Friday, January 25, 2019
5A – Identifying Local Opportunities
County struggling to meet new law - State advisory group would penalize school districts over security
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AORLB%21Orlando%2BSentinel%252C%2BThe%2B%2528FL%2529/year%3A2019%212019/mody%3A0114%21January%2B14&f=advanced&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/170F192510EDE878
In light of recent school massacres many schools around the country have been implementing many of preventive measures to prevent another massacre from occurring of these proventive many states (such as Florida) are mandating so that all schools must have an on-campus deputy or private security personal at all times. This law was established Feb. 14 of the previous year in wake of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. This would be good news if it wasn’t for struggles happening in Orange County Sheriff’s Office as they struggle in supplying full-time deputies to all the schools in the county and may be facing penalties for failing to comply. According to the article they’ve been struggling since the start of the school semester, but since then they’ve hired 50 more officers yet still need 21 more to provide full time protection to all campuses. While it is still unclear whether or not the county needs to provide for charter schools as they are privately owned, currently every high school has two on-duty officers, each middle school has one officers yet a majority of elementary schools struggle to have a single officer available all day. This has lead to much debate as many complain it is unreasonable and that there is nowhere in the law that states that an officer has to be on campus from first bell to dismissal, but allowing officers to “float” between campuses is not what the law was intended for. Now it has become a battle of funding as either funding is spent on schools or providing new officers, while Broward county is attempting to fundraise for the short funds.
While intentions are good this has quickly become a war on funding as schools struggle enough as is providing the bare necessities for their students. Those who are affected the most by this problem are also those who need this the most. What I mean is that if the law becomes stricter the less funding goes to teachers and education defeating the purpose of school but if it is the other way around in case of a crisis the school will lack the proper protection against an armed attacker.
Malls are fading, making way for new entertainment
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AORLB%21Orlando%2BSentinel%252C%2BThe%2B%2528FL%2529/year%3A2019%212019/mody%3A0121%21January%2B21&f=advanced&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/171169386BD6E298
In the age where online shopping is all the rave, many outlets are struggling to compete as mall are becoming more and more obsolete. Interesting this is not all bad as these outlets are not onlying being replaced with onsite online retailers but many dining plazas. As districts such as Disney Springs have opted in building stores that don’t rely solely on retail. This trend is also seen in many grocery stores as many no longer just sell fresh foods but also provide a variety of options for to-go meals and many even have full fledged restaurants.The new trend many retailers are now aiming for is place for customers to be entertained while they spend as the new Margaritaville may be the largest new project in florida in 2019, as it plans to be 300 arc plaza with nearly 900 homes, with several shoppings and restaurants options. This came at a hefty cost as many outlets are closing their doors including the popular retailer Sears as they face another bankruptcy this year and plan on closing more of its doors. Ironically enough these foreclosures aren't making it easier for the competition as the new open spaces are quickly being occupied by Amazon locations, making online shopping even easier. Many mall developers are opting to use their unoccupied space to various types of new tenants ranging from healthcare facilities to call centers. Researchers are estimating that this will be the new face to the diminishing mall industry. “You probably won’t recognize malls in 10 or 15 years … Malls are great properties in great locations but they will have to find a way to adapt.”
The main victims of this article is the retail/mall industry as they now not only competing with the online market but other retailers that opted to include an element of entertain to their business.
Illegal immigration features some ironies
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AORLB%21Orlando%2BSentinel%252C%2BThe%2B%2528FL%2529/year%3A2019%212019/mody%3A0114%21January%2B14&f=advanced&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/170F19256117C188
This articles the contradictory nature that is illegal immigration as it doesn’t make sense why people would flee their homeland to nation that is seemly inhospitable and unwelcoming to foreigners. The article begins with a poll as over a third of Mexican citizens would want to emigrate to the US, but the article quickly diminishes this claim by stating why would residences of a naturally rich country (“19th globally in oil reserves and currently 12th largest oil provider”) would want to leave. Then the article mentions how Mexico is in the lower half of the population density and how much revenue there is in the tourist industry in Mexico. The answer to this why so many Mexicans want to leave Mexico is the idea that Life in Mexico is relatively poor as Mexico lacks many of the rights that many American use liberally. The author believes the best way to assist Mexico with their emigration problem is by helping become more progressive by giving their residence equality.
SpaceX announces layoffs - About 10 percent of employees cut 'due to the extraordinarily difficult challenges ahead'
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AORLB%21Orlando%2BSentinel%252C%2BThe%2B%2528FL%2529/year%3A2019%212019/mody%3A0112%21January%2B12&f=advanced&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/170E728B55BA64A8
Popular space program SpaceX lays off over 6000 employees. Many of the company heads have come forth and stated that “ To continue delivering to our customers and succeeding in developing an interplanetary spacecraft… SpaceX must become a leaner company.”
