Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Explore traditional businesses that have moved to digital firm and how globalization has changed their way to do business.




Traditional business is any normal business that is running without the internet or the development of Information technology. An example about traditional business that it changed from traditional business to digital firm, actually there are many example especially about the sealing firms or the delivering companies; before they were working just to sell or deliver in the local area but later on with the development of the Information Technology is becoming digital and more developed. A simple example about a traditional business that change and developed with the Information Technology is Pizza Hut.

 Pizza Hut before was just as a small restaurant in a hometown in a USA and slowly it become more famous and has many restaurants in USA, As of 2012, there were more than 6,000 Pizza Hut restaurants in the United States, and more than 5,139 store locations in 94 other countries and territories around the world. And the biggest change is the online order and the online service that they offer nowadays according to one statistic that Pizza used My Hut ordering in early 2007 and began using mobile phone SMS technology at about the same time.
And it is clear that globalization change the way of their works, at the beginning they just have just one restaurant but later by the effect of the globalization as we saw in the statistic up how the number increased to 6.000 Pizza Hut in the USA and more than 5,100 in many other countries. So beside that because of the globalization and the development of the technology we can see that they are using it effectively such as sending SMS as an advertisement and the online delivery.


Nanotechnology, Grid computing, Quantum computing and Semantic web

Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional system at the molecular scale.this covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced.
In its original sense, 'nanotechnology' refers to the projected ability to construct items from the bottom up, using techniques and tools being developed today to make complete, high performance products.in simple words, we can say that Nanotechnology is a group of emerging technologies in which the structure of matter is controlled at the nanometer scale, the scale of small numbers of atoms, to produce novel materials and devices that have useful and unique properties. Some of these technologies impose only limited control of structure at the nanometer scale, but they are already in use, producing useful products. They are also being further developed to produce even more sophisticated products in which the structure of matter is more precisely controlled. The Foresight Nanotechnology Challenges focus on applying these developing technologies to solving important world problems.

Grid Computing
A form of networking. Unlike conventional networks that focus on communication among devices, grid computing harnesses unused processing cycles of all computers in a network for solving problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine.
Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time - usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. A well-known example of grid computing in the public domain is the ongoing SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at Home project in which thousands of people are sharing the unused processor cycles of their PCs in the vast search for signs of "rational" signals from outer space. According to John Patrick, IBM's vice-president for Internet strategies, "the next big thing will be grid computing."
Grid computing appears to be a promising trend for three reasons: (1) its ability to make more cost-effective use of a given amount of computer resources, (2) as a way to solve problems that can't be approached without an enormous amount of computing power, and (3) because it suggests that the resources of many computers can be and managed as a collaboration toward a common objective.
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/grid-computing.

Quantum computing 
A quantum computer is a computation device that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from digital computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), quantum computation uses quantum properties to represent data and perform operations on these data.
Quantum computing is the area of study focused on developing computer technology based on the principles of quantum theory, which explains the nature and behavior of energy and matter on the quantum (atomic and subatomic) level.
Quantum Theory
Quantum theory's development began in 1900 with a presentation by Max Planck to the German Physical Society, in which he introduced the idea that energy exists in individual units (which he called "quanta"), as does matter. Further developments by a number of scientists over the following thirty years led to the modern understanding of quantum theory.
The Essential Elements of Quantum Theory:
•          Energy, like matter, consists of discrete units, rather than solely as a continuous wave.
•          Elementary particles of both energy and matter, depending on the conditions, may behave like either particles or waves.
•          The movement of elementary particles is inherently random, and, thus, unpredictable.
•          The simultaneous measurement of two complementary values, such as the position and momentum of an elementary particle, is inescapably flawed; the more precisely one value is measured, the more flawed will be the measurement of the other value.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/quantum-computing

Semantic web

The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as anatural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications.
An extension of the current Web that provides an easier way to find, share, reuse and combine information. It is based on machine-readable information and builds on XML technology's capability to define customized tagging schemes and RDF's (Resource Description Framework) flexible approach to representing data. The Semantic Web provides common formats for the interchange of data (where on the Web there is only an interchange of documents). It also provides a common language for recording how data relates to real world objects, allowing a person or a machine to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.
                                                                                     
A form of networking. Unlike conventional networks that focus on communication among devices, grid computing harnesses unused processing cycles of all computers in a network for solving problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine.
Grid computing (or the use of a computational grid) is applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time - usually to a scientific or technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data. A well-known example of grid computing in the public domain is the ongoing SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @Home project in which thousands of people are sharing the unused processor cycles of their PCs in the vast search for signs of "rational" signals from outer space. According to John Patrick, IBM's vice-president for Internet strategies, "the next big thing will be grid computing."
Grid computing appears to be a promising trend for three reasons: (1) its ability to make more cost-effective use of a given amount of computer resources, (2) as a way to solve problems that can't be approached without an enormous amount of computing power, and (3) because it suggests that the resources of many computers can be and managed as a collaboration toward a common objective.







For CEOs and their organizations, avoiding complexity is not an option — the choice comes in how they respond to it. Will they allow complexity to become a stifling force that slows responsiveness, overwhelms employees and customers, or threatens profits? How do you respond to these statements? 2010 IBM Global CEO Study


How do you respond to these statements?
(For CEOs and their organizations, avoiding complexity is not an option — the choice comes in how they respond to it. Will they allow complexity to become a stifling force that slows responsiveness, overwhelms employees and customers, or threatens profits?
(2010 IBM Global CEO Study).

