Vocaboly

link to http://www.vocaboly.com

Question #4-Final Exam

21 Excellent Web Apps for College Student

http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/12/21-excellent-web-apps-for-college.html


I have used the following apps from the list before Feb.

• Wikipedia
• Gmail
• Google Doc's

I use Wikipedia and Gmail on a daily basis. I have several several gmail accounts that I use everyday for several different reasons.

Wikipedia is almost a necessary if you are a college student.

Review of ZOHO Personal

I tried out the app Zoho today. This is a very useful application with several different options all in one place.
You can set up this site to get mail from all your different email address. (I did have a problem getting the site to accept my passwords but I did have success with a few different emails).





More options include Calender, Desktop, Writer (documents aka word), Sheet (spreadsheets aka excel), Show (slide show aka PowerPoint), Meeting, Wiki, Task, Notes, Links, Notebook.

Below is a screen shot from Sheet it was very easy to use and anyone who has ever used Excel will have no problem adjusting to the difference.



I also really like the notebook feature. It kind of like a personal notebook. On one page you can put music and add text telling why you put that music or whatever you wish. You then click add new page and its like you just turned a page in your notebook and you can add anything else you would like from text, pictures, music, videos.



The last thing I would like to review is Writer. Writer is very simple to use as shown in the directions below. All the features that you normally get in a Office format are available.

Welcome to Zoho Writer

Your Word Processor on the Web

Zoho Writer is the word processor designed for you, the next generation web citizen. Built using AJAX technology, it's fast and revolutionizes the way you work with documents. Having all your documents online (and offline too! we'll get back to that later!!), you have access to them from any computer, at home or at work. And no more emailing them back-and-forth to your colleagues, clients or friends for review, thanks to its instant collaboration, inline commenting and chat facilities.

Zoho Writer's functionalities below :

Formatting Options:

Bold, italicize, underline, set back ground color & color your words, link to a web page, set margins, use cool smileys and do much more. Use the same keyboard shortcuts as with any other word processing application for accessing these functions.

Spell Check

What's a word processor without a spell checker? Zoho Writer's does all the dirty spell checking work for you so that you needn't worry about whether it's receive or recieve

Pictures

Want to decorate your document with pictures & images? Insert pictures and images in your Zoho Writer documents as you would in a normal word processor. Pull and place pictures both from your desktop as well as from the web. See how the image/picture looks like using 'Image Preview'. Shrink to fit in case the image/pic is of larger size. And set properties for the inserted pic/image like border, spacing as well.

Tags as Folders
	Get the best of both worlds. Tags are the new folders. Not sure whether you want to put a document in the Sales or Marketing folder? That's where tags-as-folders come in. Make the document available in both the folders! Now, isn't that cool?

Post to your blog

Being on the web, you can post to your blog from within Zoho Writer. As you have seen above, Zoho Writer's WYSIWYG editor is more feature-rich than a typical blog editor's. Be it Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal, TypePad or any blog that supports metaWeblog API, you can make the post from Zoho Writer. You can add tags and make the post optionally as a draft as well!

Comments Add inline comments to particular paragraphs/sentences of a document. You & your friends (or your team members & your boss) can add comments in a document you are collaborating on. Adding contextual comments is very useful for reviewing purposes. And this comes in handy for journalists/editors & teachers/students, in particular.

Bulleted Lists
Zoho Writer makes it easy

1. to have
2. numbered or
   
   • bulleted lists.
   • And there is support for
     
3. multiple levels as well
4. 
   

Insert Tables Make tables and adjust the cell properties with ease. Pick easily the number of rows/columns.

Column Header1	Column Header2	Column Header3
Table Cell 11	Table Cell 12	Table Cell 13
Table Cell 21	Table Cell 22	Table Cell 23
Table Cell 31	Table Cell 32	Table Cell 33

Share your documents
Instead of mailing your documents to everyone, share them. And Zoho Writer makes it more than just sharing. You can give Read or Write permissions for each sharing participant. Collaborate real-time on the document and there's the added chat functionality as well!

Go Offline

Not sure you'll have internet access all the time? Zoho Writer allows you to take your documents offline. You can view as well as edit your latest 25 documents offline. Changes made during offline editing will be synced with the online version once you switch.

Integration With Other Zoho Apps

Zoho Writer comes from the widely diversified stable of Zoho. Signing up with Zoho Writer allows you to access a plethora of Zoho apps - be it our web based spreadsheet tool, Zoho Sheet, the online presentation creator, Zoho Show or the net meeting enabler, Zoho Meeting. The integration doesn't stop with just single sign-on. You can embed sheets and slideshows. And here's more - any change done to the sheet/slideshow gets automatically reflected in your Zoho Writer document! Those are just a few things that can be done with Zoho Writer. You will get to discover more as you work with it.

Google School Calender

Google Calender linked also shown at the bottom of the page

Security of Networking Sites and Micro-blogging Sites

http://www.internetnews.com/webcontent/article.php/3802326/Spammers+Hijack+Facebook+Group+of+15+Million.htm

Internetnews reported that Facebook was hit with spammers on Febuary 11, 2009.

This has been a common problem for social networking sites and micro-blogging sites since they have started up. In January Twitter.com was hit with hackers promoting people to change their passwords.

Security of these sites is one of my biggest complaints. Not only is it easy for hackers to launch malicious attacks on its users but sites such as Facebook ask you to verify your account using your cell phone.

