Introducing Leore Avidar

by bavidar (16 Sep 2009 16:53)

Where you are from: Chicago, IL
When you're supposed to graduate: 2011
What type of job you hope to get (or already have lined up): Proprietary Trader, Algo Trader, or Investment Banker
What you hope to get out of this class (or why you took this class): Improve my technological and search skills
One interesting fact about you that most of your classmates would not know: My tongue turned completely black when i was in high school

Introducing Roberto Jimenez

by robo24wolverine (16 Sep 2009 16:56)

I am from Manati, Puerto Rico.
I am supposed to graduate by 2012 as a 5th year senior with a dual BBA and Informatics degree.
I hope to get a job in the Human Resources field.
This class seems like fun and useful, which is what I think college should be about.
I was stung by a scorpion in Costa Rica over the 2008 summer.

Microsoft & Google Unveil New Search-Engine Tools

by bavidar (08 Nov 2009 14:37)

This week Microsoft and Google released new search products that allow users to visually see what they are searching for. Microsoft Bing's introduced the tool "visual search" which features images instead of text. Google introduced "Fast Flip" which creates an experience similar to reading a magazine online.

Google's Fast Flip

Fast Flip allows users to scan news articles from 39 different print and online publishers. User's can flip through pages just like a magazine.
Google says the idea behind the new service is to make online news-browsing faster and create a new and better experience.

How to Use?

To use the new Fast Flip all you have to do is go to Google Labs and add the new tool called Fast Flip. Users who visit the Fast Flip site see large thumbnail images of different articles sorted by their source, topic, or current popularity. The best part of Fast Flip is that all the articles load extremely fast.

My Thoughts

Fast Flip is Awesome. It basically gives you a preview to many articles on any topic you want and lightning speed. The articles load quickly that you can just flip through them like a magazine. The only down side is that when you find an article you want to read, you have to load the article page (which may take more time). However, overall this is a great new product that Google has created.

Bing's Visual Search

Bing unveiled a new visual search service, as it seeks to win market share from Google. The new search feature allows users to search for information using image galleries rather than just text. Initially, users can search the categories for: travel, leisure, shopping and health.

How to Use?

Visual search is currently only available in beta to Bing users but will hopefully expand to all users soon. Its relatvily simple to use but requires a few plug-ins that most people might not have and may be skeptical to download.

My Thoughts

Bing is new. Bing is cool, but it still has the same old Microsoft feel. My first time trying Bing's Visual Search i was immediately prompted to install Silverlight and not until i had to restart my computer twice and reinstall Bing, berewas I able to get the Visual Search to work. As much as I am a fan of Microsoft, I just don't think that Bind has the capability to compete with Google in the Search Industry.

Google Vs. Bing

Conculusion

• A study showed that in June, 65% of all searches were done by Google and only 8.4% used Bing.
• New products such as these show that the search-engine market is growing and diversifying.
• Bing has taken an 11 per cent share of the US search market in the three months since its launch, making it the fastest-growing search engine in > the United States.
• Google, which accounts for 65 per cent of the search market, grew its share by 2.6 per cent in the same period.

Introducing Josh Bostwick

by joshuaaa (18 Nov 2009 20:59)

Hello everybody, I am from Hickory Corners, MI, just east of Kalamazoo. I am planning on graduating in 2012. I hope to get some sort of job in the accounting realm of the business world. I am taking this class because because it seemed pretty interesting and sounded like more fun than the MO elective class. Something mildly interesting about me is that I am a registered MHSAA baseball umpire and have been umpiring high school baseball games for about a year.

Introducing Billy Chen

by Wdchen (29 Nov 2009 03:18)

Hi Guys! How's it going?

• My hometown is Rochester Hills, MI
• I'm planning on graduating in the Winter of 2011 with a concentration in corporate finance. Specifically, I want to go into hospital administration, in which I've been interning at the U of M Transplant Center these past two summers.
• From this class, I hope to learn how to better utilize the Web to find information and am definitely excited to create my own Wiki.
• An interesting fact about myself is that I'm also a Peace and Social Justice minor.

