The Evolution of PowerPoint

We all remember the first time we discovered animations in PowerPoint. Every presentation became a busy collage of color and motion. After first being released, PowerPoint quickly became the industry standard for creating slide presentation. PowerPoint is a powerful tool with many cool features, but should be displaced soon by Apple’s Keynote. Apple created Keynote with design in mind. After using both PowerPoint and Keynote, I found Keynote to be far superior. The user interface and workflow are easier and faster in Keynote. I was able to throw together a high quality presentation in a short time frame because Keynote makes everything so easy to do. Keynote offers a feature called Magic Move that blows PowerPoint out of the water. Magic Move allows you to quickly add a transition between slides that use the same elements but where the location changes between slides. A good slide deck is all about the appeal to design and making it engaging for the viewer. While PowerPoint is powerful, Keynote offers an easier, better production package to create an engaging slide deck. If you haven’t checked out Keynote, I recommend you check it out today!

Tweet Your Way Into the Business World

Twitter is a valuable networking tool. The online messaging service has been around since 2006.  Twitter provides many benefits to its 500 million users. First, twitter is one of the quickest live-update news services. When news happens around the world, twitter users are some of the first to know.  Second, for those in the tech industry, twitter is a great location to learn about new technologies and developments. New articles are posted daily on all of the latest trends. Third, twitter is a powerful networking tool. Companies, organizations, clubs, and groups all post their events on twitter. It is a quick informal way to connect with professionals in any industry. I have personally witnessed the interactions of developers and entrepreneurs along the Silicon Slopes of Utah; valuable interactions occur daily. I have found I can maximize the value of having a twitter account when I join the conversations. I have been able to establish a valuable personal brand and connect with many industry professionals. Maybe twitter isn’t for everyone, but I have found great value in maintaining an active account. If you are on the fence, get your tweeter account today and try it out!

Networking in the Cloud

I have been learning a lot about networking in my Data Comms class this semester. Understanding how a server works and how it hosts information is essential for any IT professional. There is a new element in the networking world that is changing how we will learn about the Internet in the future. That new element is cloud computing. Cloud computing is divided into three elements presented by the acronyms IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. These three acronyms break down the parts of the cloud as a pay-as-you-go service: Infrastructure, Platform, and Software. Infrastructure entails the virtualization of a server to distribute the processing load across a server. Platform includes all the web applications run to support your software. These applications could include databases, web servers, and mail servers. Software includes the applications that run the everyday business use cases. Developing software applications is what interests me most, but an understanding of the underlying layers is every important. For more information, I recommend a Google search for detailed explanations.

I Bought a Girl Some Ice Cream

My MCOM teacher challenged us to buy something for a stranger. I bought a girl some ice cream. While it would be fun to share the awkward experience of asking a girl if I could purchase ice cream for her, I want to focus on the good feelings of focusing on others. Last week was a busy week for me. As of late, I have been slowly knocking off projects off my list of things to do. Every time I check something off my list, it seems two more projects pop up in its place. It was refreshing to forget my projects and focus on someone else. Instead of the stresses of school and work, I focused on making someone’s day (Oh and for the record, a little Ben and Jerry’s goes a long way to make someone’s day) I enjoy seeing the smile on someone’s face when they receive something unexpected, and that sort of kindness is hard to come by in today’s world. I’m grateful for the challenge from my professor and his encouragement to look outward and make the world a better place.

A New Language, A Guide to Understand English

The biggest factor that helped me understand the English language was learning a foreign language. I learned Portuguese to serve an LDS mission in Brazil. Before learning Portuguese, I never understood verb tenses. I couldn’t tell you the differences between sentences that used subjunctive tense versus past perfect tense to save my life. Now, in my senior writing class I’m learning about grammar. Understanding the rules of how to speak Portuguese help me understand all of the rules in English. It is easy for me to translate a sentence back into Portuguese to understand what tense is being used.

Everyone should have a chance to learn a new language. It is hard to learn a new language in the high school classroom setting, so get out and learn a new language in a foreign country! Go on a trip and learn the rules to be able to communicate with the natives. This will help you accomplish two great things traveling the world and more importantly learning a new language.

Wearable Tech

Wearable tech has yet to catch the mainstream of the market. Several mainstream companies have developed smart watches to connect with smart phones. Smart watches have several features that demonstrate that we truly live in the next generation, but for some reason the markets haven’t fully adopted the idea of using that technology in their everyday lives. Smart watches will eventually take over the industry, but the current issue is time.

To me the coolest thing about smart watches is the ability to interact with people’s smart phones. I can’t wait to see the cool applications that use both devices to accomplish complicated tasks, play challenging games, or simply people’s lives. I hope to be at the head of this development as a mobile developer currently working to hone my skills. When wearable tech has taken over the market place I hope to be in the forefront also making the newest technologies.

Sequence Diagrams

This week I discovered the art of creating sequence diagrams for my implementation class. To be honest I never understood the importance of planning out a system before starting to programming. I always figured that I could program an application, or a program, faster than it would take to plan out the functionality and then program. I still believe that getting right to the programming could be a good strategy for a small program. With that being said, a complicated system can be very hard to implement, and planning out which elements of a program need to be able to talk to one another is very beneficial.

Sequence diagrams are beginning to be a little bit enjoyable. It is fun to plan out which entities need to be created, which methods they need to have, and which methods they need to call to make the system work as a whole. Designing a  system can be tedious, but it is very beneficial in the end.