Chapter 4 : Specialized Application Software

Posted in | at 1/28/2011 10:15:00 PM

INTRODUCTION

Specialized applications make it possible to perform advanced tasks at home like users can create website, do graphic things and others.

There are 5 specialized applications :-

  • graphics programs
  • audio and video editing software
  • multimedia
  • web authoring
  • artificial intelligence

Graphics Programs

Desktop Publishing
  • allow you to create publication like newsletter, brochure,
  • eg:- Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Publisher, Quark XPress

Image Editors
  • creating and editing bitmap images/raster images
  • bitmap images use dots or pixels to represent an image
  • eg:- Piant.Net, Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro

Illustration Programs
  • used to create and edit vector images (use geometric shapes of objects) such as points line, curves, shape to represent image in computer graphics.
  • eg:- Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDRAW

Image Galleries
  • library of electronic images
  • give us/visitor one-click access to several graphical images.
  • 2 types :- stock photographs, clip art

 Graphic Suite
  • it is a bundled graphic program
  • user can buy a larger variety of graphics programs at a lower cost
  • eg:- Corel DRAW Graphic Suite


Audio And Video  

Audio Editing Software
  • creates and edit audio clips
  • eg:-Apple Garage Band and Sony's ACID
Video Editing Software
  •  enhances digital video footage.
  • eg:- Apple's Garage Band and Sony's Acid

Multimedia
  • a variety of media into one presentation that include video, music, voice, graphics and text.

Links And Button
  • interactive multimedia presentation 
  • organized as a series of related pages
  • can be to video, sounds, graphics and also text file 

Multimedia Authoring Program
  • create multimedia presentations
  • bring together all the video, audio, graphics and text element
  • eg :- Adobe Director, Toolbook


Web Authoring
  • individuals create web logs or blogs as their own personal sites to keep in touch with friends and family.
  • meanwhile, corporations use the web to reach new customers.
  • 2 types : web site design, web authoring programs


Artificial Intelligence
  • the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it.
  • simulate human senses, thought processes and actions.
  • help people and organizations become more productive.
  • have 3 area :- Virtual Reality, Knowledge-based (expert) systems, robotics

That's all for this week...
See you next time..!!!! ^oo^

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Chapter 3 : Basic Application Software

Posted in | at 1/28/2011 09:53:00 PM


Application software is a complete, self-contained program that performs a specific function directly for the user. There are 2 types of application software : 
i)  Basic application software 
ii) Specialized application software

In this chapter we will only focus on basic application software


Common Features

- Graphical User Interface (GUI)
  • The use of pictures rather than just words to represent the input and output of a program. A program with a GUI runs under some windowing system (e.g. The X Window System, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, Acorn RISC OS, NEXTSTEP). The program displays certainicons, buttons, dialogue boxes, etc. in its windows on the screen and the user controls it mainly by moving a pointer on the screen (typically controlled by a mouse) and selecting certain objects by pressing buttons on the mouse while the pointer is pointing at them. This contrasts with acommand line interface where communication is by exchange of strings of text.


- Icons
  • A small picture intended to represent something (a file, directory, or action) in a graphical user interface. When an icon is clicked on, some action is performed such as opening a directory or aborting a file transfer.


- Menus
  • A list from which the user may select an operation to be performed. This is often done with a mouse or other pointing device under a graphical user interface but may also be controlled from the keyboard. 

  • Menus are very convenient for beginners because they show what commands are available and make experimentating with a new program easy, often reducing the need for user documentation. Experienced users however, often prefer keyboard commands, especially for frequently user operations, because they are faster to use.


- Toolbars
  • Toolbar is a horizontal row or vertical column of selectable image "buttons" that give the user a constantly visible reminder of and an easy way to select certain desktop or other application functions, such as saving or printing a document or moving pages forwards or backwards within a Web browser.




Basic application software include : 

 1.Word processors

·         A program used to create and print (chiefly textual) documents that might otherwise be prepared on a typewriter. The key advantage of word processor is its ability to make changes easily, such as correcting spelling, changing margins, or adding, deleting, and relocating entire blocks of text. Once created, the document can be printed quickly and accurately and saved for later modification

·         Example: Microsoft word



2. Spreadsheets

·         Also called as "worksheet". A type of application program which manipulates numerical and string data in rows and columns of cells. The value in a cell can be calculated from a formula which can involve other cells. A value is recalculated automatically whenever a value on which it depends changes. Different cells may be displayed with different formats. 