Introducing Diane Bao

by dbao (21 Sep 2009 15:49)

Hello, fellow BIT330 classmates! I am from Marquette, MI (in the Upper Peninsula.) I am supposed to graduate in May 2011 from Ross and with a dual degree in econ. I'm not sure what kind of job I want yet, but as of right now I'm thinking consulting or possibly corporate law (maybe law school is in my future.) I took this class because it sounded interesting when Leore told me about it and I want to be able to more effectively use search tools the internet has to offer. My interesting fact is that I once ate a 4 lb burrito.

Introducing Erica Kim

by ercaki (18 Sep 2009 02:55)

Hi,

My name is Erica Kim and I am from Farmington Hills, MI. I am supposed to graduate in the Winter of 2011. I have no idea what I want to with my life but I think I would like to do something with Managing or maybe PR. I hope to learn something that I can use in the real world as well as help me to do my job well. One fact that many of you would not know about me is that I also have a British History Minor because one of my aspirations is to live in England, London to be more exact.

Have a nice day.

Introducing Jesse Ip

by jesseip (18 Sep 2009 05:48)

Hi everyone. I am Jesse and I am from Hong Kong. I am supposed to graduate in May 2011. My short term goal is to get a consulting intern while my long term goal is to take over my family business in China. I hope I can learn how to gather information effectively from this class. One interesting fact about me is that I love to play archery!

Introducing Kristen Freels

by kfreels (20 Sep 2009 20:46)

Hello, I'm Kristen Freels.

• I am from Rochester Hills, MI
• I'm going to "graduate" in May of 2010, however, I won't be taking classes next semester because I have enough credits!
• I will be working for PricewaterhouseCoopers doing Assurance after graduation.
• I took this class because it seemed like it would be more fun than the other business school classes I'm taking this semester
• My favorite place to vacation is the Outer Banks of North Carolina

Introducing Omer Ismail

by oish330 (20 Sep 2009 20:52)

Hello, I'm Omer, and here's some information about me.

• Where you are from: Ann Arbor via Montreal, Quebec & Halifax, Nova Scotia
• When you're supposed to graduate: April 2010
• What type of job you hope to get (or already have lined up): Brand Management or Consulting
• What you hope to get out of this class (or why you took this class): Learn new ways to use the internet and search
• One interesting fact about you that most of your classmates would not know: I own a DJ company

Introducing Ran Fan

by ranfan (21 Sep 2009 15:55)

Hello everyone!

• I am originally from Beijing, China. Went abroad with my parents when I was eight - lived in Europe for a couple years and currently home is in South Jersey. Dad's in Florida.
• In 2011, I will no longer be an undergrad and hopefully by then, I'll have a job. Right now, my interest is in consulting, though that might change.
• There's a whole lot of information out there, and I hope this class will help me better utilize it.
• I survived an internship in Beijing this summer (I've only gone back twice in the 12 years I've been abroad) and learned a LOT. I have an offer to go back next summer but if I go back, I may end up staying permanently :P

Introducing Adrienne Green

by aegreen (21 Sep 2009 15:57)

Hi everyone, my name is Adrienne Green and here is some stuff about me…

• I am from Bay City, MI.

• I will graduate with my BBA after this semester.

• I hope to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm.

• I wanted to take this class because it seemed very interesting and fun. I also think that it will be very useful in my career, since I will often be using the internet to research new legislation, guidance, etc.

• Scuba diving is one of my favorite things to do.

Introducing Moon Soo Park

by moonpark (20 Sep 2009 22:43)

My Introduction

My name is Ray Park, and I am currently a BBA senior attending Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. I will be graduating in 2010 with a major in Finance and Accounting. As a career, I hope to be a Fixed Income trader at a bulge bracket firm.

I am originally from Seoul, South Korea, but was mostly raised in Tokyo, Japan. When I was in high school, I moved to New York, and now I live in Saline, Michigan.

