Our emerging technology class required all the students taking the said course to conduct a seminar on technologies which are likely to develop into something big like technologies we have at present. There were 3 seminar dates which contained 2 seminars per day. Each seminar talking about something that will emerge in the future. Something that will revolutionize an industry. Here are some of the seminars that were conducted as per requirement of the course. These seminars are emerging technologies that may be the forefront of the IT industry.
On the 1st day of the EM-TECH seminar series was all about Microsoft Windows and 2 of their upcoming creations which were Microsoft Windows 8 and Windows Phone. Let's start with Windows 8. First, Windows 8 has been completely redesigned as compared from Windows 7. Windows 8 features the Metro style which was inspired by real life interactions humans commonly experience. Windows 8 used "live tiles" to reflect each event in an app a compared to regular, stationary icons. The inner workings on Windows 8 was also completely redesigned as compared to Windows 7. A clear change one can see when someone uses Windows 8 coming from Windows 7 is its speed in opening itself. Windows 8 has been optimized for performance. The battery life management of Windows 8 has also improved as compared to Windows 7. Overall. Windows 8 is a major leap from Windows 7.
The next product to be presented was Windows Phone. Though the speaker wanted to present Windows Phone 8, she dis not have an emulator present for the said OS so she presented Windows Phone 7 which is quite similar to Windows Phone 8. Like Windows 8, Windows Phone 7 features the metro style which features active changing icons as compared to boring stagnant ones. The speaker also presented key features of Windows Phone 7. The 1st one was its smart design. Windows Phone 7 features a "glance and go" function which enables the user to just look at the desired app and see if there are any new activities. No need to open and tap every single thing just to check if there's a notification. The 2nd featured smart design was "do more in less steps" which means that there would be less tapping and more "doing". Windows Phone 7 also features 5 hubs to sort what can you do on the phone. The 1st hub is people, which will give you an overview of their online activity and you can feature certain people you desire. The 2nd hub is picture. This hub speaks by itself; pictures. Every single shot you took from your Windows Phone will be placed in this hub. The 3rd hub is music, and also speaks for itself on what this hub does, music. All music you places on the phone will be placed here. The 4th hub is Office. Almost everyone who uses a computer is familiar with Microsoft Office. Yes! Microsoft Office is present in Windows Phones and all files stored on the Windows Phone can be synced through the SkyDrive cloud service. Last but not the least, the final hub is games. Windows Phone is completely integrated with XBox live so you can track your achievements and play with your friends who also possess a Windows Phone.
The 2nd day of the seminar series, the topics that were talked about were Windows Azure and unit testing. First off, unit testing was a very interesting topic especially to CCS students. The topic mostly focused on debugging a software. Of course CCS students need to learn such technique when making their own program because if they don’t debug, the end-user will find a hard time using the software and eventually will stop using it. A perfect example for a debugging tool is Microsoft’s own product, the Visual Studio. The Visual Studio will allow the programmer to generate specific scenarios on his/her program and check if there are bugs present. The Visual Studio will simulate user interaction, either normally or otherwise.
The next topic that was discussed on the 2nd day was Windows Azure. If you’ll search the meaning of Azure, it means blue, commonly being used for blue clouds. Well, Windows Azure is what the meaning says, cloud. Cloud computing is an emerging technology that is slowly being implemented throughout the IT industry, an example that I could think about is Apple cloud service “iCloud”. Windows Azure, much like Chrome OS is an operating system that does not need “good” hardware to efficiently run but it will be based on Cloud Computing Technology. Windows Azure will have the same functions present in a regular OS that we are familiar of but it will be cloud based so everything will be shared throughout the cloud network.
Lastly, the final topics to be discussed were gas detection and monitoring techniques and social media consultant as a career. These topics were so diverse that it shifted from focusing from windows based products to careers and technologies we didn’t even realize the importance of it. First off, gas detection and monitoring is a technique that is used on areas that specifically has very high population in it. For me, this topic was one I was not very familiar of because for one, I was not aware of these methods and how important it is to conduct gas detection. If these methods were not present, we would be suffocating at this very moment because we are unaware of harmful gases that are invisible to the naked eye.
The 2nd topic that was discussed on the last day was social media consultant as a career. We students know careers as future programmers, accountants, executives but we are unaware of social media consulting as a career. If you are a Facebook user, then you are aware of digital marketing. Nowadays, people that would like to sell their products at a cost that will not affect their business is using social media as an advertising tool to promote their products. Using social media is free. It can be accessed by anyone associated within the social network.
Now that the seminar series is at a close, this words are just a peek of what I have learned and discovered. I have discovered numerous things that cannot be described by words alone. It has been an interesting event and I know I was not the only one that got interested by the variety of topics that was presented on the seminar series. From windows products to unknown careers. From programming to detecting harmful gases. These are the things that was presented and fed to us by speakers that did their best in explaining their respective topics to our young minds. For that, I say, thank you for opening our minds to information we have found useful and could be used in the upcoming future
MARC KEVIN ENGLIS of EM-TECH S13
