That was Then... This is Now

The Interop conference and exhibition was held last week in Las Vegas. The event featured more than 125 workshops and conference classes and more than 300 companies participated. If you weren’t able to go, click here to check out this slideshow of 10 top products from InformationWeek.

Once again in my BUS 350 Operations Management class, we held the "Billionaire's Challenge." The exercise involved analyzing a production case-study problem using Microsoft Excel's Solver "add in." Students had to first set-up and solve the problem then change key variables using Excel to earn at least one-million dollars profit. After achieving that goal students may compete to make at least $1,000,000,000.  This year saw all previous records in the simulation fall. Congratulations! Our newest Billionaires are: Michael Cummings - $292 Billion Cory Slade - $1.5 Billion AJ Christian - $5 Billion And two "Billion, Billion, Billionaires": Adrianne Johnson - $10 Octillion Morgan Crutcher - $4.9 Decillion Awesome!!!

I Survived The End of The World Posters by flyingdiscs Make posters online at Zazzle. Well it's December 22 and everyone is still here! So despite all of media hype and disinformation surrounding the Mayan calendar the world didn't end (told ya so...) but the way we see and interact with our "world" through the Internet is definitely changing. Mobile devices have become the primary means of communicating for an entire generation. Forbes has a very good article about what that means for business and individual users .

The MIS 290 class has started working on developing mobile apps. Using the development tools at the site iBuildApp.com it is possible to quickly create a working app for the iPhone or any Android compatible device. Developers can choose from many pre-defined templates and modules or with a little time and effort they can even create their own. If you know HTML or JavaScript the iBuildApp site provides a generic “bare bones” module to insert original code. Some of the basic modules provided by iBuildApp include: Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, Contact Information, Streaming Video, and RSS feeds. There is even a simulator to test the app that emulates an iPhone or Android. The picture below shows one of our apps being tested on an iPad:

Today in the BUS 350 Operations Management class, we held this semester’s "Billionaire's Challenge." The exercise involved analyzing a production case study using Microsoft Excel's Solver "add in." Students had to first set-up and solve the case then change key variables using Excel to earn at least one-million dollars profit. After that they may compete to make at least $1,000,000,000. This semester's Billionaires are: Maria Schwab - "Winner" $3.9 Billion! Ciera Hughes Julia Naab Augie Hibner Caleb Kolby Weston Luzadder Nice going everybody!

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity touched down on the surface of the Red Planet, completing a 354-million-mile journey, and marking the beginning of a new era in planetary exploration. The rover which is about the size of a small SUV, approached Mars at about 13,000 miles per hour. When the Martian atmosphere slowed the craft to about 900 miles per hour, a supersonic parachute deployed, slowing the craft even further. But the rover was still descending too quickly to land in one piece. After the rover separated from the parachute, rocket motors fired, continuing to slow the descent. Then, at about 60 feet above the surface, a "sky-crane" lowered the rover to its new home on the Red Planet. According to NASA, the rover touched down at approximately 1:30 a.m. EDT Read the full article from the Huffington Post here .

On July 9 some computers that have been infected with the “DNS Changer Malware” will lose their Internet access when the “safety net” of servers now in place from the FBI will be taken down. If you are worried that your computer may be infected, visit http://www.dcwg.org to perform a scan of your computer. There is also advice on what to do if your computer is infected.