As world gets flatter through the use of internet, I believe it is important to understand how to retrieve data efficiently. Therefore, I have decided to take this class, and I hope it will enable me to be more productive in the workplace.

Interesting Fact: I have traveled to half of Asia and Europe

Google Chrome Update!

by aegreen (23 Sep 2009 15:51)

I'm so excited about this new release that I just can't contain myself - but first, let me tell you about my relationship with Google Chrome.

My History with

Even though Google's fantastic browser celebrated its first birthday about 2-1/2 weeks ago, I have only been using it for about six months. While our relationship has been relatively short, its length has not made our time together any less meaningful.

I was looking for something new when Chrome came into my life, and it was just what I needed. It meshed so well with the other Google tools that I already loved, like Gmail and iGoogle, and on top of that it provided such a logical interface. I fell in love with Chrome because when I opened a new tab, it displayed thumbnails of my most-visited pages and links to those recently closed.

I could go on and on about what made Google Chrome so special, but more exciting things are happening…

New and Improved

Just when I thought Chrome couldn't get any better, on 9/15/09, Google announced a brand new stable release of my favorite internet browser. I thought it liked it just the way it was, but a little self-improvement never hurt anyone. And I have a whole bunch of updates and bugfixes to thank!

It's Faster

Which means I can launch and load even more quickly. That's what I look for in a browser!

And it's Better Looking

Chrome has redesigned the New Tab page so that it's "easy to use and easily customizable." Frankly, the biggest reason I like it is that looks more clean-cut and organized.

However, some of its new features really will be useful, like that I can now rearrange the thumbnails on the page. I can also pin a thumbnail onto the page so that it always shows up, even if I visit that site less than other sites. This will especially come in handy for the Weather.com hour-by-hour forecast for Ann Arbor. I haven't been using it lately, but now that the weather is changing I'll probably check it every day. Instead of having to try visiting it enough to get it to show as a thumbnail, which is what I thought I would have to do and which is a hassle, now I can just pin the Weather.com thumbnail to the page and spare myself the trouble!

I also love that I can now display one of Google's many themes on my browser's pages. I'm glad that Google wants me to be able to choose how Chrome looks. Looking at pictures that make me happy, makes me happy. In case you were wondering, I'm currently using the "stargazing" theme, which I really like. Let me know if there are other ones I should be checking out though!

Finally, Chrome has dolled up its Omnibox, which is its combination search + address bar. Not only does it look a little more polished (which we know I love), but it also now has little icons to tell you whether an item in the dropdown menu is a suggested site or search, a bookmark, or a site from my browsing history. Now my browser tells me what it's thinking!

What Else is New?

I'm sorry, but I've just been so excited about my new and improved relationship with Google Chrome that I forgot to mention what else happened last week. Well, here's something worth mentioning: I knew that Google was doing a lot with display advertising (you know what I mean if you use Gmail), but I didn't realize that they were planning to create their own market for advertising! How very innovative. How very Google. Go to this page on Google's Official Blog for more details.

Introducing Jenny Martinec

by jenmmart (20 Sep 2009 17:23)

Hi Everyone!

• I'm from Livonia, MI
• I am graduating May, 2010
• I hope to get a job in services marketing but might go back to my summer internship at a boutique PR/Marketing firm working with luxury hospitality (it's complicated).
• I signed up for this class because a lot of my work this summer had me creatively researching things online, but I always felt that "googling" everything didn't necessarily give me the best results.
• Interesting fact: This summer, I went to the New York red carpet premiere and after-party for the movie Julie & Julia and met Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Introducing Jim Egerer

by JEgerer (20 Sep 2009 20:44)

Hello hello!

