CIS 8020 Assignment 2 SR International Student Population

As Georgia State University seeks to serve a globally diverse student population, it is important to tailor academic offerings to meet the demands of the international student body. In particular, language and culture specific offerings are an excellent way to both welcome incoming students, as well as provide a forum for existing students to maintain cultural ties.
In order to begin to develop such a program, the university would first have to determine the major student populations. Given limited resources, it would be important to also measure the percentage a specific student population composes of the entire international student community.
Using a Google API, you can graphically illustrate the composition of the international student body. You can break out the population geographically (by continent, country, or major cities) or by language (Spanish, Russian, Cantonese, or Hindi). In this hypothetical scenario, we will illustrate the five leading countries from which international students originate.



http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?chs=700x280&chd=t:15,20,25,30,30&cht=p3&chtt=Student%20Profile&chl=France|Germany|Brazil|China|India&chco=FF0000,00FF00,0000FF,800080,FFFF00

The pie chart is much more representative of the student population than would be the case with a line or bar chart. By representing each given student demographic as a portion of the pie chart, the viewer can instantly understand the ratio of the given population, as it relates to the entire international student body. By extension, the pie chart can also serve to illustrate a “benchmark” for resource allocation, to ensure funds are spent in proportion to the given student population demographic.
A line chart would be more effective for illustrating trends in student population over a specified period of time. This would allow the viewer to see growth patterns, and potentially anticipate future student needs. Additionally, using a line chart, or a bar chart, would give the viewer the opportunity to graphically illustrate growth in comparison to spending. Ultimately, the selection of chart type is largely driven by intended purpose. The pie chart was selected to represent student demographics a point in time, whereas the line/bar chart would be more effective to show trends.

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 JM Google Calendar

The Company

MomoCon LLC is an Atlanta-based events company, featuring a large event in March held at Georgia Tech campus. In 2009, the convention welcomed 7200 people, all of whom did not pay for admission. Due to the free admission status, a new set of peripheral events has been created through momoconontour.com to attempt to build community and raise money to help the main event manage expenses.

The Challenge

MomoCon on Tour operates a separate website and about one event per month, most of which are local to the Atlanta area. These events are promoted on momoconontour.com, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and a host of other places. Google Calendar proves to be a great way for attendees to keep up with the upcoming events in a single location, moreso than other alternatives which are either one-event-at-a-time, or give no way to see previous event information (such as Facebook events, which are difficult to access after the event has passed). It can also be integrated to HTML emails and other formats in ordered to be utilized IN other alternative methods of advertising.

Below is a snippet from the MomoCon on Tour calendar, featuring both events throughout the rest of calendar year 2009 and MomoCon staff meetings, which are often poorly advertised but are very necessary for the continuation of the main event.

I can be a pessimist #3

Keeping today's short.

There is a difference between xhtml syntax, and xhtml being served as xml.

To be honest, 80% of developers don't need to know the difference, but probably 80% of those that do need to know the difference don't know the difference.
But if you have kept up with standards talk, xHTML 2.0 has been killed. Does that mean that xHTML is dead? No. The syntax of xhtml lives on as HTML 5.

I'm not the best person to describe what happened, but someone who is good at writing comics is...

Here is the first part of the comic, please click it to go to Smashing Magazine to read the rest of it.



Continue to rest of comic

The importance of data and information - a credit bureau love story

Picture it: 2009, Anytown, USA, Michael Morgan wants to buy a new car. Naturally, he would like to check up on his credit record and primary FICO score, so he takes advantage the two-a-year free credit report option and pulls his records.

OH NO!

Mike discovers that his student loans from Chase have been put on his credit report twice! His report shows that he owes thousands of dollars more than he took out for graduate school, and his address is incorrect to boot! The rage within Mike builds to the point where he feels it is necessary to call the credit bureau's help desk.

Mike: My report is incorrect!

Operator: Sir, you'll need to fax in form A-3 with two valid forms of ID to make any changes.

Mike: *rage* Why can't you just fix it over the phone?

Operator: I'm sorry sir....

Mike gets so intensely angry that he bursts an anyeurism and has to be rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment.

What did we learn?

