Computerization

English Articles Computerization

‘‘Computerization’’ refers to worldwide technology integration and adoption of computers and other electronic IT devices, along with the Internet, to support the activities that people do in the course of their daily lives. A person who uses a computer online exemplifies computerization, as do millions of other people who use any type f IT device. Thus, computerization generally has to do with the integration of IT evices and computerized systems into communications, transportation, manufacturing, ilitary weaponry, entertainment systems, and virtually all other technological reas of modern life. The process of computerization began in the late 1940s with he invention of modern computers to provide munitions guidance systems for the .S. military. However, it was not until 1969 with the invention of the Advanced esearch Project Agency Network (ARPANET) that computerization as we now nderstand it really began to expand. This is because ARPANET pioneered packet witching technology, which began the basis for the Internet in 1983, its commercialization n 1988, and finally the World Wide Web in 1991. Over this period of time, xtending half a century, what began as a small number of mainframe computers volved into personal computers (PCs) that have been widely adopted for academic, overnment, business, nonprofit organization, and individual user purposes.

Today over 1 billion computers exist on the Earth, with approximately 1.5 billion ndividual users of the Internet. The adoption of computers and other IT devices nhances Internet usage, and vice versa. High-speed (broadband) Internet connectivity expansion also drives computer, IT, and Internet technology adoption and utilization by individuals and organizations throughout the world. Utilization of the Internet expanded nearly 275 percent from 2000 to 2008. In North America alone approximately 72 percent of the domestic population (244 million out of 337 million people) now use the Internet regularly. North America represents approximately 18 percent of worldwide Internet users. And there are currently over 100 million Web sites existing on the World Wide Web, with thousands of new Web sites created everyday.

Growth of computer and IT device users and the Internet also stems from how much easier these technologies are to use. Long gone are the days in which a user needed to understand programming in order to use computers. Originally, computers were built with bulky vacuum tubes and comparatively crude electronic components by today’s standards. Consequently, these ‘‘mainframe’’ machines with their computer punch-card readers and their printing components would literally take up very large or several rooms within a building. Each mainframe computer cost millions of dollars.

Today digital computers, IT devices, and plug-in media/components are increasingly smaller, portable, and much more affordable. They have faster processing speeds, greater memory, and increasingly more built-in functions. For example, Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices are media players that also have Internet browsing and communication abilities. Several manufacturers are integrating personal digital assistant (PDA) and cellular phone capabilities, and it is difficult to purchase a cell phone without a built-in digital camera.

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Gold Standard

Gold Standard

A standard defining a national currency in terms of a fixed weight of gold, and allowing a free exchange and trade of gold. Until the nineteenth century, most of the countries maintained a bimetallic monetary system, in which national monetary units were valued against a certain weight of either gold or silver. The widespread adoption of the gold standard during the second half of the nineteenth century was largely due to the Industrial Revolution that brought a tremendous increase in the production of goods and widened the basis of world trade. During its existence, the classical gold standard is widely seen to have contributed to equilibrium of balances of payments worldwide. The same institutions that lent support to a period of remarkable globalization and economic modernization later contributed to interwar instability and the depth and length of the Great Depression of the 1930s. By the late 1930s, the gold standard as a species of monetary policy was mostly extinct.

The countries that accepted the gold standard had three principal objectives: to facilitate the settlement of international commercial and fi nancial transactions, to establish stability in foreign exchange rates, and to maintain domestic monetary stability.

Monetary authorities in different countries believed these aims could best be accomplished by having a single standard of universal validity and relative stability. In the early part of the nineteenth century, virtually no country had a gold-based currency. The gold standard was introduced by Great Britain in 1821 and adopted by Australia and Canada in 1852 and 1853, respectively. Between 1870 and 1910, however, Gold Standard 281 most nations came to adopt it. The far-reaching changes of 1871 led Germany, Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Finland, and the United States to adopt gold standards by 1879. In the 1880s, Argentina, Chile, Greece, and Italy chose gold-based regimes, but these experiments did not last. Many of the countries soon reverted to fi at currency regimes where it became impossible to trade a fi xed number of domestic notes for gold specie at the legally mandated quantity. By the first decade of the twentieth century, most of these nations nonetheless adopted the gold standard again. In the 20 years after 1890, Asian nations also linked up to the gold standard. With some exceptions, the prevalence of the gold standard lasted until the economic crisis of 1929 and the ensuing depression.