1. Where you are from
   • I'm from Hemlock, outside of Saginaw, MI at the moment. And of course Ann Arbor at the moment, and I spend a about a month and a half a year in Las Vegas.
2. When you're supposed to graduate
   • Supposed to and will graduate after this year, hopefully with all you fine folks.
3. What type of job you hope to get (or already have lined up)
   • I'm on a little bit of non-traditional route for a BBA more about that in personal blog, for now though I have a plan and I'm happy, maybe law school down the road.
4. What you hope to get out of this class (or why you took this class)
   • Seems way more applicable to me than say accounting because its something we have to be using everyday. Figure getting comfortable with doing something you will be doing everyday is pretty beneficial.
5. One interesting fact about you that most of your classmates would not know**
   • I make the best pancakes in Ann Arbor, maybe Michigan, probably the world ……self proclaimed

Introducing Mike Danhof

by mike_danhof (21 Sep 2009 15:53)

Blackberry Storm > iPhone

Hi everyone, and welcome to my site. My name is Mike, and I'm a senior BBA student here at the University of Michigan, graduating in the Spring of 2010. I am focusing on Marketing and Finance for now, . I have a job offer to return to DISH Network, though I really have no idea what I want to do in the future, but ultimately I would like to end up having a career in sports or athletics in some shape or form.

I love sports, especially football and basketball. Some of my hobbies include reading, working out, yoga (ok, so I'm a bit of a noob at that), and playing video games. On campus, I am involved primarily with two groups-Delta Sigma Pi, a professional business fraternity, and K-grams, the largest student-run community service organization on campus. I am originally from Muskegon, a city on the west side of Michigan, right on the sandy beaches of Lake Michigan. I lived there my whole life, and thus is why I basically defaulted to going to the University of Michigan. I am an only child, which often surprises people. Another thing, I was brought up green and white (gasp blasphemy, I know). But it wasn't my fault-my parents both went to MSU, three of my aunts did (one still works there), my grandma did, and my uncle did as well. The only Maize and Blue influences I had were my Grandpa and my uncle, who went to Law School here.

I took this class because I have had friends that have taken it, and said it was a great class that was a lot of fun, but also one where I would learn a lot about internet searching, how to do things with blogs, and more.

Noiset

by aegreen (08 Nov 2009 14:39)

There is a new search engine that you can use to search for songs, albums, and artist biographies called noiset. When I first read about Noiset, I was excited to see how it worked. Finally, was there a place I could go that would make it easy to find the music I was looking for, especially when it was relatively unknown stuff?

What the Article Says

Noiset Highlights

Discover Music

Users can recommend albums and see what other users have recommended.

Save Time

Users can listen to song previews before they download them.

Large Collection

Users can browse over 15,000 free albums and find links to download them. Also, because Noiset searches for new, high-quality music blogs, its music collection is constantly growing.

Alternative Links

Noiset crawls music blogs for links to free music download links and posts as many as they can find, in case some links get broken or deleted. These include Megaupload, RapidShare and MediaFire.

My Take

All of that stuff sounded great, so naturally I had high expectations for Noiset. While I do believe that this search engine has the potential to be very useful, after using it I think that it needs some refinement first.

The Good

Album Covers

Sadly, there is not much that I can say is great about Noiset - at least not yet. However, I do like that I can see all the album covers in my search.

The Not-so-Good

Precision

For clarity's sake, let me walk you through an example. Go to Noiset.com and search for "Single Ladies" (we all know that song by Beyonce, right?) You will have to scroll down to see that the only song with the title "Single Ladies," the song we were looking for, is in the album that came up seventh in your search results. Now, search "Beyonce Knowles." Better. Since the first four albums listed are exclusively Beyonce, Single Ladies shows up in the second album shown. Finally, let's try "Single Ladies Beyonce Knowles." This query is pretty specific, so I'm expecting that the album/song we are looking for will be the first search result…Not true. This time it's the fourth album down.

This type of thing seems to happen with other artists and songs as well. So, it seems that Noiset doesn't produce what I would consider to be logical and accurate search results. In other words, I think that Noiset's "precision" could be improved.

Completeness

Just from looking at the Beyonce albums that showed up in our "demo," it appears that none of them are complete. Songs are missing from each album, so I would really like to see Noiset increase its library.

Legitimacy

Now that I've read that part about "free downloading links" and taken a look at the website, I'm not sure that people should even use Noiset. If it takes users to links for free music downloads, isn't it just facilitating music piracy? I would definitely look into this issue before downloading anything!

