T 4.7

Multimedia is defined as text, graphics, video, animation, audio, and other media that can be used to help an organization efficiently achieve its goals. [1] All businesses use the multimedia text, graphics, and audio in one form or another. Text in business is used for websites, contracts, procedures, and more. Graphics are used in business to make sales presentations, persuasive charts, company logos, etc. Creating and altering audio is used in businesses to record sales calls, play music while working, and is used in almost all videos.  The focus of my article will be describing free software that any business can use to create and modify the multimedia text, graphics, and audio.

When I first heard about the open source Open Office, I thought it only was used as a word processor. However, Apache OpenOffice is an open-source office productivity software suite containing word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, formula editor, and database management application. [2] Open Office is great for small businesses who cannot afford multiple Microsoft Office licenses or who want to support open source projects. Most small businesses will use it with text and graphics multimedia. Businesses can use it to make reports, sales presentations, and view raw data in a spreadsheet. It can also open Word documents, and slowly more and more people are using Open Office. By analyzing website visitor’s ability to see certain fonts, a recent study of 20 countries found that 9% of people in the United States have Open Office installed, and Poland and the Czech Republic had the highest percentage of users with 22% usage. [3]

Graphics multimedia is a very important aspect of businesses.  Businesses who want an advanced, open source graphics editor turn to Gimp. I have never heard of Gimp, even though it is often cited as a replacement for Adobe Photoshop. [4] I can see small businesses using Gimp to make quick alterations to pictures such as cropping or reducing the image size. The simple editing of pictures and adjusting colors beyond the basic Microsoft Paint is essential for all businesses.

Audio multimedia is being used more and more on the internet by businesses. Once edited, audio files can also be used to enhance presentations, create music, develop audio books, record podcasts, and enhance video and animation. [5] I see even small businesses making Youtube videos now. Everyone hates watching videos that are hard to hear or understand. I found an open source program called Audacity which is a free digital audio editor and recording application that has over 75 million downloads. [6] You can just drag any audio file into Audacity and edit it. A feature I like is called “normalize” which makes the sound levels of the entire audio clip about the same volume.

In conclusion, multimedia which includes text, graphics, and audio are used in businesses daily. The open source software Open Office, Gimp, and Audacity can be used in a small business to create and edit all of their important multimedia for free.

Sources:

1. Page 334 of the book
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_office
3. http://ostatic.com/blog/openoffice-org-by-the-numbers
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GIMP
5. Page 336 of the book
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_%28audio_editor%29

T 4.8

My first SQL query shows what products have had a profit of over $1000 and their dates. The business could use this data to predict future sales of large profits.

SELECT "Date", "Region", "Product", "Profit"
FROM "Sales"
WHERE "Profit" > 1000


https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?OBJID=793985000000007016&STANDALONE=true&privatelink=bae35263930364126defb812f5bce81e&ZDB_THEME_NAME=blue&DATATYPESYMBOL=true&REMTOOLBAR=false&SEARCHBOX=true&SHOWHIDEOPT=true


Chart based on above query that shows the average product profit when the profit profit is over $1000.

<img width='400' height='300' src='https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBChartEmbed.png?OBJID=793985000000008016&STANDALONE=true&privatelink=70b79cb58d37aa61dcf1d11345ecd1bc&WIDTH=400&HEIGHT=300&ZDB_THEME_NAME=blue&TITLE=true&DESCRIPTION=true' />


This SQL query shows profits from Mondays only. This will help businesses see how profitable Mondays are.

SELECT "Date", "Product", "Profit"
FROM "Sales"
WHERE weekday("Date") = '0'

/* 0 is monday */

https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?OBJID=793985000000007110&STANDALONE=true&privatelink=a08fdd04b2565c8eeb3f0c03d5b24a1c&ZDB_THEME_NAME=blue&DATATYPESYMBOL=true&REMTOOLBAR=false&SEARCHBOX=true&SHOWHIDEOPT=true


I realized that this query could be better and added a where clause that shows Mondays where the profit is over $3000

SELECT "Date", "Product", "Profit"
FROM "Sales"
WHERE weekday("Date") = '0' AND "Profit" > '3000'

/* 0 for weekday is monday */

https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?OBJID=793985000000007197&STANDALONE=true&privatelink=2b280bc22d5cf2e82234f8e7ab67bfc8&ZDB_THEME_NAME=blue&DATATYPESYMBOL=true&REMTOOLBAR=false&SEARCHBOX=true&SHOWHIDEOPT=true

T 4.3

There are many different types and uses for decision support systems (DSS). A decision support system is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. [1] The focus of my article will be describing an institutional DSS software that was tested in hospitals called COMPETE III and discussing the complexities of having computer applications make medical decisions. Compete III was a real-time Clinical Data Repository (CDR) that consolidates data from a variety of clinical sources such as EMR and paper, and was developed to present a unified patient data view. This software includes “The Vascular Tracker” which gave the physician an at-a-glance updated, color-coded system highlighting the urgency of addressing each risk factor of a patient. [2]

