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!
Tech, Adventure, and More
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Sunday, March 29, 2015
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!
Sunday, March 22, 2015
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.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
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.
Monday, March 9, 2015
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.
Monday, March 2, 2015
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.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
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.
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