Final Summary

My entrepreneurial idea was an interactive website in which users posted their academic schedules or calendars onto their profiles. They have the option to becomes friends with other users that may go to their school. The purpose of the website is to make it easy for friends to schedule classes with each other. I have found as a student that I like to take classes with friends rather than alone. This can be difficult when you have to go around to each person and see what kind of courses they're taking. My website is here to simplify that process.

This concept has developed a little bit from what I originally had in mind. After speaking with a TA, I was informed of a few applications for smart phones that perform similar functions, along with the fact that Facebook used to run a similar feature. I intended on my website being able to sync with Facebook like many websites do nowadays.

This project was interesting because prior to it, I had never really put my mind towards thinking of a unique idea to market. I actually came up with a few ideas but ended up choosing the one that I did. As I take more classes like IST 195, I will be much more likely to think of unique ideas than if I had never taken the course or completed this project.

http://sschuld.blogspot.com/ http://magida-project-ion.blogspot.com/ http://thestudentsectionits195.blogspot.com/

Operating Systems

An operating system is a set of programs that coordinate all the activities among computer hardware devices. My website is a website that can be used on any type of operating system through an internet browser. The operating system has no effect on the way the site works. Schedules and other information will be portrayed as images and other documents through the browser.

Facebook used to have a feature in which students could upload schedules and share their classes with friends. This has since been removed from the site, which in my opinion is a bad move. Facebook has made some questionable choices that have left many users dissatisfied over the years. They often change the layout of the website which is almost always unpopular among the majority of Facebook users.

If my website modified and improved what Facebook had, I believe it can be very successful. Another thing I would like to be able to do is to make it compatible with other social networking sites along with Facebook. It would be beneficial to capitalize on other social media sites to make it more widely popular.

Professional Blogger

Om Malik was born in New Delhi and moved to New York City in 1993 to become a writer for Forbes. After writing for various publications and websites, in 2001, he began what he is known for today. GigaOM, which is a Web 2.0 blog, is one of the leading tech blogs in the industry.

GigaOM is a blog that offers a variety of services which include news, and analysis and opinions on various things like start ups, new technologies, broadband, and online games. The website claims to have a monthly global audience of roughly 500,000. In addition to its publication, GigaOM has organized several tech conferences.

As GigaOM grows, it has integrated other blogs and services into its network. This allows GigaOM to grow as a company and allows Om Malik to further his success as a living example of the American dream.

http://GigaOM.com/

Bits and Bytes

The use of our website does not require any type of storage device on the part of the user. They will have accounts in which their schedules will be posted. No information will need to be saved on their part. The website is interactive between users in the sense that they can add people as their friends and see what classes everyone is taking and which they would like to take, along with dates and times.

A potential idea for the website would be to make downloadable documents available of all their friends information. The purpose of this would be to make schedules accessible to people on their hard drive or other storage devices where internet may be unavailable. 

Input and Output

Input is any data and instructions entered into the memory of a computer. The tools used for input for my website are nothing too complex and out of the comfort zone of any average computer and internet user. The necessities will be a keyboard and a mouse, like pretty much every computer. The use of a scanner would be helpful to those whose academic schedules are not accessible online, but are not a necessity.

Output is data that has been processed into a useful form. Examples of forms of output are text, graphics, audio, and video. These are provided with something called an output device. A monitor would be one example of a display device, because it shows text, graphics, or video that has been processed.

My entrepreneurial website will require a monitor to show images being processed by the computer. Text, like many other websites, will be a component of the website. Another important factor is graphics. No body will want to look at a boring website with just plain black text on white background. Graphics will help make the website look appealing and friendly to users. Audio and video will not be a factor to start off, but may come into play with some feature at a later time.

Hardware

My entrepreneurial idea doesn't rely heavily on specific components in hardware. It runs on basic parts that every computer has such as a processor, memory, graphics card, and others. Websites run through the internet, so as long as a computer is connected to the internet, any user can make a free account. 

Privacy isn't too much of an issue in the case of my website. We do not require any payment information since it's services are free. It is not necessary to provide your social security number, therefore your identity is safe. All services are free, with the hope of gaining revenue from advertisements or being bought out by a bigger website.

Internet Privacy and Spreadsheets

In recent lectures, I have learned about the lack of privacy that exists over the internet. I had previous knowledge of the dangers of putting information out on the internet. One of the benefits of my website, in my opinion, is that it does not require the user to put any personal information onto our site, such as address, personal information, or credit card information. It is simply a variation of social networking in which users can coordinate their own class schedules with those of peers.

Social networking sites like Facebook require some personal information for you to enjoy the full effect of their resources. You won't be doing much on Facebook if you have no pictures of yourself and are not networking with other people based on where you're from and common interests you may share with others. The only material a user needs to provide with my entrepreneurial idea is their schedules. No personal information that could later come back to haunt anyone is needed.

Another topic covered last week in lectures was spreadsheets and the use of Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheets would likely play a large role in the success of my website. That is what would probably be used to format all the schedules, seeing as it is the most effective way to lay out dates and times in an organized fashion. Although my website may not be utilizing all the features Excel or other spreadsheet applications have to offer, it is by far the most organized way to put all data together.