Blog Entry 7.1

The five most common security threats to a computer system are accidents and natural disasters, employees and consultants, links to outside businesses, outside intruders, and viruses. For the cabin rental company accidents and natural disasters may be common so in the case of a power outage or any other disaster the constant backing up of information will take place within the company and the storage of important databases will be stored off site away from any disaster that may take place at the company. Employees and consultants will sometimes try and share information with rival companies so in order to prevent this from happening in the cabins, the use of biometrics will be used and employee ID cards for authorized access to any information that may be important to prevent unauthorized access of data. The info shared with links to outside businesses will be conducted using secure firewalls and the virtual private network using the internet to share data, these firewalls and VPNs will prevent the access of data from other rival companies trying to access the info of the cabins. Outside intruders can harm a computer system and the biometrics will be used after hours of the company and photo ID badges will be used and the cabins with security cameras and gate access to the information building in order to keep secure data from being accessed. Viruses will really harm a computer system. In order for the cabins to keep this from happening Norton Anti-virus software will be installed on every computer in the system and emails that may contain viruses will not be access to open the files.     

Blog Entry 6.1

There are four pillars of Web 2.0. The first pillar is utilizing the web as a platform which uses peer to peer technology. The second pillar is harnessing collective intelligence and an example of that would be reviewers of a product on a website. The third pillar is leveraging the data which uses knowledge of the customer to accommodate them better. The last pillar is implementing innovative web capabilities which uses knowledge of the web to perform a service.
These pillars of Web 2.0 can fit into the cabin rental company as follows. First utilizing the web as a platform would help the cabin company in peer to peer technology by spreading the word of the company over the web as a great place to vacation. Harnessing collective data would be very helpful to the cabin company by allowing users of the web to go onto the cabin company website and sit up a review board so that customers of the cabins could express over the web how their experience was while staying at the cabins by giving positive reviews to the company. Leveraging the data would be very helpful in serving the customer better by storing data in the systems of the company databases for returning customers and this would allow the cabins to already have returning customers information on file in the database and allow the customer to return to the cabins with ease. The final pillar of implementing innovative web capabilities would be helpful to the cabins in the way that they can use the knowledge of the web to check with sister companies if the cabins are full on days that a customer would like to stay at the cabins and find the customer another place to stay that is close to the cabin rentals. 

Blog Entry 5.3

The cabin company would use and extranet network with the intranet network to provide their services to their customers. The internet would be used to by the inside network of the company to order supplies or other items with the firewall protecting the information being sent or received over the two networks. The server inside the company network provides service to the client computers on the network. The outside network client gets service just from the internet.  

Blog Entry 5.1

      The competing website I chose was Holiday Inn Express in Rocky Mount VA. Their business to consumer relationship involved in their website takes travelers and provides them with the service of finding accommodations to stay at their location while they are on a trip. The website is in a good state of E-Commerce and serves a good relationship with consumers. Holiday Inn uses the consumer comes first strategy to run their web page. 

Rules

  1.The Website Should Offer Something Unique

        The rating for Holiday Inn for this rule is a 3. It does not offer anything very unique that other websites do not offer. 

  2. The Website Should be aesthetically pleasing

         The rating for this rule is a 5. The layout of the site and use of color is very appealing and the photos displayed of the place are of high quality. 

  3. The Website Must be easy to use and fast

          The rating for this rule is a 5. The website is very easy to use and anything done on the site is fast. 

  4. The Website must motivate people to visit

          The rating for this rule is a 3. The website does not provide any features that cannot be found anywhere else. 

  5. You must advertise your presence on the web

         The rating for this rule is a 4. The layout and schemes stand out on the site and you know that you have visited the site when you are there. 

  6. You should learn from your website

         The rating for this rule is a 5. The Holiday Inn site has a 95% traffic rating according to alexa. 