The COMPETE III program accessed the patient’s medical history and intelligently guessed the risk factors of various medical conditions. I think having a computer program suggesting medical advice is a great idea, and I would definitely consider its suggestions. However, I don’t think that computers are intelligent enough yet to make highly accurate medical predictions. There are too many variables involved like the patient’s complete medical history and how that compares to other patients. This is a perfect example of “unstructured problems” which are complex problems in which the relationships among the pieces of data are not always clear, and the data is in a variety of formats. [3] Despite that complexity, the previous version of COMPETE III cost $483,699 to design and implement,  and it targeted patients with Type 2 diabetes. Over a one year period the software helped decrease patients’ risk of amputation by 14%, stroke by 12%, renal failure by 9%, and heart failure by 5%. [4] This is an obvious success and definitely justifies the cost in my opinion, and the making of COMPETE IV is currently being discussed.

After watching IBM’s supercomputer Watson beat the best Jeopardy players in the world, people were discussing its practical applications. Watson is so unique because it’s by far the best artificial intelligence computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language with a hardcore cost of about $3 million. [5] IBM has announced that it will use Watson to improve patient care through the use of evidence-based medicine, which is designed to standardize patient treatments by identifying proven best practices such as suggesting an aspirin to someone leaving the hospital who suffered a heart attack. [6] Watson would fit in perfectly with any DSS, and would greatly enhance COMPETE IV or make it completely obsolete.

In conclusion, COMPETE III is a great example of a decision support system (DSS) being used in the medical industry, and it has been successful in suggesting medical advice despite the complexities of making such a program.

Sources:

1.       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_support_system

2.       http://www.compete-study.com/C3_news.htm

3.       Page 290 of the Book

4.       http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2011/11/14/study-clinical-decision-support-systems-do-not-generate-cost-savings.aspx

5.       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_%28artificial_intelligence_software%29

6.       https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9219937/IBM_s_Watson_supercomputer_to_diagnose_patients

T 3.6

Widespread use of live chat in e-commerce websites is a fairly new interesting part of today’s electronic businesses. Live support (chat) is a Web service that allows businesses to communicate, or chat, in real time with visitors to their Web site. [1] Live chat basically looks like an obvious chat window on a website where you can only type in a message and hit send.  I see more and more websites displaying live chat boxes as soon as their website loads. Live chat can be considered a Web 2.0 technology since you can communicate with someone else on a website.

Live chat technology is more sophisticated than I thought.  A well-known live chat company coincidently called LiveChat offers a software as a service chat window that can be initiated manually by the operator or automatically by LiveChat system as soon as the visitor meets the predefined criteria (i.e. searched keyword, time on website, encountered error, etc.) [2] Personally I don’t think that live chat windows are annoying as long as the window doesn’t move from the side of a website.

The big question for an electronic business is whether they will lose money by hiring people to operate the live chat.  However, with a live chat you would assume that your business will get fewer phone calls. To me, just seeing a live chat box means that they’re not a small company and I trust them more. In fact, In 2008 Wells Fargo used online chat to gain high customer satisfaction scores and a double-digit increase in converted shoppers. [3] Also, Northridge Developments found that putting a live chat service on their builder website helped increase their conversion rate by a whopping 260%. [4] It seems obvious that a well implemented live chat system would increase sales, and with LIveChat you can try out their service month to month starting at $36 per month. There are also free and open source live chat programs available such as http://mibew.org/.

Almost every live chat study I look up says it improves customer satisfaction and/or sales. A (expensive ) study showed that 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer. [5] In conclusion, it would be very unwise for an e-businesses company not to consider at least testing a live chat solution on their website.

Sources:

1.       http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/live_support.html

2.       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveChat

3.       http://blog.kissmetrics.com/live-chat/

4.       http://buildertarget.com/blog/home-builder-website-analytics/case-study-home-builder-increases-website-conversion-by-260-with-live-chat/

5.       http://www.forrester.com/Making+Proactive+Chat+Work/fulltext/-/E-RES57054?objectid=RES57054

T 3.4

Web search engines [1] such as Google are now used by everyone on the internet, but some people (me) think that they collect too much information about us. Web search engines simply work by storing information about many web pages, which they retrieve from the HTML itself. [2] The most popular current search engines in the United States are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Google currently has about 84% [3] of the current web search engine market share. Basically companies like Google use computer software called spiders [1] to follow every link on every website and then store each webpage’s HTML in their database. I will be talking only about Google’s web search engine since it is by far the most popular search engine right now.