As we know that the technology every day is improving and even the small company is becoming a huge one and international one t maximize the profit.
 Complexity has three aspects which are technological, organizational and societal. So day by day with the improvement the company faces some problems and the person who receives most of them is CEO because he/she is the one who is responsible in the company and has to solve the problems including the complexity. Not all the complexity is bad for the company; complexity is the development of the technology and here the CEOs will face the problem of managing and dividing the jobs among the employs. So the good CEO is the one who knows how to manage the complexity and try to take the advantages from it to improve their company and achieve their goals.

Thursday, 7 March 2013

What is usability ? & Why there is a need for user centered design in software or web application?





Usability is a measure of how easy it is to use a product to perform prescribed tasks.






Why there is a need for user centered design in software or web application?
It is clear that the user centred design is something very important in the designing stage. Just to show simple example about this, just if we have a look to the applications, machines and many other things, we can see that if the producer considers the user needs and opinions about the application or the produced thing we can see that this thing is popular and all the people like it because it is easy like FACEBOOK , on the other hand if we look to a complicated website like self-service we can see that there are many problems and the students don’t like it because it is difficult to deal with it.

which application system has the best user centered design and why do you say so?


User centered design:
Actually from what I understand in this class that user central designed is to make user issues central in the design process by carrying out early testing and evaluation with users and the design takes place iteratively, in simple words means that when we designed anything we should take the attention about the customer and the user and how they will use this product, so here as a producer we need to think about YOU as a user and not just ME,ME,ME and how I am going to gain more and more.
There are many examples about good user centered design, but one from the n=most popular and easy application for the user is FACEBOOK.

FACEBOOK is considered as one from the best user centered design because many reasons. I will mention here some of the reasons. First, the FACEBOOK is very clear and easy to use even if the user does not know much about computer and internet, everywhere in Facebook page is guided so any one can follow the guidance to do what he wish to do, beside that Facebook has many advantages such as sharing information; it allow to us to share what we desire to share beside asking questions about other’s opinion and sharing pictures and videos.

 Another advantages is chatting and find new friends because Facebook is a social network so we can know more friends either from local areas or from outside our area and a simple example that it happened with me is find old friends, after I leaved my country Syria and I came here to study so I lost the connect with all my old friends but later on because of the Facebook I found many of them. Also one from the biggest advantages that I find in FACEBOOK is following the news; as we know that there are many pages for news in FACEBOOK in all the aspects, political, advertisements and news about education, last on I will mention it here is the video call, the FACEBOOK is not just for chatting no also we can make a call and we can see the person that we are talking with.


 

Monday, 18 February 2013

Compare the topics and methods of the computing disciplines? (Similarities) What are the differences among these disciplines? (Differences)



Computer disciplines is the scientific and practical approach to computation and its applications and it has five parts which are Computer Science (CS), Software Engineering (SE), Information Systems (IS), Cognitive Science (CS) and Computer Engineering (CE).
First of all, all of these disciplines actually related to each other and there are some mutual and common things among them and on the other hand each one has something specific by its own.


First discipline is (CS) Computer Science: CS is the mother of all computer disciplines because it studies the theory of computation and the creating a system, a computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems and he try to develop news idea about the system according to the mathematical concepts.
CS has strong connection with other disciplines because the CS develop the system and create new ideas to make the system easy to the users and CS differ from other discipline that CS studies and concern on the theory and on the mathematical (software) part rather than hardware.
Next is (SE) Software Engineering, after Computer Science directly come Software Engineering because SE applies the principles and the theory of Computer science to find good solutions for software problems. SE is the application of systematic, disciplined to maintenance of it and develop software. The differences between SE and others disciplines is that Software Engineering is focus on the software and how to develop it by applying the concept of Computer Science.



Then we have Information System IS, Information System is the combination of information technology and people's activities that support operations, management and decision making. The difference between information technology (IT)and information systems (IS) is that IS focus on the applications and implications of computing in the business domain, however, IT does not focus on a single domain in which IT is practiced, but instead focuses on the integration and deployment of computing technology. But the  similarities between them is Organizational management and IT infrastucture.

After IS there is Cognitive Science (CS), Cognitive Science is the study of the mind and its processes. It includes research on intelligence and behaviour and especially focusing on the information and how we present and transform it in the system and machine for example, language. There are many topics related to the CS, such as psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy and linguistics. So as we can see here that the Cognitive Science focuses on the understanding the nature of the human mind rather than on software or hardware like other disciplines


Finally, is Computer Engineering (CE), Compute Engineering is the most general discipline in all discipline computers because CE is the combination of two fields: computer science and electrical engineering. CE also is the process of analyzing and designing all hardware, software, and operating systems for a computer.
CE called the body and the mind because it needs to understand both the hardware and the software of computers.
Actually Computer Engineering has many similarities to all computer disciplines due to it study the hardware and the software. For example, IT and computer engineering have similarities because IT focuses more on the hardware on the other hand CE also study the hardware beside the software.

Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Can I live without Internet connection for a day, a week, a month, a year?




Actually this is somehow difficult question, in my opinion, it depends on the situation because sometimes we go camping or we go a trip,there we don’t have an internet and we stay there few days or a week,  but generally I think I cannot because for me I depend on the internet in many things in my life such as my studies, following the news, contact with my friends and families, increase my knowledge about many things beside that the internet is a huge references for me because as a student I don’t have many references.