Basic Photo Editing Techniques

This is a quick showcase of basic photo editing techniques we learned in class.

Google Maps

Tour of Honolulu



View Tour of Honolulu in a larger map

Music Survey Results

For this assignment I surveyed the class on what they're favorite styles of music are. I had them rate them from 1-5. Then I calculated the averages and made a bar graph to compare them. Rock, Hip-Hop, and Pop dominated the chart.

Google Calendar

I embedded this calendar by going into the calendar's settings and copying the HTML embed link. Google Calendar is extremely useful. My work uses it for scheduling and covering shifts. I use it to keep track of pretty much every event in my life. It's also helpful because Google Calendar can also send you text or email reminders of events before they happen. There are also lots of great calendar widgets for Android Phones. I have one on my home screen so I always see what's coming up. It's also helpful as a supervisor at my job. It's nice to be able to quickly see who is coming in so I know when people are late.

QR Codes

To make my QR code I used a website called qrstuff.com. I tried using the website you link, but when I did I got a warning that it's a scam. I use a Chrome addon called Web of Trust. This warns you about websites with a bad reputation that they get from being a scam or hosting malware. The nice thing about qrstuff is the amount of features it has and how easy it is to use. You can make website specific codes for stuff like YouTube or google maps. This is so the QR reader can easily identify what app the code should be associated with. On this site you can also change the color or get it printed on merchandise.

QR codes can be good for lots of things. When I was at CES the company I was working for used them to share their product catalog with people. I've also seen it used on posters to link to important information or something like a service evaluation card, but digital. They can also be helpful on business cards. Web designers like to use them to link to their online portfolio. The main problem I found is that it can be kind of clunky to pull out your phone, open the app, wait for it to scan, then open. So I think NFC tags are much more useful. NFC is the same technology that you see with Tap-to-Pay on phones. You're able to just hover or touch your phone on something and it does the same thing QR codes can do and more.

Cloud Computing

Name of Service	How Much Storage Capacity for   Free	Can you download a   drive to your computer?	How Much is the Upgrade Price to Pro or more storage
Google Drive	15 GB	Yes	Average of $5/100GB
Microsoft Sky Drive	7 GB	Yes	$25/50 GB
Dropbox.com	2 GB	Yes	Pro $10/Month
Yousendit.com(now called Hightail)	2 GB	Yes	$15.99/Month
Ubuntu One	5 GB	Yes	Pro $4/Month + 20 GB, additional 20GB for $3/Month

I use dropbox, Drive, and Ubuntu One pretty regularly. I use dropbox for all of my school work backup as well as for music sharing. My friends and I all have a shared folder that we put new music we find to give to each other. I use dropbox more than a lot of people because I have a ton of space. I got into the beta pretty early and with time an promotions i have a ton of extra space. This is my main desktop cloud storage. I also use Drive for school work or simple word documents. It's not a very powerful word processor so I only use it for simple reports. I find it's not very helpful when you need to do any kind of formatting. I also hate how the desktop client works, so i very rarely access stuff on my desktop from it or upload. It's for this reason I also don't do shared folders like I do with dropbox. We use drive at my work though. We use it to share all the documentation that all the supervisors should know.
Ubuntu One comes included with Ubuntu based Linux versions. I don't have nearly as much space with this nor is it very powerful. I only use this for OS backups, kind of like Mac's timemachine.

Search Engines

Search Engines

My main search engine I use is actually called DuckDuckGo. Google and Bing are both useful, but if you are a person who cares about privacy like me DuckDuckGo is perfect. The main problem I find when I try alternate search engines are the search results are not nearly as helpful as google. Their algorithm is just too refined and I'm able to find what I need much quicker. But with DDG you can use it as sort of a proxy search where you can use the tools of other sites, but use them through the privacy of DuckDuckGo. By adding query operators you can search Google with !g, Yahoo with !y, Bing with !b, etc. The main selling point of DDG is the fact that they don't store any search info about you or any other personal data. DDG keeps improving with what they call DuckDuckHack as well. Programmers are able to write tools so that DDG can provide instant answers when you search, like Google Cards on their search. I've included the intro video for DuckDuckGo below. All these search engines I use mainly as a means to get to another website or a quick answer. Wolfamalpha doesn't really do this for me. I mainly use it more as an app to get information or calculate data, not search for website. I'm constantly blown away by how many things it can do.