·         Some spreadsheet support three-dimensional matrices and cyclic references which lead to iterative calculation. 

·         An essential feature of a spreadsheet is the copy function (often using drag-and-drop). A rectangular area may be copied to another which is a multiple of its size. References between cells may be either absolute or relative in either their horizontal or vertical index. All copies of an absolute reference will refer to the same row, column or cell whereas a relative reference refers to a cell with a given offset from the current cell. 





3. Database management systems (DBMS)
·         Suite of programs which typically manage large structured sets of persistent data, offering ad hoc query facilities to many users. They are widely used in business applications. 

·         A database management system (DBMS) can be an extremely complex set of software programs that controls the organisation, storage and retrieval of data (fields, records and files) in a database. It also controls the security and integrity of the database.Data security prevents unauthorised users from viewing or updating the database. Using passwords, users are allowed access to the entire database or subsets of the database, called subschemas (pronounced "sub-skeema").  

·         The DBMS accepts requests for data from the application program and instructs the operating system to transfer the appropriate data. When a DBMS is used, information systems can be changed much more easily as the organisation's information requirements change. New categories of data can be added to the database without disruption to the existing system. 



4. Presentation graphics

·        Presentation graphics software provides predefined backgrounds and sample page layouts to assist in the creation of complete computer-driven slide shows, which, in combination with a data projector, have all but made the 35mm slide presentation obsolete. Navigation from page to page (slide to slide) can be done manually or automatically every so many seconds.

·         This software also provides a variety of special effects that can be used to fade and wipe one frame into another such as commonly found in the video world. Sound and video can also be merged into the presentation. 

·         Example Microsoft PowerPoint and Lotus Freelance Graphics.




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Chapter 2: The Internet, The Web and Electric Commerce

Posted in | at 1/20/2011 10:57:00 AM

Internet connect people around the world. It becomes a necessary because we will use internet all the time. we use internet for entertainment, trade, learn and connect with other people.


ACCESS
1) Browser
  • a browser is what we use to surf the web. Most common browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are the other browser that we can use.

2) URLs
  • Web sites are found by their address. Each web site has a URL (Uniform Resource Locate). This is how a URL is broken down:
Exp: http://pandora.com  where
http:// is type of file
pandora is domain name
com is top level


COMMUNICATION
It s because internet is using to connect people around the world, we use internet as a communication tool. Activities we do to communicate with others:

1) Electronic mail(email)
  • Electronic mail, commonly called email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from a sender to one or more receiver. In email, a sender can attach a picture, song, video or other file and send to other people.

2) Instant Messaging (IM)
  • IM is a real time text-based communication between two or more people using computer. More advance IM software provide us video calling such as MSN, Skype and Yahoo Messanger that we use often for chatting with our friends.

3) Social Networking
  • Social Networking such as Facebook, Myspace provide us a platform for meeting friends, sharing interest and having fun.

4) Blogs, Microblogs & Wikis
  •  Blogs are social media. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
  • Microblog's content is smaller than blog. Microblogs allow users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images, or video links.
  • Wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any information in a website name Wikipedia. The information can provided by miscellaneous users around the world.

SEARCH TOOLS

1) Search Engine
  • Search engine is a set of programs which used to search for information within specific area and collect that information in a database.

2) Metasearch Engine
  • This is a search engine that combine the search result from other search engines means that we do searching from not only one search engine. The example of metasearch engine is http://www.search.com/

3) Specialized Search Engine
  • We can use specialized search engine to search specific web page for example we want to search place to visit in Singapore we can search by http://www.yoursingapore.com/  and this will save lot of times because will narrow our searching.
    •  
    By the way, not all the information we search from internet is accurate, so that we need to evaluate the content before we use it.


    ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
    Electronic commerce is often called as e-commerce ad become more and more popular now. With e-commerce, producers can sell their products online direct to other manufacturers (B2B) or to consumers(B2C) without using intermediaries while consumer can sell their products to others consumers (C2C).

    1) Business to Business (B2B)
    • B2B is business between two firms, not firm between consumers. The quantity of purchase is large at competitive price.

    2) Business to Consumer (B2C)
    • B2C is a retailing business that a firm sell to individual buyer, normally in small quantity.