The Little Thing in the Corner of the Search Bar!

Every time I try clicking into the left edge of the search bar, I accidentally click this little black box that spills over it. It is a link taking me back to the homepage. It can get frustrating! You can just click inside the search bar and then use the left arrow key to get to the beginning of whatever text you want to edit, but that gets annoying. I would like to see this "spillage" get fixed.

My Conclusion

I still think that Noiset could be a really useful tool if it works on the shortcomings discussed above. I would love to see it evolve into the place to go to search for music in one convenient location. At least, that would make my life easier. Noiset, if you're listening, the thought does count. It just wasn't enough. Get cleaned up, think about how you can improve your search, and please get rid of that thing in the search bar! Then we'll talk. Looking forward to it…

ImHalal.com

by bavidar (30 Sep 2009 17:31)

New Search Engine

A new search engine, called ImHalal.com was just released in order to protect the religious views of Muslims. ImHalal filters its contents by deciding whether content is harem or forbidden by the faith. ImHalal.com aims to become a leader in the filtered search industry. There goal is to become the number one homepage in all Muslim households.

How It Works?

ImHalal.com is a tool designed for Muslims to be able to continue their online activities in a safe and clean environment. Using ImHalal.com will prevent you from “accidentally” bumping into explicit content but if you deliberately go looking for explicit content you might find what you are looking for after some while and that’s why we advise those people to use alternative search engines since ImHalal.com isn’t designed for those purposes. When users search a keyword on the site, the results are returned but they also get a harem rating. If the user gets a harem rating of level one or two out of three, they are advised to choose another keyword to search, but they can still continue their search if they believe the results fetched are not harem.

Words like porn and rape are considered to be at a rating of three, and are blocked, he added. Terms like beer and pork, however, get a haram rating of one because users cannot consume them off the Internet.

Background Information

ImHalal.com was launched earlier this month, and has received more than 400,000 unique visitors so far. The site aims to create a safe and clean environment for Muslims to search the Web. There main product will always be a search engine but they have ambitious plans to expand there product line by adding Islamic widgets.

Other Uses

Parental Control For Kids

Since the site blocks off inappropriate material. It also can be used a search tool for kids. I was surfing the site and when I searched for images of celebrities or needed information about something that was not appropriate, I was either denied access or was shown results that were appropriate. Essentially, it has a built in Parental Control unit.

Relevancy

Since almost all of the inappropriate sites have been blocked. Almost all search results are more relevant. I was shocked to see that sometimes I got more relevant searches using ImHalal.com then Google.

Really Cool Things

Images

Besides from its great search results, ImHalal.com shows images next to each search result. I particularly like this as I can get a preview of the site that i am about to go to. Too bad Google does not have this!

Website Mode

Similar to searching Inurl: on Google. ImHalal.com has a tab that allow you to create quieries that will search within websites. Its nice that its one of the 4 tabs on the site. Additionally, just like the main search results, there is a picture preview of the site right next to the search result.

Conclusion

ImHalal.com is designed really well. It allows you to preview relevant sites and is just really precise. I expect this search engine to challenge the big search engines to think more about the user experience and not just about search results.

blog:Introducing Nikhil Pajankar

by npajank (20 Sep 2009 20:53)

Hey everyone. My name is Nikhil Pajankar and I am a Junior in the BBA program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I am originally from Bombay in India, but was brought up in Muscat, Oman (I often am asked where that is…so it is in the middle east just under Dubai). Even though I was brought up in Muscat, I visit Bombay every year and even did an internship last year at an Asset Management firm there last summer. I am supposed to graduate in 2011. As of now I am planning on concentrating in Finance and am currently looking for an internship for the summer. I took this class because I am very interested in technology and this course will help me use technology efficiently. Also, I heard it was a really fun class.

I enjoy playing soccer (the real football :P) and tennis (though I haven't been playing much). I also love playing pool and poker. I also enjoying doing community service.