I did recently verify my account using my cell phone and soon after I looked at my account profile. I was shocked to see that my cell phone number was listed. I deleted my phone number as soon as I saw it but the number had already been put into a old high school friends blackberry.

A week later on my way home from work I get a text message from someone I didn't know. I sent a reply text asking "who they were?' to which the rely I received was "hey its Wade I got your phone number from Facebook." This is a big concern for me, I have several friends who I don't necessarily want them to have access to my phone number but I do not mind them being able to see me on the internet.

I feel Social Networking sites still have a long way to come in their tightening of security. I hope that they feel the same way.

I am a fan of networking sites

I have been a fan of Networking sites. I have had my Myspace account for several years and my Facebook account for almost a year. I will admit that I had preferred Myspace for the music and user friendliness but I have recently started using Facebook as much as Myspace. My change to Facebook is the discovery of several of my high school classmates who are not on Myspace.

Facebook is more of a people site for reconnecting with friends. While Myspace for me is more of a site to find and listen to music.

I recently just got a Twitter account and I have yet to figure out all the ins and outs. But I feel that Twitter will become another one of my favorite site to spend some time connecting to others with similar interest.

Why Social Networking and Micro-blogging are so popular

One reason Social networking and Micro-blogging have become so popular today because they allow people to become reattached to people they have not seen or been in contact with for many years such as old high school and college friends. They offer allow family members who do not live close to be able to stay in touch with photos, videos, emails and blogs.

Social Networking sites and Micro-blogging are set up so that even with little computer knowledge you can set up your own personal website. This makes everone young and old feel they are all on the same page.

Micro-blogging

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140 characters or fewer) or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web. An example of this is www.twitter.com

Social Networking

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Examples of these are www.facebook.com, www.myspace.com and www.twitter.com.

This weeks assignment--Our opinion of privacy related to Google Maps.

This week I am to offer my opinion of privacy related to satellite and street views via Google Maps.

I have used Google Maps street view many time when I travel. The ability for me to see landmarks before making a upcoming turn is very helpful to me. When my son's dad moved last October I could go on Google Maps and see the house before taking my son there to spend the weekend. (this was in no way a stalker kind of thing)

But I never really thought about the privacy issue until this assignment. Now after doing a lot of web-surfing I have found so many things that make me question if I should really be looking at this and would I want my home to be that up and personally with everyone on the web.

Currently my town does not offer street view and right now I think I want it to stay that way. But I am torn over if all street views should be gone or maybe they could just blur out the people and open windows.

I think at this time I would prefer Google Maps to include landmarks in the street views but if there are peoples homes then I think they need to be blurred out.

You can see all kinds of things that people have found using Google Maps in my digg account. The link is in the post below.

my digg account

http://digg.com/users/mcclung178

My current line of defense against computer threats

Depending on which of the 3 computers I am currently working on, on any given day I have several different programs running to protect my computers.

One of my computers at work has the antivirus software McAfee. http://www.mcafee.com/us/
This same computer also runs Ad-Aware and has a firewall and has the Internet Explorer security zones set to a very high level.

My other computer at work has the antivirus software Vipre. http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/home-home-office/vipre/
This computer also runs Ad-Aware and has the same firewall and Internet Explorer security zones.

My personal computer at home has the antivirus software NOD32. http://www.eset.com/
This computer also runs Ad-Aware. For the last few months we have been visiting housecall http://housecall.trendmicro.com/ since my teenage son downloaded a little virus.

With the three different antivirus I use on a daily basis at this time I prefer Vipre. Vipre has not locked up my computer while updating its definitions which is something that happens consistantly with McAfee.

I feel I am pretty secure with all the security that we have implemented on our computers. But with the virus a few months ago I know the only true security is knowledge.

Installing and Running my first scan on Ad-Aware

Ad-Aware is very simple to install. Once you have downloaded Ad-Aware you will be walked through a very simple installation process.

After installation Ad-Aware will update to its most current rev. with the Update Manager. For me this was the longest part of the whole installation. (I sat for about 15 min thinking maybe I should just go to lunch and it would be done when I got back but before I even get my coat on it was complete. )

The Ad-Aware Icon will now be on your desktop its just that easy.

Open up the Ad-Aware program by double clicking on the icon and the following screen will be displayed:

Click on the green circle in the middle of the screen to get to the scan window.

The following will be displayed here you can choose what type of scan you want done.

--A smart scan will do a quick scan of all the critical areas. While a Full scan will do a more detailed scan of your whole computer.

When the scan is complete you will get a window like this. My whole scan took a little over 7 min.

You can see a more detailed list of the object Ad-Aware has found and what their recommended action is by clicking on the double arrow down button.

If you agree with the recommended action. Then all you need now to do is click the green button. To change any of the recommended actions simple click on the arrow down button next to the action for a list of alternatives.

Once the action is complete you will get a screen telling you that you were successful.

For the basic computer user that is all you really need to know to get your computer protected.

For the more advance user, Ad-Aware offers a whole bunch of options to set up Ad-Aware to your liking.

Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition 8.0 Review

Today for this class I am installed the Ad-Aware Anniversary Edition 8.0 on my work computer. On my personal computer I have been running Ad-Aware for the last 4 or 5 years. I have always enjoyed the ease of use of Ad-Aware and hope this anniversary edition is just as easy to use.