Google Activity

For most people, Google is nothing more than a way to search for information. However, at further glance, there is so much more. For my assignment, I found and explorered three different applications: Picnik, SketchUp and Google Product.

Similar to Adobe's popular Photoshop program, Google's Picnik is an image manipulation program that is entirely online. You can upload pictures and manipulate them using a bunch of different tools, including the clone tool, burn and doge and more. Picnik also allows users to make a quick online card to a close friend or family using the Frames tool, which puts cool frames that are related to the holiday's and seasons. If you are willing to do even more to your pictures, you have the option of purchasing upgrades for the reasonable price of $2 a month. Although certainly not as advanced as Photoshop, Picnik is definitely a great free alternative.

Google SketchUp is 3D modeling program that allows the user to create models of your choice. The limits to this program are endless - you can create a model for your living room, invent a new model of furniture and even design a whole city! Although the learning curve for the program is a bit steep, if you don't let yourself be daunted it can be a great time waster. Simply messing around with tools to create a hidiously deformed chair is a lot more fun than one would typically think. Although SketchUp lacks some features compared to similar programs like AutoCad, it is one of the best modeling programs that I have seen for the price.

Google Product is yet another useful application released by Google. Although still in the Beta stage, Google Product already caught my eye because of the "Recently found" table at the bottom. The most randomness things could be found, such as glycolic acid, Febreeze and a rubber chicken. Another great feature of this application is the price comparison with other websites. For instance, if you wanted to purchase a rubber chicken, you could see the prices that Amazon.com or buy.com are offering. There are also a number of options that you can select to make your search more specific, such as ones for price, stores, and location. The usefulness of the Google Products will make online shopping a snap.

Webpage Evaluation

In our lesson on website evaluation, we had to look up sites by various universities about how we should check the validity of each website. For an example, our group had to look up John Hopkin's site about webpage evaluation. When the entire class collaborated on what we had learned, there were a number of similar ideas present. These included:

• Checking the author's credentials in order to see if the writing was believable. This was done by checking if the author was affiliated with an established university or seeing if the author had a university degree.
• Checking to see if the website had any biases, and to see if the writing was objective overall. If there was any kind of indication that the website was not objective or was biased towards one side, then it must be taken into consideration.
• Checking the site design. Make sure that the website was designed well, if the information included some kind of source page, and if there was recently edited. Another thing to check was if layout of the website, such as if the majority of the page was with text etc.

Excel Reflection

It has been a long couple of weeks, and we are finally finished with the Excel unit of our Computer Business Apps Class. When I had first entered the class, my knowledge of Excel was scant at best. I knew how to open the program, and maybe punch a couple of numbers in a feeble attempt to look like I knew something. When a teacher asked me to use Excel to make a graph, I might as well have been asked to describe the photosynthetic properties of the black moss of Peru.

When we finally began to learn about Excel, I found that most of my fears were unwarrented. The book was, for the most part, simple to comprehend and learn from. I feel that I would be able to use my newfound knowledge of Excel to many different uses.

First Weeks of School

After 12 years of education in public school, the time has finally come to begin the last required year. With a new year comes new responsibility; we seniors now have new privileges exclusive to us, including the ability to leave school for lunch and special events such as the Senior Picnic and more. For many of us, it is also the time for people to begin the dreaded process of college applications. With so many future possibilities, why wouldn't we be excited?

For me personally, the first week of school was pretty good. It was nice to see some friends again, and I was somewhat satisfied with my classes. I had two of the same teachers again from last year, and I hope that I will enjoy their classes again.