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Breast Cancer photographer makes women feel beautiful

Breast cancer photographer makes women feel beautiful

(CNN) -- Nearly every day, Terri Shaver comes face to face with cancer and can't help but think about her life and how short it could be.

For more than four years, the 56-year-old photographer from Laingsburg, Michigan, has taken free portraits of people with terminal and life-threatening illnesses as part of the Oldham Project, the nonprofit she founded in 2008 after her husband's two sisters-in-law died from breast cancer.

Although the Oldham Project, named for the two sisters, provided photos for families and children, Shaver started Be Bold, Feel Beautiful, a campaign specifically aimed at women with cancer, in summer 2010.

"I'll never be the same," she said. "These women are already dealing with the choices of the things they want to accomplish or need to accomplish before their time here is over. They really see the things that are important."

The campaign began as a way to provide the women who lost their hair from cancer treatments photos in which they felt beautiful. Although she had already been taking photos of people with cancer, Shaver wanted to raise awareness, and from her extended family, knew what a powerful effect going bald had on women in particular.

"When they lose their hair, 99.9% of these women have said that they lose themselves," she said. "They lose their identity."

Shaver remembers one woman telling her that when her eyelashes and eyebrows fell out, she looked in the mirror and saw an alien. But when the women see their photos -- some somber and some lighthearted, posing with something significant to them -- they regain their self-image. Shaver said some have even told her that they stopped wearing their wigs after the session.

Since the campaign started in July 2010, Shaver has photographed about 100 women -- ages 20 to 82 -- who have had cancer, as well as partnering with a local spa to pamper them and try to make them feel gorgeous for a day. Although it began as a campaign planned to run until October, which is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Shaver said the feedback from the women was overwhelming and she extended the campaign to be a permanent fixture of the Oldham Project.

"Your will has a lot to do with progress that you make when you're sick," Shaver said. "I firmly believe that if I can make women feel better about themselves, while they're undergoing this treatment and have no hair, their treatment will be much more successful."

Before starting a session, Shaver turns up the music in her studio and strives for an optimistic perspective, determined to make the day an uplifting experience for the woman, even though she knows this particular visit is likely a trip woven into a schedule of radiation treatments and countless doctor visits.

"You can't help putting yourself in these women's shoes as I talk to each and every one of them, thinking, 'What if that was me?'" Shaver said. "How would I react? How would I deal with that? Many times, I don't even have words."

If she didn't consciously take a more analytical approach to each woman's cancer, Shaver said, the project would be awful. It doesn't mean the emotions are absent, but Shaver, who used to be a nurse, knows she can't take on every burden she witnesses.

Toward the end of last fall when Be Bold, Feel Beautiful was in full swing, Shaver was scheduling sessions with up to 10 women a week and began to become physically and emotionally drained.

"I was sleeping three hours a night because I was thinking about the person I photographed yesterday or the woman I was going to," she said. "When you hear these people's stories, you spend a couple hours with them -- photographing them, interviewing them -- you become part of their lives."

She stepped back from updating the campaign's blog -- which was as often as she had a session -- and to her husband's relief, scheduled the portraits at a slower pace to give herself time.

Shaver said the only thing more difficult than a session is hearing the news that one of her photo subjects has died. The first was Denise Acker, 55, who died in August 2010 after fighting lung cancer, and was also the very first person to be photographed with Be Bold, Feel Beautiful. Shaver said five women have died since she began and it is devastating every time.

Dealing with the grief and looking mortality in the face has made Shaver live differently. She said she doesn't stress out about as many things because she has realized they simply don't matter. What gets her out of bed in the morning when she knows that the day's session will be tough is imagining that she has the ability to watch a woman overcome her insecurities and find peace in how she looks.

"It doesn't matter how bad my day is, I'll bet you their day is worse," Shaver said. "And I'm going to do all I can to make them look as good as I possibly can."

A little more than a year later, Shaver knows it sounds like an extraordinary statement, but she believes the ongoing campaign has the potential to save lives.

"If other women who are just newly diagnosed or haven't even been diagnosed yet see women like this who are strong, powerful, bold and feel good about themselves, they, too, will know that I can do this," she said. "They won't panic when they find a lump, they won't just stick their heads in the sand and hope it'll go away."

