Artificial Intelligence

All the chapter about AI was extremely interesting. AI is an idea that traditionally excited me. Now it excites me even more mostly from the computer scientist perspective, but also from the applications of it in a business environment. I've seen some very intelligent robots, that can astonish you with how intelligently they can answer to questions. One of those that I show recently was on a documentary/series on netflix called: "The next 10 big things" (Documentaries is all I watch).
So there was this guy that makes amazing robots which implement all the human facial expressions and simulate 22 muscle movements on the face. He also makes a sort of mask from a very realistically looking material. His best construct was a "guy" which implements all the above but especially has a sort of AI level of intelligence with voice recognition and his "brain" is connected on the internet so he receives and send information from the internet. Well that video blew my mind not only because the robot was looking extremely realistic (especially the facial expressions following the flow of his speech) but it would give especially intelligent answers sometimes 2-3 sentences long.
The robot was of a size of a human being, it was static on a sofa and could also move its hands. Of course it was connected to a desktop.

E-commerce

In general e-commerce is a daily concern of mine. I am trying to get better on every aspect of it, so I found all the chapter very interesting.
I will definitely come back to this information in the summer and look more into depth and make sure I further develop our online advertisement campaign.
Also during the summer I am planning to make a couple of personal online stores.

Some Nice Software

Comodo Intrnet Security 

An absolutely free firewall/diffender/sandbox/antivirus (can use whatever needed) package that had received many awards.
It's is a little pro (can adjust almost everything) but it is very reliable. A main reason that I like firewalls is because you know which program is trying to connect to the internet and with a little more research/knowledge you can know why too...(in general I block most of those types of request, except from very specific things)
 A bad experience that I had with firewalls is that they often do not work along with antivirus software from other firms. So for example don't use Comodo and Antivir. In general I would suggest using security software from one firm.
Also Comodo offers other free useful software and SSL encryption for webpages. They still offer a 6month free 128 SSL certificate for sites/businesses. 
www.comodo.com

SuperAntispyware and Mbam (Malwarebytes)

Both very nice and free (the free version does the job->there is a paid version too) pieces of software for trojan, malware, cookies, search and elimination.

Click and Clean for Chrome and Firefox.

A very nice add-on that cleans browsing history, cookies, cache, Flash objects, silverlight cookies, etc...You can set it up to clean anything of the above you want when browser closes (that's my preference).
They recently added a malware search tool.

By the way, long time ago I abandoned Internet explorer as an actual browser, but unfortunately I have to make sure all our sites are working fine on the Internet explorer. It seems that IE 9 is a great upgrade and hopefully it will make the web-designer's life easier (along with the html5.0 agreement).


Tune Up utilities

A relatively cheap piece of software that does what it says... It has many useful tools to improve performance and customize the windows environment. Most important, it has a great registry cleaner.
I've used it for many years to repair computers with software issues.
In general registry cleaners might damage some software that has unrecognizable functions (by the cleaner) on the registry. But if you have a really bad registry the system is dead.. so one good thing to do is to run registry maintenance accept all recommendations and then uninstall/ reinstall any software that might not run properly afterwards.
Sometimes to reinstall windows is better, sometimes its too much work if you can save the system with malware removal tools, antivirus, registry cleaners and tune-up programs.

A very interesting comment

   I never really thought what you mentioned last week, specifically how the selection takes place between big groups of candidates for a job. I am referring to the method of choosing/eliminating resumes through a predetermined selection of keywords! So write some simple code and run it on the electronic resumes that have been submitted, that sounds very robotic... Tbh it is a way to make a selection between a few hundreds or maybe thousands of resumes, but to my understanding through this method some good candidates would be eliminated.
   The best part is that by knowing this rule one can make more attractive applications for a specific type of industry.

Thank you for the great insight,
always have great information to share!

TLA Java Applet

Here are the two Java applets that I "promised" on my previous post.
This is pretty cool for memorizing and practicing TLAs
http://business.joe-upatras.gr/Java/Applet1.html

Here are the most important definitions of chapter 6 in a similar applet
http://business.joe-upatras.gr/Java2/Applet2.html

Take Care,
have a great week.

Some Critical Thinking

It is ridiculous to see Chapman students during lectures (and I am not talking specifically for this class) on Facebook; I can't believe how they waste their time like this... It is really pissing me off even watching them or even knowing that they are doing it.
I was making fun of facebooking- or other online-time-burning-activities, with my professor in Business Law  last semester, He used to teach in a small lecture hall; annoyed, but in a humorous style he told me one day in his office hours, some people are just relentless all of a sudden during the lecture they will throw huge smiles or even laughs, totally ignoring where they are. It was on a small lecture hall, but he could point-out who was time-burning on their laptops...

I recalled you mentioned you failed someone because of Facebook, nice!

I forgot to mention that another important reason that the whole thing bothers me is that it has an impact on me. I use computers for note taking, I type fast and blind and I am really organizing information on computers very well. Also this last year I finally got a multi-screen environment on my Desktop, for work initially, but I couldn't believe the productivity boost on the student part. Computers are a great tool for students, if used wisely. My conclusion is that some professors do not allow laptops/computers due to the fact that students will be wondering away online... So back to hand-written notes where I can barely take 1/3 of the notes that I would with a laptop (and with serious pain on my hand) and then scan... blah.. (CR won't even work on my handwriting, hehe, so failure)

I am glad you keep a strict policy with this whole issue.

Maybe Chapman should block Facebook!

That would be funny! I am sure it would raise hell... (just joking)

Thanks for the opportunity to relax a bit and get back to work/studying.

Some fun staff!

   I will implement a Java applet to assist me in studying for midterm 3 and also for some practice in Java.(It can be a useful template for other exams too). I ll post the link on the blog when it's ready so you can see it.
    Something else that I am excited about is that we are developing another site (blogs, forums and a main site). It's a scientific community with major topics: Business/Econ, Physics, Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering (Constructions). I am writing the code with one more person and I will be writing the Business/Econ blogs and forums and the Computer Science blog (Can't have a forum on that). 2 more people with great technical knowledge and friends for years will be responsible for the Physics and Engineering. I am working for a month now on this project and have finished the template designs. It is going to be ready after the spring brake or by June.
   We 've got big plans to develop in many ways, one is possibly to soon implement an online tutoring environment.
  I 'll let you know when it's ready.
Or maybe I 'll do a tech news report on it... hehe

Today's lecture was much harder and very technical but interesting. I watched a lot of videos' for Oracle BI 11g in the beginning of this course and they analyzed numerous aspects of CRMS. Many times during the last lecture, I had the "flash": oh yea that was they were talking about in BI 11g...

I probably mentioned that I really like this course and actually all the courses that I am taking, especially because this course has connected and built-on my tacit knowledge. It's an experience...

I never asked, do you teach other courses?

Also I just remembered, I posted some of the sites that we have made and mentioned that they are in Greece just so you wont be surprised . They have at least, an English template.
I am saying so because you replied you won't check them because their are in Greek.
Either way, check them out if you have a minute :)