    3) Consumer to Consumer (C2C)
    • This is a business that involved consumers selling to other consumers through auction. Auction is price bidding from many consumers and the consumer that big highest price will get the product.

    4) Security
    • Security of a web site is very important in e-commerce. It is because the payment will make in credit card or thought the bank account. If a user do not trust the web is secure to make any payment transaction it means that they will not purchase the product.

    WEB UTILITIES

    1) Web-based Application
    • This is an application that is accessed over a network such as the internet. For instance, Google calender is a contact and time management web application offered by Google.

    2) Plug-in
    • Pug-in is an additional application software that we can download and use. The plug-in software can use for paying video such as real player, photo editing and design such as Picasa.

    3) Filters
    • Filter is a program that will decide which data can be accept and block certain data that is not necessary. This also can call as parental control program because the parents can setup what content is suitable for their children when doing searching.

    4) Files Transfer Protocol(FTP)
    • FTP normally use to download a file from server using internet or upload a file to server.

    5) Internet Security Suite
    • It is a program that use to protect our privacy and security while online. There are many brand of security suite available in market such as Avira, AVG, Microsoft Security Essential and so on. we can buy the security suite from the market or download it free.

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    Information Technology, The Internet And You.

    Posted in | at 1/14/2011 10:18:00 PM

    Chapter 1
    Hi guys... this is our first task
    today we would to share something with you about :

    INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
    (IT) is "the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications".

    Do you know how Information Technology got its name..????

    The term in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review, in which authors Leavitt and Whistler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology”.

    Thanks to Leatvitt and Whisler for the name...!!!!

    INFORMATION SYSTEM

    Is any combination of information technology and people's activities using that technology to support operations, management, and decision-making.


    In a very broad sense, the term information system is frequently used to refer to the interaction between people, algorithmic processes, data and technology. In this sense, the term is used to refer not only to the information and communication technology (ICT) an organization uses, but also to the way in which people interact with this technology in support of business processes

    There is 5 parts of an Information System.
    Huhu.. guess what..????



    1.    People
               Its like you, me and also the others..!!!
               People like us its very important part for this system via direct 
               and also indirect.

    2.    Procedures
               Of course its has the rules/guidelines for computer operations...!!!!!!
               Like to log in Google account, you must have user name
               and password.

    3.    Software
               Its also known as program.
               It is Step-by-step instructions that convert data into information.
               Software cannot be stored electronically.
               Software is divided into two different categories

                     -   System Software
                         System software is the operating system and all the utilities
                         that enable the computer to function at lower level.
                         Some examples are compilers, loaders and linkers.

                     -   Application Software
                         Is programs that do real work for users. An example would be 
                         word processors, spreadsheets, and database 
                         management systems.

                           don't be confuse about that..!!!!!!

    4.    Hardware
               Hardware is nothing but the physical part of computers which
               are includes Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor System Unit and 
               other devices. It is controlled by Software's.
                 
               Do you know about the type of computers?
               Its consist :
                      - supercomputers
                      - mainframe computers (also known as mid-range computers)
                      - microcomputers
       ·         desktop
       ·         media centre system units
       ·         notebook or laptop
       ·         netbook
       ·         tablet pc
       ·         hanheld (I want it..!!)

    5.    Data
               Data is a unprocessed facts and figures which are the raw 
               materials of the Information & is to be process before it 
               become as information.
               Stored electronically in files like
    ·         Document files
    ·         worksheet files
    ·         Database files
    ·         presentation files

    INTERNET 

    There are many definition about internet like : 
    • a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of computer networks that use the TCP/IP network protocols to facilitate data transmission and exchange. 
    • The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. 
    • A worldwide system of interconnected networks and computers.

    Internet give us so many advantage such as information, communication, entertainment,services, e-commerce and so on..

    But...............
    Do you know how the evolution of web is expand from web 1.0, 2.0 and to web 3.0..???

    Here, I provide the link for you..
    check it out...!!!!!


    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsNcjya56v8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pe79kPh3hw&feature=related

    we hope u can understand well..
    see you later...!!! ^-^




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    Posted in | at 1/14/2011 09:24:00 PM

    hello and hi everyone...!!!!!!
    this blog is for our project SCK 1413 Technology & Information Systems..
    and of course, we will share with you all information about technology and information system...

    we hope you can support it, and don't forget to leave your comment here, so that, we can improve our blog...
    thank you.. ^..^

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