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Advertising on the Internet

English Articles Advertising on the Internet

Like broadcast or print, the Internet is an advertising medium. Companies and organizations working to promote their products and services must consider this medium as they would television, magazines, outdoor, and so on. Advertising on the Internet employs a variety of forms.

Banners

The most common form of advertising on the Web is banner ads. Banner ads may be used for creating awareness or recognition or for direct-marketing objectives. Banner ads may take on a variety of forms as well as a number of names such as side panels, skyscrapers, or verticals. Initially banner ads constituted the vast majority of advertising on the Net, but studies indicating their questionable effectiveness have led to a decline in usage. Reports on click-through rates vary, but most studies indicate a less than 1 percent response rate. Afew studies have shown an increase in response rates in recent years. These findings may lead to increased use of this method of advertising in the future.

Sponsorships

Another common form of advertising is sponsorships. There are two types of sponsorships. Regular sponsorships occur when a company pays to sponsor a section of a site, for example, Clairol’s sponsorship of a page on GirlsOn.com and Intuit’s Turbo Tax sponsorship of a page on Netscape’s financial section. A more involved agreement is the content sponsorship, in which the sponsor not only provides dollars in return for name association but participates in providing the content itself. In some cases, the site is responsible for providing content and having it approved by the sponsor; in other instances, the sponsor may contribute all or part of the content. Due in part to the lack of effectiveness of banner ads, sponsorships have been increasing in popularity. Notice the number of partners on the iVillage site in each of which provides content.

Pop-Ups/Pop-Unders

When you access the Internet, have you ever seen a small window appear on Netscape advertising AOL’s “Instant Messenger”? Such Windows are known as pop-ups, and they often appear when you access a certain site. Pop-ups are usually larger than a banner ad but smaller than a full screen.

Pop-unders are ads that appear underneath the web page and become visible only when the user leaves the site. For example, if you ever visited a travel website, you probably were hit with a pop-under ad for Orbitz—one of the heaviest users of this form of web advertising. Go to the Los Angeles Times website, and when you leave, you will almost certainly see an example of this form of advertising.

While some companies like Orbitz believe that pop-ups and pop-unders are effective forms of advertising, others disagree. Consumer complaints have led Google.com, iVillage.com, and Earthlink (among others) to no longer accept these advertising forms. (According to iVillage, its research indicates that as many as 90 percent of its users dislike such ads.) Nevertheless, indications are that despite the annoying qualities of popups and pop-unders, more and more websites are offering this type of advertising. Interstitials Interstitials are ads that appear on your screen while you are waiting for a site’s content to download. Although some advertisers believe that interstitials are irritating and more of a nuisance than a benefit, a study conducted by Grey Advertising found that only 15 percent of those surveyed felt that the ads were irritating (versus 9 percent for banner ads) and that 47 percent liked the ads (versus 38 percent for banners). Perhaps more importantly, while ad recall of banner ads was approximately 51 percent, recall of interstitials was much higher, at 76 percent. Recently, Acura introduced its Integra Type R model using an interstitial. Coca-Cola, TriStar, and Macy’s commonly employ this ad form.

Push Technologies

Push technologies, or webcasting technologies, allow companies to “push” a message to consumers rather than waiting for them to find it. Push technologies dispatch web pages and news updates and may have sound and video geared to specific audiences and even individuals. For example, a manager whose job responsibilities involve corporate finance might log on to his or her computer and find new stories are automatically there on the economy, stock updates, or a summary of a speech by Alan Greenspan. Companies provide screen savers that automatically “hook” the viewer to their sites for sports, news, weather reports, and/or other information that the viewer has specified. Users can use personalization—that is, they can personalize their sites to request the kinds of specific information they are most interested in viewing. For example, if you are into college sports, you can have updates sent to you through sites providing college sports information. The service is paid for by advertisers who flash their messages on the screen.

Links

While considered by some as not a type of advertising, links serve many of the same purposes as are served by the types discussed above. For example, a visitor to one site may click on a link that provides additional information and/or related materials at another site. At the bottom of the homepage at women.com are a number of links to magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping among others. Clicking on one of these takes you to the magazine’s site and usually a pop-up for a subscription to the magazine appears. Other forms of advertising, such as ads placed in chat rooms, are also available. Given the limited use of many of these alternatives, we suggest the reader consult additional resources for more information.

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