment is crucial. Collaboration often takes place between co-workers working on a project, and even between one company and another to work out logistics of a joint project. Collaboration is possible in many ways through meeting in boardrooms, conference calls, and in more recent times on the World Wide Web.
Collaboration is deemed so necessary that even companies like Microsoft are profiting by creating programs to be used as an online business meeting place. Enabling businesses to work on projects day or night, which is especially important when working with different time zones.
After using SharePoint for our class project I can see the importance and the difficulties of team collaboration. Significant benefit is gained by having people with different backgrounds, experiences and training come together to work on one project. The resulting project will be superior because the task was approached from numerous angles. Although I was fortunate to work with a great group of classmates I can see the difficulties that can result from teamwork. It is very important to carefully word disagreements so that others are not offended. This is especially important when communicating online. Due to it being difficult to read tone, your message can easily be lost in translation. All in all I think that collaboration is a great tool, which is imperative for the success of a business.
Excel:
Excel 2003/2007skills
In this excel project, I learned alot of useful ways to use Excel worksheets. I now know how to clean up and organize information in a worksheet. I learned how to take advantage of pivot tables to display needed information. The Pivot Wizard helps to organize and display data, making it easy to view and access from multiple angles. Goal Seek makes setting business goals very easy. It is a very straightforward program and will be very useful to meet future professional and personal goals.
Database:
Microsoft Access Skills
Microsoft Access is a database program that can be used by small and large businesses or for personal use. It provides a way for data to be organized and stored in tables that relate to one another, and through which that data can be retrieved through the use of queries. MS Access also enables the data to be accessed by multiple users on a network, and various reports can to be generated.
The exercise with Microsoft Access provided a useful introduction to the advantages that come from planning how data is stored, and how a great deal of time can be saved when looking to ‘pull’ data where elements may reside in separate tables. The use of drop down lists is a great example of how a function that will be performed repetitively can be done very quickly and consistently. From this exercise I also learned how a table in a database could be configured to allow only those entries that conform to a particular criteria, such as dates, zip codes or phone numbers. This again is a valuable feature as it can assist greatly with data integrity and accuracy.
Businesses will often have a requirement to access data quickly and to draw data together from various sources. Understanding how a tool such as Access, or any data-mining tool, functions would be particularly useful to a business. I found that Access also provides the ability to perform calculations on the data that is returned in queries, which would also be a key requirement for businesses that are looking to measure an aspect of performance.