With more than 4 billion indexed web pages stored on over 500,000 computers [1], it is amazing that Google can instantly display search results. Not only does Google display website results for keywords that you search for, they also display images, products, local businesses on a map, and more. Also, Google owns Youtube, and Youtube is its own search engine just for videos. Amazingly, 20% of Google search queries are ones we haven't seen in the past 90 days. [4] How Google determines what results show up for a search is a secret and complex. They are always tweaking their algorithms to display better results. Google recently announced that they make about 500 changes to their algorithm annually. [5] Matt Cutts, the spokesman for Google’s webspam team, admitted that Google uses over 200 signals to determine search rankings such as the speed in which a webpage loads. [6]

Google logs all the searches we make. They probably store them for forever. This is a huge privacy concern for some people, especially since a lot of people use their Gmail. They know too much about us. However, Google claims they anonymize the IP addresses in their search logs after 9 months and anonymize their stored cookies after 18 months. [7]

Facebook has a built in search engine, too. The owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has said that privacy is dead. It appears that Facebook is tracking every single thing you do on their website for forever including your last known physical location, with latitude, longitude, time/date, altitude, and more. [8]

In conclusion, Google is the best example of a useful web search engine, but they are looking more and more like Big Brother [9] every year with all the information they are collecting about us.

Sources:

1.       page 189 of the book (ISBN 1-111-53165-X)

2.       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_search_engine

3.       http://www.karmasnack.com/about/search-engine-market-share/

4.       http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/this-week-in-search-121809.html

5.       http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303505504577406751747002494.html

6.       http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/

7.       http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/faq/

8.       http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2114059/Your-Facebook-Data-File-Everything-You-Never-Wanted-Anyone-to-Know

9.       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Brother_(Nineteen_Eighty-Four)

T 3.3

Squidoo.com, the approximately 158^th[1] most viewed website in the United States, is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 website, and users can also earn money with it. Squidoo allows users to make blog posts for free called “lenses”. It is a prime example of a Web 2.0 website with the sole purpose of supporting user-generated content and user feedback. [2]

When you sign up to Squidoo, you become a “lensmaster.” You then can make unlimited lenses that will be hosted on Squidoo.com/lens-name. Each lens is only one page and can only be on one topic. Other users can comment on the bottom of each of your lenses. You can also view the most popular lenses in different categories which businesses could use to see what niches are popular. Like blogger, you don’t have to know any coding or HTML to make posts, and you can embed pictures and videos.

Squidoo allows content creators to earn revenue from referral links to sites like Amazon.com and Ebay and 50% of all revenue goes to the lensmasters. [3] Squidoo automatically places ads in your lenses, and if people click them (Google Adsense [4]) or buy something from an Amazon link on your lens, then Squidoo will split the commission money with you. With well over 1.5 million [3] lenses, it’s not that easy to get rich quick with Squidoo. There are people earning $2000 [5] per month though. You have to remember that Squidoo’s lenses show up in Google’s search results. Thus, if you write a long unique article on a niche topic, it’s possible to get a lot of visits from Google searches alone. There are courses you can buy that teach you how to make a lot of money with Squidoo lenses, such as squidooserpcrusher.com. I admit that I haven’t created any Squidoo lenses yet, but now I’m interested since I could make some extra income with it.

With millions of websites being created every year, only a few get a lot of visitors. I think Squidoo made the cut mainly because the famous marketer and author Seth Godin is the founder, and users can easily earn money with it. When researching Squidoo, a saw a lot of people comparing it to a similar website Hubpages.com. In conclusion, Squidoo is a perfect example of a Web 2.0 website since it only allows user generated content and feedback, and as a bonus you can earn money from each of your lenses.

Sources:

1.       http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/squidoo.com

2.       Page 195 of our book (ISBN 1-111-53165-X)

3.       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squidoo

4.       http://www.squidoo.com/Squidoo_Payday

5.       http://www.androdigit.com/top-3-squidoo-earners-2000-per-month-earners-club.html

T 2.7 Zoho Database

https://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?OBJID=793985000000003023&STANDALONE=true&privatelink=710b2d12cf2a735a531a948e74e0e6d7&ZDB_THEME_NAME=blue&DATATYPESYMBOL=true&REMTOOLBAR=false&SEARCHBOX=true&SHOWHIDEOPT=true

1. I watched the Zoho database video
2. Went to https://reports.zoho.com
3. Created a Blank Database and named it and clicked create
4. Clicked "Enter Data Right Away"
5. Labeled the Columns except profit column and clicked Save
6. Entered all my data
7. Went to an empty column and clicked the "Add" button then clicked "Custom Formula"
8. Named the formula "Profit" and entered in the formula "Revenue - Cost" and clicked Okay
9. Clicked "Publish" button then clicked "URL / Permalink for this view..."
10. Clicked "Click Here" next to "To access this view/table without login ," and saved that link to Notepad
11. Clicked "Publish" button then clicked "Embed In Website/Blog..."
12. Clicked "Click Here" next to "To access this view/table without login ," and saved that link to Notepad and replaced all single quotes with double quotes
13. Went into my blogger account and clicked the Layout tab on the left then "Add a Gadget" on the right
14. Clicked on "HTML/JavaScript" in the popup and pasted in my iframe code and clicked Save

I didn't have problems this time