Week 10: Blog Summary

My entrepreneurial idea started out as a system where a person’s entire wardrobe is in their computer and the user clicks options for the weather of the day, the type of occasion they are dressing for, and their mood, and the system picks out an outfit for the person based on what they click. As the course continued, my idea evolved because I was able to understand how certain aspects to it could add or change how the system is looked at. I found that the system had more parts than I originally thought that it did.

As I learned more lessons, I was forced to apply it to my idea. I had to dig into what the lesson was about in order to be able to apply it because I normally could not see how it related to immediately. I had to find specific parts of my idea that related to the lesson, such as pixels in a picture.

            My idea evolved from just a system with simple algorithms to a database that is part of a network. As I’m reading through my blog I see how each week it changed because of what we had spoke about in the class prior. The most difficult part of writing this blog for me was finding how to relate it to the class. All in all, I’m happy with my idea and maybe one day it’ll come to life!

Week 9: Blog Review

           Lisa Nielsen writes the blog “The Innovative Educator” in which she shares ideas for making a learning environment a more exciting place. She writes about ideas and recommendations she has geared towards educators and people interested in education. She embraces technology as a factor to be used in the education process.

            She’s made blog posts titled “Celly for Administrators, Teachers, and Students” as well as “Twitter for Administrators, Teachers, and Students” in which she explains how technology that is consistently banned in the classroom should in fact be embraced. She uses examples from different types of schools or teachers as well as her own ideas to prove why these types of technology should be used in the classroom. She believes these types of technologies are easy ways to communicate as well as review questions in a classroom.

            She also posts true stories on how technology has helped education. In one blog post titled “Develop language skills with cell phones- True stories” she talks about Google Voice, which has been used for oral reports, assignments, and sound bites. In her blog she introduces these types of technologies so educators can be informed of them and use them in the classroom. In this particular blogpost she inserts an anecdote from a teacher’s experience using the technology.

http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/

            

Week 8: Databases

A database is defined as a collection of data. Various things can be qualified as a database and this system is one of them. It is a database because it has a collection of clothing options, weather options, and mood options.

A database stores information systematically, in rows and columns. On this system, the options for mood and weather would both be stored in a column. The clothing choices would most likely be in a row, however showed visually.

The goals of databases are efficiency and integrity. In this system it would be efficient because there would not be a repetition of items of clothing as well as potentially outfits chosen if the mood and weather is similar from one day to the next. It can meet the goal of data integrity because adding, editing, and deleting clothing options would be up to date and easy to do.

Week 7: Communication/Networks

Network neutrality is a network design principle where information given out to the public is used to its maximal potential and treats all its content, sites, and platforms with equality. Service providers cannot discriminate on the various content and applications found online. This relates to my entrepreneurial idea because it is an application and the network providers must provide for it as they do any other application online.

If people using this software want to send it to a different location to either show results to a friend on a different computer or send everything on it to use on a different computer it has to be sent through digital signals and modems. The digital signals are analog voltages and through the use of modems are converted from analog to digital and back to analog. For the most part the phone company carries the information using a modem from one network to the next.

With a system like this one, most of the sharing would be peer to peer to show their choices and outcomes. When many people use this system, it brings more worth to it because of sharing. The more people that use it, the more valuable the system becomes.

Week 6: Advanced Hardware

In any type of software and system, retaining and not losing the memory and data is very important. If the hard drive for a computer with this system on it crashes, not only is it inconvenient, but it is also an annoyance to get the software back on the computer, the images of the clothing back on the software, and everything else back in order. If the hard drive somehow crashes, it is possible the data back somehow. If the software and the contents of the software are wiped out of the hard drive, there are tools and services in order to recover the data.

            The hard drive stores the software with all its data of the options and articles of clothing in platters coated with magnetic material. The surface of the platter is organized into concentric rings called tracks, which are divided into sectors. A read/write head floats above the platter surface and uses an electromagnet to manipulate and detect magnetic fields. All of the contents of the system and the system itself are stored this way.

            If for some reason a user finds it necessary to delete all of this from their hard drive to protect their own clothing from others, the files containing all of this are not completely gone when it is deleted. The space it now freed is simply made available for later use for a different file to take up. If a user is really paranoid for some reason that all of the files need to be completely gone, overwriting it can delete it permanently. 

Week 5: Hardware Basics 2

A large part of my entrepreneurial idea is the fact that it’s necessary for all articles of clothing to have a photo of it in the system. This being said, each article needs to be inputted from the camera that takes a picture of it, to the computer to be put into the system. A digitizer must be used to do this where it captures input from a camera and converts it into a digital signal. It then is store in the memory and is able to be displayed on the screen, and therefore can be used in the system.

All the pictures of the pieces of clothing need to be able to seen clearly and vividly in order for the user of this system to be able to see what they’re going to be wearing. The output from the computer to the user is what helps the user see the pictures. Depending on the resolution, or number of pixels displayed on screen, the pictures can be very clear or not so much. The higher the resolution, the closer together the pixels are causing it to have a better picture.

Lastly, the color depth also affects the quality of the picture. The color depth is the number of different colors that the monitors can display at once. Also known as the bit depth, the larger the color depth the more vivid the pictures of the clothing will be.

Week 4: Hardware Basics

            For my entrepreneurial idea, the specific information encoded in it is the pictures of the clothing and the words in the options that you choose. Each separate piece of clothing is one piece of the information, as well as each word in the choices for weather, mood, and occasion. Also, the instructions for the system are encoded as information.

            Considering a byte can represent 256 combinations, in this system a byte can represent 256 combinations of mood/occasion/weather and also 256 combinations of pieces of one’s wardrobe. Therefore, how many combinations there may be in the options and the articles of clothing, this system can have a storage size of a kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, etc. It all depends on how many pieces of clothing one has. However, there are only “x” amount of options for the mood, weather, and occasion and therefore the storage space for that would be a specific amount.

            In order for the system to work properly, it has to keep up with how the file formats change over time in order to not deteriorate. When using this system people have to update the software or means of disc format it is on. It may possible start as a CD-ROM to install onto ones computer now, however in a few years a different means will be needed.