Clean data saves lives! Ok, maybe that was an exaggeration, but clean data does make a huge difference in certain circumstances. Our local credit bureau, lets call them Equi-Trans-Perian, houses 280 million credit files in the US alone, containing large amounts of data on each consumer: credit lines, installment loans, liens and collections, and a host of demographic data is separate databases that can be matched up to the credit data. Equi-Trans-Perian has been in business for over 100 years, all that time collecting data on consumers and businesses and adding it to the database on a gradual basis.

They've had to move from word-of-mouth from shop-keeps to paper-based records to an IBM mainframe, each time suffering from data input issues and incongruities. Everyday hundreds of thousands of pieces of data are reported to this 'fictional' company's technology office in Alpharetta from banks, credit card companies, repo firms, and other vendors, all of which have slightly different ways of cataloging their customers.

What does it all mean?

Huge amount of data +

incongruous systems of input +

many many years of changeovers in technology and data input =

MOUNDS of important, life-altering data that has inconsistencies!

Good thing for us, Equi-Trans-Perian is the industry leader in cleaning their data! They have systems in place to verify information, determine what level of verification is needed for certain types of customers, and even give the OPTION to different customers of how clean their data can be delivered!

Not to say that this system is perfect. The huge amount of data proves to be a challenge, and every time a new law goes into effect (such as the Vermont do-not-solicit law or a new law in a Northeast state involving cell phone numbers), the data needs to be verified in new ways. Technology changes with the times, and the beast of a database can't always keep up promptly, causing issues like the one that poor Mike experienced. You may not always think of clean data as a big problem or as a very important one, but it certainly can be.

Poor Mike.

(Don't hate your credit bureau so much, they have a lot to deal with!)

~Jess~

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 [PC] [Twitter check]

Scenario:
A company wants to monitor trends of their brand on the internet. To do so, they monitor Twitter for words, and will keep records of what words are being used in tweets that are referencing their brand. Over time, they will be able to see a rough map of what words were associated with the brand over time.

How:
They will do this by using Google Chart's API with data coming from Twitter's API.

Implementation:

Words used in tweets for:

Explanation:

• Uses Google's AJAX Libraries API to load the Prototype javascript framework from google's massive content delivery network.
• Uses Prototype to load the twitter search API. The format requested to the RESTful API is JSON, so it is automatically evaluated as a javascript data structure.
  
• Uses the porter stemming algorithm (ported to javascript) to get the root of each word, compare them to other words, and keep tallies of how often each root word is used.
• Uses Google Charts API to display data.
• Specifically designed to be one file.
  

Note:
Only tested in firefox 3.5 on Ubuntu (shiretoko)
It is possible that this will not work in other browsers, as this requires a form of Cross Site Scripting, which has only been recently re-enabled on the web.

Original Source: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1078297/mashup.html

Cloud Camp

In case you need it: http://www.cloudcamp.com/?page_id=1288

I can be a pessimist #2

I don't do proprietary

I hadn't used Windows in 5 months... but the streak was stopped the the use of espn 360 to watch college football

I hope I never hear another person tell me that Access is better for data insertion

I think its funny that the presenter said "A code." He can one day be

I think there is a difference between an Internal vs External API

I think that wikipedia still is not a credible source...

I have a hard time seeing cloud computing being any service... the definition given is far too loose. On the other hand, I can see that a person's definition of the term depends on what part of the technical vs business spectrum a person is in. I'm on the more technical side, so cloud computing means something specific.

With that:
-I think being able to use stuff in your car is not cloud computing (it could be, but it isn't in itself)
-Classic Email is not suddenly cloud computing
-Google docs, although is built upon cloud computing, isn't itsself cloud computing.
-Computing in general is not cloud computing, there is a resource consumption that brings about it... it is not just because you don't know what is happening in the background, its a specific computing problem. It is possible to describe the cloud without just describing the basic definition of what the internet is.


I think the NYT PDF conversion thing is an incredible exmaple of good usage of cloud computing: Computing power that you didn't have before, and only need in a short burst of processing power (and don't need to buy a full server for it). With that its great to be at a point where we don't have to worry about creating the most efficient algorithms, when you can just create an instant work force.

I think RESTful design is awesome. In short: it is because it allows you to reuse a ton of code in an MVC pattern for web developlement. In long: look at my commen ton the CIS Integratem blog

I had a hard time, at first, thinking of using Google charts and instantly calling it a mashup. Well, I still do, but I can kinda understand... well not really... But atleast I can see how one could call it that... well not really. However I do see how mashup has become a buzzword... and therefore its meaning has dropped =\