As A Full Sail Graduate Student: Internet Marketing Masters (IMMS)

Hello! A year later, and I am once again in school. After graduating from University at Buffalo with a major in Communication, I worked for a year as an Internet Marketing Specialist and decided I wanted to be a professional in Internet Marketing. Hence, when Full Sail offered me both a scholarship and a Masters in Internet Marketing, I jumped at the opportunity.

My coursework officially started on September 9, 2009 and will end a year later. The course is instructed fully online. I am physically in Singapore, but the online course has allowed me to be anywhere in the world. The tuition fee of 30,000 USD a year includes these: textbooks in the mail, study materials online, instructors fee, Project Launchbox. Project Launchbox is an online platform where the instructors and students meet, either by voice, video chat or email. Besides the tuition fee, we also had to upgrade our computers to a Mac of at least 2.5 GHz and buy software from Apple and Microsoft.

I very much enjoy my second month into the course. There is, of course, the stress that comes along with completing assignments on time and of excellent quality, but I have a lot more freedom than traditional universities. I learn time management and the use of Web 2.0 tools. The online reading introduced me to a lot of articles that are reporting on the cutting-edge technology and web trends, in essence, preparing me to know the industry like the back of my hand. The instructors gave encouragement and feedback on the progress of my project, but mostly it is really up to you to take initiative if you want to do well in the course.

Over the next few weeks and months, I will be posting my assignments I have done in Full Sail. I think it's going to be an exciting year!

How I cleaned up my facebook profile

It was only after I cleaned up facebook that I realized fb allows us so much freedom to customize what we want to see and what we do not want to see.

It started with the “Extended Profile” option. I struggled with disappearing apps and unneeded stubborn apps on my profile until I found

Facebook has chat!

What is this?

The moment I saw the word "online", I'm excited. Because the word "online" means interactivity, instantaneous, going LIVE, connected somehow...

sproutbuilder.com --- widget-builder for the layman

Link
This widget builder came just at the right time---I am graduating and need to sell myself to companies.

When I saw the ad in Facebook, I thought I would be able to code my own widget. But no, it is like an interface widget builder. They separate the styles and content with the coding. They put a few styles infront of you and they do the coding behind.

This is very great news for aspiring web designers who wish to use the simplicity of interface design and leave the rest of the complicated coding to the computer. One who uses Dreamweaver and know nothing about web html/xhtml/css. The bad: if you're not able to write your code, you're not able to edit your code, which will be difficult when errors arise.

Sproutbuilder is also taking the idea of Web 2.0 and meshing it with a component of the Web. It could work. The idea is very catchy. Also, it does not need you to sign up as a member, which takes away a lot of the hassle of logging in to my gmail, getting verified yada yada... (That said, wordpress should start adding "gmail" into their dictionary... it's been around ages and it still gets underlined in red in my New Post.)

That was fast

A few days ago, heard my friend said he got a virus attack on his computer which had to be reinstalled. He also said, almost everyone he knew 'kena' it, meaning their computers got the virus as well.

The campus-in-charge has sent us emails 2x to warn us of suspicious emails yada-yada, as far as I can remember. Maybe its my lack of diligence when it comes to opening attachments, or maybe Mac is just immune from virus. Whatever it is, I was shield and sheltered from the disastrous 'reformatting, restart, reinstall' customary act. These words, so familiar to any Windows-user. Luckily I am out of it!

Today, I found this, at my doorstep.



Pretty ingenious I would say. Preferably a UB student. Computer Engineering Senior. Or a Computer Engineering aspiring sophmore.

Some of us, given a grace period of 3 months, would never even get the idea.

The bad news is, my friend has already reformatted his computer. What are the chances the rest has not? What are the chances more people will be hit by the same virus?

MacBook Air

Apple has a new laptop named MacBook Air. Fancy name. It is meant to mean “really lightweight”. And I love the idea of lightweight because I am carrying my laptop around these days on campus because it makes me productive; I am essentially becoming a geek.

The first things I notice about this new kid on the block is that – it doesn’t have a CD nor DVD-ROM. Don’t panic! The logic/reasoning Apple gave for not having a slot to insert your CDs or DVDs is because Air is wireless. Which means if you really really need to insert a CD or really really really need to read a DVD, you could always switch on the wireless feature on your Air and let it feed off the CD/DVD-ROM of another computer in the vicinity. Which means, Air is not independent.



Not very smart isn’t it.

The Apple website only gave an example of “installing softwares” as a use of CD/DVD. But what if I simple need to read them? Like play a song? Ok they have mp3s now. Play a movie? I have no business ripping a movie off a DVD just to watch it. Listen to my CD sermons? Tsk. (These information can be found at: http://www.apple.com/macbookair/wireless.html)

Air is not independent.

AND. And. Watch this.

Under ”Tech Specs”, I found the sale of a Superdrive under “Accessories”. How ridiculous can this get.

The Superdrive is a:

-Slot-loading 8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
-Size: 139 x 139 x 17 mm / 5.47 x 5.47 x 0.67 inches (L x W x H)
-Weight: 320 g (0.71 pounds)
-Requires MacBook Air with available USB 2.0 port

So essentially, you are buying an external CD/DVD-ROM cum writer. And you’re paying USD 1,700 (SGD 2,446.13) for this new computer? Can we check out some Fujitsu please.

Is there a trend now for “retreating services” and quality of goods?

Other than these alarming notes I made in my head for Air, I must applaud Apple for the ingenious wireless idea. And the extra fun stuff which are going to come with the box -- Micro-DVI to DVI adapter, Micro-DVI to VGA adapter, except I think I already have one of them. (http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html)

Because Air has the ability to tap into other computers' harddrive, Apple justifies by slashing hard disk capacity to 80GB and 64GB. My current Macbook is 80GB so I have no problems with that. The thing I don't under stand is why is the 64GB 2x more expensive than the 80GB when the only difference is a 0.2GHz processor?



Air is a Mystery.


This is all you have for Inputs. The USB port being for the superdrive.



And another one for power on the other side.


No Ethernet port. Err… is the wireless really that strong?

The mouse trackpad techniques was quite impressive though. Kinda like what they had already done for iPhone.
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/features.html



I have to figure out what this means. Don't even bother telling me the obvious.




I still do not want to get an iPhone. (Take away the AT&T I’ll consider!) I still don’t really like Air. Show me something better, Apple.

I have a crack-hole on my Macbook, screams! Well that shows how much I have been using it and how much I love using it.


Question: Would you pre-order this thing? Cos its not on sale yet. The marketing people might have more time to persuade you-i don't know.

BBMAK - Back Here

http://www.singshot.com/playPerformance.html?performanceId=JkH7CWQIoS8%3D&play=Y

I can't freaking embed it.