Blog Entry 5.2

 

The cabin rental company would use an extranet to perform business with other businesses over the web. For example they may work with Priceline or other accommodation websites to rent out there cabin space. Both the cabin company and the cabin supplier use the internet to do this, with a firewall on each end of the connection to keep personal information contained. The supplier is the server of the internet in this situation and the cabin vendor is the client on this network.

Blog Entry 4.4

Entities are something you can create data about. In this entity relationship diagram, the entities are broken down into customer, product, and invoice. Attributes are what go into an entity that are used to record the data. Name is an example of an attribute under the customer entity. All three of these entities share the relationship of being information needed to record the data that is stored in the records for a cabin rental company. They are all related as the attributes are all recorded on an invoice but are then broken down into three entities. The entities and attributes are all recorded in these three tables showing the relationship to each type of attribute.

Blog Entry 4.3

On this shared network there are several users. The problem with this is that data being transmitted over the network has to be broken down into packets and sent to different places using the TCP which prepares the messages to be sent. The IP uses routers to send the messages using an IP address, which is assigned to every computer and router on the network. The IP uses these addresses to format the messages back into their proper format in order for delivery.  The receiving network computer places the message back into format so it can be read once the TCP and IP have performed their job of breaking it down and sending it over the network. 

Blog Entry 4.2

The server in this diagram is providing network service to the client computers. The hard line cable media is used to connect the two client computers along with the wireless client server router. The client server router is providing a wireless LAN to the client laptop computer. The connection to the laptop computer is using wireless media to connect the laptop with the other computers on the network. The bandwidth is currently at its maximum transmission capacity and if upgraded it will need a larger server to connect the computers to the network. 

Blog Entry 4.1

This image depicts the inputs and outputs of a computer. In order to input the word HELLO the input technology of the keyboard uses the standard ASCII binary code to transfer the letters into machine language. The input of HELLO uses process technology within the system unit and control unit to transfer the letters into binary code which is machine language to the computer. The 8-bit binary code is used to store the information into the computer using the central processing unit. The binary code transfers input technologies into on or off because that is really all a computer can understand so it must be transfer so the information can be stored. The codes that are stored into the computer are stored as binary code using the control unit and ALU to process and break down the information to be transferred into code. Whatever is processed through the computer will be output using a printer or the monitor to display the information. 

Blog Entry 3.3

 The purpose of a cost benefit analysis is to project the cost of accepting a new product such as an information system. It will show the projected savings of the information system in upcoming years. It will also compare the costs associated with the new system and compare it to the benefits as the benefits increase with increased sales and error reduction as this one shows.

This value chart shows the customer relationship before during and after stages of the company as they were implementing the new information system. It shows that after the company accepted the information system the customer relationship with the company benefited greatly. 

Blog Entry 3.2

Faith:
"By accepting this information system it will allow us to serve our customers to a step above our competition allowing us to become on top of the competition scale just trust me you will just have to take it on faith"

Fear:
"If your company does not accept this information system, our competitors will walk all over us until the point of our company's collapse, so we do this or we die."

Fact:
"This analysis shows that by implementing this information system will allow us to reduce errors by 60 percent and reduce operating costs by 20 percent per year by also increasing our production by 10 percent a year and it will all pay off within the first two years of business."

Blog Entry 3.1

Mrs. Anderson just a reminder that I switched to the cabin rental group instead of the amusement park because of the loss of group members at the point of this blog.

Customer Makes Reservation - This information system will allow the cabin rentals to keep records of their rentals and upcoming reservation in the information system and it will cut down on customer hours put in and it will also simplify things for the employees as for the managers.

Customer Makes Rental Transaction - This system will make the payment process for the cabin rentals not only faster and simpler but it will also bring in more customers because they will be able to use credit and debit cards now making it more convenient for the cabins and the customers. 

Customer Stays in Rental Cabin -This system will simplify the use of keeping records of the cabin as if the cabin is vacant or not vacant. It will also work with the other systems and tell them if the cabin is available for rental or not and it will cut down on employee hours and errors such as double booking. 

