Status Update: Your College Is Checking Your Facebook.

When you put your pictures up from last weeks party or say something offensive in a comment you though that only your "Facebook Friends" would see, but you thought wrong. Colleges are now using social networks to weave out the applicants they no longer want to go to their school. This may sound extremely unfair, but it does happen. Why shouldn't they be allowed to view your facebook though, it you post a picture that is really incriminating or embarassing then maybe you should think twice before posting it online for everyone to see. Maybe you think that if you put up privacy settings on your facebook then only your friends can look at your profile, but once again you are wrong. Just because you have privacy settings does not mean that everyone can't see your facebook. Sometimes your friends on facebook will use incriminating pictures or anything else on your facebook against you for many different reasons. Like my friend who was in beauty pagents. She told me that other girls in the pagent wanted to win so bad that they would use their facebook and show the judges the competition just to eliminate them and further their chances to being the winner.

So next time you post that picture up of you and your firends drinking at a party, think twice because that picture can affect you in ways greater then you thought they could, such as applying to college.

FORUM 10: More To Life Than The Office

Things To Think About

Instead of buying Microsoft Office, consumers also have the options of buying other programs such as IBM workplace, OpenOffice, or ajaxWrite. Office has a 95% market share and 400 million copies in use. These figures are probably so high because Office’s toughest competition is none other than, well, Office. That is, older versions of Office. This is because people have grown accustomed to their older versions of Office and don’t really see the need in upgrading to the newer versions.

OpenOffice is described as a clone to Microsoft’s Office because it works in the same way that Office does and the documents made in one of the programs can be viewed in the other. While documents made in OpenOffice can be viewed in Microsoft’s Office, it isn’t necessarily true the other way around. Not all documents made on Microsoft’s Office can be seen on OpenOffice, which is one of the main drawbacks for OpenOffice since Microsoft’s Office is still a widely used program. This may only last so long though because the International Organization for Standardization approved a new technology standard. This new standard is called the Open Document Format which assures that any word processor or spreadsheet application must communicate freely with any other.

The government, such as the executive branch of Massachusetts has decided to adopt the new Open Document Format standard. This means that no one company will be able to can bind their customers to one Word Processor. Microsoft will not have this though. Their plan, make their own new file format which they will license for free to all comers. This creates a new competition of document format standards. Though it may sound unfair to Microsoft that the government is adopting a new standard, this makes it better for the market place. If they adopt a new standard then it will create competition in the marketplace and that will give the average consumer more options of what word processor they want to purchase. The government it not stopping Microsoft from selling its product, they are just making them adapt to others needs, and not the average consumer have to stay up to date with Microsoft’s applications.

Even though there are more online applications for word processors being developed, I personally don’t think that Microsoft has to worry. Even though the applications online are available for free, some people may feel that it doesn’t provide as much security or simplicity as Microsoft Office; this is why many people are still sticking with their Microsoft Office programs. Just because young users are the people who are becoming more online savvy does not mean that they will be creating all of their documents on these free applications.

I believe that Microsoft Office may become integrated in the future. Some people may find it necessary for the different programs such as word and spreadsheets to be separate, but others may find it easier if these programs were all in one. This is why I think Microsoft Office will develop an application where you can choose if you want all of the applications integrated or not. If you want to see what an integrated program looks like go to Evermore Integrated Office. EIOffice is software that is Word Processor/Spreadsheet/Presentation Graphics, and Macro Editor integrated into one application with the look and feel of Microsoft Office.

Email: Love It Or Hate It?

When should you communicate through email?

Effective email can be a great method of communication between 2 or more people. Emails are effective when it is information or a question that you need to send or ask and the receiver doesn’t necessarily need to read or respond right away. If it is an asynchronous email, meaning that it does not require a reply in a set amount of time, then it could be done though an email. If it is an email that needs a reply immediately or both people are exchanging information back and forth, then it is best to use a telephone to quicken the action. Also if it is a delicate communication or a message that is more personal, it is better off to use the telephone or write the message in a letter and mail it to add that extra bit of personalization.

What do I do in the subject line?

Writing an effective subject line can make it easier for the receiver of an email to respond or read the message. When writing a subject line you want to keep in mind the 4 key points of writing; clarity, simplicity, brevity, and humanity. You want your message to be very clear and simple to understand, but short enough for the reader to be able to scan through many emails and find what he/she is looking for. You want to be very precise when writing a subject line, not broad. The reader should be able to read the subject line and know exactly what is in the email. Also you can write key words in the subject line such as “[URGENT]”, but if it is extremely urgent then use a telephone, not an email. Other key words such as , or end of message, can be used if there is no actual content in the email, just a short message in the subject line.

Who actually reads their emails these days?

Many people that use email as a main source of communication don’t have the time to read every single piece of email received, so instead they may just scan through what they receive. You want to be able to send an email that the receiver can read without actually “reading” it. The most basic way to send an email that has many different topics is to do in list form and in each number topic. Write the information needed for each topic and any action needed to follow it up afterwards. If you don’t want to send a list because one topic is more important than the other, then you can send each topic as an individual email. To do this have each message with the same subject line, but after the subject write (1 of 3) i.e. if it was the first of 3 messages. To save time from writing the subject line over and over, it may be easier to copy and paste the subject then add the message number after the subject.

Hello Friends...

Hey everyone, welcome to my first blog, I can't believe how easy it was to make one. I guess I can say I'm a blogger now.