Planning and Reflection

Why are you creating the content you're creating?

                   I'm creating the content because it is the most comfortable topic to me. I love to learn about different pieces of technology and this was a great fit for me. 

Who is your audience?

                    My audience is people who want more about different applications, hardware, or software.

What do you want the content to achieve?

                    I want to give people new technology they might not know of to help them in their everyday life. 

When and how are you going to develop the content? Share your schedule for posting to the blog.

                   I wanted to update my blog 3 times a week.

Where are you going to publish? Evaluate why you selected this option by comparing three alternative options using a features comparison matrix,and explaiing why this was the best choice for you.

                        I chose blogger because I had used before back in highschool to do a music blog. It has an easy interface and extremely easy to use. I looked at tumblr.com and Wordpress.com but blogger just was easier to use.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a web application that I believe in alot. I use this more then any other thing on the internet and more then Microsoft Office. Google Docs is a web application that allows you to use Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and Access for free. It has an unbelievably easy interface. It has a cloud drive so you can save everything there. Another, great option it has, one of the best in my opinion, is that it allows real-time editing from someone else who has permission to edit the file.  Google docs ties in with your email as well so as long as you have your email information you can log in to Google Docs. What i really love about this is I can write a presentation and go to class open it there and present to the class.

Speed test

So for this week I looked at an app you can download to test the speed of your internet on your phone. So lets say your phone is running slow when trying to download or surf the web on your phone. When you hit run it would tell you how long it takes to receive a ping to the network, the download and upload speed. It also shows a graph that tracks how much data you use and how fast it goes from time to time.  What i mean by time to time, I mean that it tracks it from day to day to show if the speed has gone up or down.  

LibreOffice

For today I looked at a piece of software that made it on the PCWORLD's must have list for a college student. The software is called IibreOffice. LibreOffice is a program that is similar to Microsoft Office. It has all the basics like Word, Powerpoint, Drawing, Math, Base (Access) and Excel. So you might ask why should i download this instead of Microsoft Office. Being a college student I can tell you that there are somethings that just cant fit in my budget. Even with school discount you can spend anywhere from $80-$100 for a copy of Microsoft. So if I can get something i need to use for class for free why not.  Great thing about this program is you can even open Microsoft files in it. So all the hand-outs you get from a teacher who more than likely has Microsoft you will be able to view them. From the looks of it, It might not have all the things you need for lets say a Computer Lit class or even advance Word class but for the average student it looks like a great software.

Main interface

Word

PowerPoint

SpreadSheet

Drawing

Math

Database

AirDroid

So this week I went back to apps for your mobile device that might be a must have for you. The app i chose was called the "AirDroid". It is an app you have to pay for but it is cheap and well worth it. You pay a subscription of $20 per year you have it in use. It allows you to transfer files from your computer to your phone or the other way around, via wireless on local network or remotely. It will allow you to send and receive texts from your desktop,locate your lost phone, mange apps, use the camera remotely, call contacts, share the clipboard, and then some.
In case anyone wants to check it out I will post a link here, http://www.airdroid.com/.

Ps4

So one piece of new technology that just came out was the Playstation 4. I am a huge fan of the Playstation system since the Ps2. I think i loved it do to the fact that it was free online and also the fact that there was one game that i loved "Solcom 2". So back to the Ps4 all around it sounds like a great system even from what i heard from the E3 convention. It even stole some of the xbox fans do to what it had and what xbox didn't have.
So here are the hardware specs. So as the Ps3 it comes with a built in blu-ray player. It comes with 8Gb DDR5 RAM (Random Access Memory). It comes with the Single-chip x86 AMD "Jaguar" processor, 8 cores, which is the processor. It also has AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next engine w/ 1152 shaders GPU (Graphic Processing Unit). It has a built in 500Gb hard-drive, with the ability to swap out hard-drives. One of the best things it has is a built in DVR, which allows the ability to record games and even stream to twitch which is awesome. It comes with the amazing price of $399.99 which is $100 cheaper than the Xbox one. 

650TI

So today I wanted to take a look at a piece of hardware. To me one of the most important pieces of hardware would be your graphics card. So to most people budget is always an issue, and this graphics card is well worth it. The card I'm talking about the EVGA GeForce 650ti boost. I recently bought this card for my current computer and wow what a difference it made. When I bought this card it cost me $180 which for the power it has was decent price. Now that the price has dropped even more makes it a better choice for your build. So from personal experience i would recommend it to anyone. From the box you get the graphics card, power connect, driver cd, and owners manual. It is fairly large graphics card with the dimensions of 9.5" x 4.5" x 1.5". It was an easy install, all you had to do was slide it in the PCI express slot. Then put in the driver cd in and it will install all the latest drivers. With this card you will be able to run almost every game out there on max settings with 60 frames per second which is perfect for any gamer. Not only that this card does not use a lot of power, runs very quiet, but also runs very cool. 

Here is what the card looks like.

Here is a chart that shows the comparison between graphics cards that are similar.  

Avast the anti-virus

So to day i had a problem with my computer where i got a virus that forced me to reformat my computer. No biggie but it is a pain in the butt to re-install everything that i had to get rid of. So in the process i thought it would be a great idea to take a look at an anti-virus software. So I looked at avast which i was told was suppose to be pretty good for being free.

So i went to download it super easy and fast download. It did not have any other add-ons to worry about just hit continue and you were good to go. The only thing that scared me a little bit was the random voice that told me "Thank you for downloading and it was time to scan". Was kinda creepy but hey lets look at it a little more. So nothing really negative i can say about it to be honest. Gives easy access to full scans just but a push of a button. It will also back up all your Android devices which means your phones or tablets. It also has a browser cleanup that will clean all your browser cookies, and unwanted tool-bars and lets be honest everyone hates those. Another thing they offer is the ability to update the important software on your computer that if not updated can cause harm.

Here are two screen shots i took of avast. Has an easy user interface that anyone can use. 

It all starts here!

I would like to do a little intro before i get in to my topic for today. Hi! My name is James and i am in the final year at Moraine Park for two associate  degree, one in Tech support and the other in Network Specialist. I want to bring a little knowledge to everyone either from apps, hardware, software, or interesting technology. 

I wanted to start this blog out to give you some information on new technology that is great that you might not know about. I will try to upload blogs atleast 3 times a week.