Customer Checks Out of Rental Cabin - This system will work with the customer stays in rental cabin system as well as the customer makes reservation system. Once the customer checks out of a cabin the other system will alert this systems and allow another customer to reserve the cabin.This will simplify all three systems and cut down on employee costs and hours.  

Blog Entry 2.2

This case study talks about Ford and how they may end up the last of the big three Detroit automakers because they were the only company that did not take the bale out as the others done. The study talks about how manufacturers have been working towards developing a "world car" which is simply a car that would suit consumers all around the world as in America and Europe and Asia. This seems to be challenging because not everybody likes their cars the same. Americans prefer more open SUVs  and pickups while Asians prefer a more smaller and narrow car to maneuver well through the crowded streets. Until more globalization takes place the world car will not be accomplished.

1. Globalization is fueling change in the auto industry because after the auto crisis of 2008, automakers do not want this to happen once again so attempts at some major changes are taking place to improve the auto world.

2. It is difficult to create a world car because different cultures prefer different cars. For example, Americans prefer more of a larger open SUV while Asians prefer smaller-sized cars that maneuver well through the narrow crowded streets. Also the Europeans think fuel economy first when buying a car while this concept is only slowly being adopted in the United States. Variations in the regulating of emission standards also affect the world car and the different countries and buyers choices.

Blog Entry 2.1

Flickr is a website that allows its users to upload and share photos with other users. Users may upload and share photos with everyone or they may set them to private so only certain people can view their photos. Flickr is a free website to its users so the revenue that is earned from it comes from placed ads by Yahoo and any photographers that post photos on Flickr and may want to sell them. Copyright protection is also provided on Flickr to all of its not-for-profit users and photographers can purchase copyright protection. Flickr is allowed to provide these services because it is a free service that protects its users on the site and provides copyrights to the photos that are uploaded. 

Blog Entry 1.3

       The first layer of the organizational chart consists of the CIO whom is over everyone in the company. On the second level there is a support manager, development manager, and a maintenance manager. All three of these manager are managers over their departments and report to the CIO. Under the support manager is the systems consultant, database administrator, and network administrator and all of these people report to the systems consultant which then reports to the CIO. Under the development manager there is the business analyst, computer programmer, and the software engineer and they report to the development manager which then reports to the CIO. Under the maintenance manager is the information system auditor, webmaster, and the social networking administrator and they report to the maintenance manager which then reports to the CIO.
      The shapes that are colored red I chose for the four most important jobs. The CIO, the Support manager, the Development manager, and the Maintenance manager. I chose these jobs because I think that they are the most important in the company because the CIO controls everyone in the company and the other three managers control everyone in their department and therefore report to the CIO.

Blog Entry 1.2

1. Employees

• Data: Employees
• Information: Employee Number
• Name
• Gender
• Earnings
• Phone Number

• Knowledge
• Employee Number-match to employee

• Wisdom
• Work Background
• Employee Records 

2. Number of Customers within the Parks

• Data: tickets sold that day
• Information: Ticket Number
• Knowledge:
• what tickets were sold at which park

• Wisdom:
• Records on ticket sales

3. Number of Riders that rode a new attraction that day

• Data: Riders
• Information: ticket counter
• Knowledge: How many riders rode the new attraction that day and if the ride is a good attraction and should be kept or if it is a bad ride and needs to be replaced. 
• Wisdom: Records on the ride.

Blog Entry 1.1 Fictional Company Introduction

Amusement Park

Name: 7 Flags
Size: 2 Parks
Location: One Park is located in Richmond, VA and the other is located in Greensboro, NC
Employees: 10,000

7 Flags Amusement Park Owns 2 different parks located in Richmond Virginia and Greensboro North Carolina.  7 Flags currently has 10,000 employees, with 5,000 employed at each park. 7 Flags makes profit by selling tickets to the different parks to ride the rides and also have different vendors within the parks selling items related to the park.