U-Blog 10

This week I read the Computer World article "4 New Mini Laptops -- Which is Smallest, Lightest, Best?". I've been watching these new laptops, casually called "netbooks" for the past year. I myself would love to have one of these to carry around while traveling, that way I wouldn't have to carry my larger notebook. The netbooks in the article are really nice, but Dell has one called the Mini 9 that I believe tops the others. The Mini 9 has a long battery life, larger keys, and is able to hold larger hard drives if you choose not to go with a Solid State Drive. The thing to remember with these machines is that they are netbooks, not production PC's. They are only meant to be used with casual web surfing, emailing, and creating and editing documents.

U-Blog 9

This week I read the article "Companies Warm Up to Social Networks" from the Interesting Articles link in our Blog folder. I chose to read this article because the company that I work for has actually asked if we could set up a company group in Facebook. The reason being is so new employees could get a better idea of who is who in our company. We actually have around 20 or so employees that have Facebook accounts and are friends with each other. Some problems introduced in the article were to keep a close eye on employees putting too much information on their profile page that gives company competitors bits and pieces of valuable information. I believe that with rules set in place, employees could use these social networks to share company events, meetings and friendly comments on jobs that they have accomplished successfully.

U-Blog 8

Lately I have been gaining a strong interest in using Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects. I have been doing sermon slides for our church for about 8 months now and have used most of the free swag that came with our presentation software, Media Shout. Just recently, I have been spending more time searching for creative, inspiring, and relevant media to use for Sunday services on Google Images. I decided that I should spend that time making my own media, the kind I know in my head I want to use, instead of searching hours for something that looks kinda close to want I want. As a extra push towards that desire, I happened to come across a podcast that gives people such as myself information, tips, and tricks on how to make my own media. I have downloaded the 100% legal trial of all three softwares from Adobe's website and now, I can't stop creating random stuff. Its really cool to see the final product after hours of miticulous work. I plan on preposing to our church finance team to purchase this software so that I and hopefully others (if I can teach them) can use it to create new and inspiring media for worship.

U-Blog 7

Apple showed off their new Macbooks yesturday. The show was a letdown to a lot of fans. There had been lots of rumors going around that Apple would introduce a sub-$1000 notebook that would better compete against the Microsoft market. Another letdown was the fact that the LCD screens on the new Macbooks and Macbook Pros were glossy. Consumers seem to prefer the matte finish rather than the reflective nature of a glass screen. There really weren't any specific announcements that were surprising. No price cuts, no new and improved Macbook Air. Besides the Macbooks, everything else was just revamped with more storage space and more RAM.

U-Blog 6

I recently came across a site called Photosynth.net. It is a site where anyone can take pictures of a place and upload them together. Doesn't sound that unique does it. Well, it is. Once the pictures are loaded, the site will read the meta data and examine the photos and the positions of the objects in the picture. What it does after that is pretty amazing. It creates a virtual 3D atmosphere of the place you visited, using your pictures. One person took pictures their trip to the Taj Mahal. You can view his photos and see what he saw, at all the places and positions he took the pictures. You can even walk up to the front and side of the beautiful building. I appologize if my explanation is too vague or hard to understand. Head over to the site to see first hand what I'm talking about. You will have to install the web app that allows you to view the 3D photo albums.

U-Blog 5

This week I downloaded Google's new browser Chrome. I was hyped because everything that Google has put out to the public has been very useful and innovative. After messing around with Chrome for about 2 hours, I had some impressions on its performance. The first thing I noticed was that it was faster than Firefox for most websites. But when I went to pages that were very Flash oriented, I noticed Chrome would start to bog down and even freeze up. I came across several bugs and reported them to Google. I know it is only a Beta, but I've never had to report any kind of bug for public Firefox Betas. I was sorely disappointed by Google Chrome. Hopefully, Google will take notice of the complaints and reports and use them to bring out a true IE8-killer.

3rd U-Blog

Its been a very busy and hectic week. I'm starting to get busy in classes now, and close on my new house. Friday, I finally close and move in. Once this weekend is over, I should be able to focus more time to school and work. I enjoyed listening to Mr. Nalley on open source and Fedora. I think he did an excellent job at promoting the Fedora Project and certainly made me interested in trying it out.

I was somewhat bummed that our group did not get our first pick for our training project, but I was flattered that Dr. Keane thought we were the better group for leading the Intermediate Training System at Lowman Homes. I feel that being able to go out of the classroom to do a real world project is pretty sweet. Not to mention it adds more value to our experiences as a working individual. I look forward to working with the people at Lowman Homes.