The people who are suffering this problem in the article are those who are being laid off the SpaceX program as even though the article repeated over and over again that the leaders at SpaceX are grateful for the contributions of everyone they had laid off made. But the article also mentions how other space programs have been letting go senior members and this downward thread seems to counterproductive in terms of space travel as yes on one hand it leaves more funds for building space crafts, but it also limits what the team can do and less people on deck to prevent errors or other miscalculations.
Short staffs and long lines at U.S. airports
https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/news/document-view?p=WORLDNEWS&t=pubname%3AORLB%21Orlando%2BSentinel%252C%2BThe%2B%2528FL%2529/year%3A2019%212019/mody%3A0115%21January%2B15&f=advanced&action=browse&format=text&docref=news/170F6F1B1BE91888
In Atlanta, preflight traffic was at its worst Monday, 1/14, as many reported delays to have lasted over hours. The article attributes this massive delay to an unprecedented 7.6% absence rate this was in part due to the government shut down as many sympathized with the TSA workers as they agreed they too would have went on looking for new work if their current employment didn’t pay. According to many TSA members the wait times reported by many customers do not accurately reflect the actual wait times as the Sunday prior over 99% of all customers experienced wait times less than 30 minutes and over 93% experienced less than 15 minute wait times.
The problem here stems from the idea that TSA traffic is being affected by the government shut down as less TSA members are willing to show up to work as they are government officials are currently looking elsewhere for work.
Friday, January 18, 2019
4A – Forming An Opportunity Belief
A common issue I witness that goes continuously unaddressed is the idea that technology is “scary”. What I mean by this the common idea that even in the generation where technology has become universal commonplace in everyday life; not too many people understand why things work they way they do and lack the proper understanding in making purchases that properly suit their needs. I mentioned this briefly in my previous blog post, where technology is changing so rapidly that many people don't know the difference between their options to the point in which the average consumer is being taken advantage of. Even though there are over thousands of resources that can assist people in making such purchases many people either don’t know about them or they’ve visited them before but got intimidated by the jargon many of the community members have adopted. My goal is to make a three-part tech forum, with the three parts being part social media, part news outlet, and part wiki page. The idea is to create a place where people can talk about the tech that interests them while also hosting links to the products( ie where to purchase it, or in-depth look at the components) and ability to research a certain feature and a way to compare features (with both comment based reviews and unbiased reviews). The structure will be similar to Reddit where users can make threads about the products they are using or comment about current tech news but without the “upvote” system. This way users can express their honest opinions about something and don't feel pressured to parakeet popular opinions. While also allowing users to search the meaning of various terms they may come across. How this will work is that for every piece of tech there will be a tag associated with it allowing users to search a certain product and the search results will include news articles about said product, user-created threads about the product and a list of features with both articles and threads on the features in question. The target demographic would both the informed and the uninformed.
To gauge interest for such a site I interviewed various people with various understanding and asked both direct and indirect questions to full gauge their understanding. For the direct questions I asked the interviewed person how much they feel they understand about technology, where do they go when something stops working and where do they go before they make a tech purchase. Then for the indirect question, I would ask them questions about their phones and how much they know about their phones; asking questions like what type of phone do they use, what do they use their phone for, what features do they use their phone for, what carrier do they use and what is included in their current plan, and if they know the features of other phones on the market.
When interviewing my prototypical consumers, of the 3 people I had interviewed 2 of them had an android based product( S9+ and “Moto”) devices and the other had an iPhone (iPhone 6 plus). Note these interviews are not a representation of consumer base of said products, with that being said for the rest of the blog the interviewers will be differentiated by their phone of choice to protect their identity. When asked how much they know about technology as a whole on a scale of 10, the S9+ user rated themselves as an 8/10 as they felt comfortable with most things tech-based but becomes unsure of things when objects got technical such in-depth description of various hardware aspects. The next being the “Moto” user whereas they rated themselves as 6/10, to which they explained they keep up with the news of various tech updates and keeps up with the stock of tech companies but when it comes to operating such products they become bewildered without the assistance of a manual or the internet. Finally was the iPhone 6 plus user to whom felt rather uncomfortable around new technology and rated themselves as a 3/10 and felt they could only use technology with the assistance of others. As expected all participants universally explained how the internet was essential to their understanding as they all admitted to using google searches to uncover the information on technology and admitted that their research would be limited to the first page of google and a couple user views. When asked if they knew the name of the site they used they all responded with “ whatever, Google had presented to them” and when asked if they had visited sites like “Tom’s hardware” the response was unanimous with a “probably”. The responses were the same when it came to their process of buying tech as they said most of their information on the product would be based both the purchase site and “Google”. When asked what phone each person used frequently they all had smartphones and knew generally what their device was capable of expect for the Moto user to whom didn’t know what exactly what model phone they had but explained they only used their phone for calls and text. For the S9+ and iPhone 6 plus users why both explained that call/text was important but preferred a phone great playback quality and video quality. When asked about their service both the Moto and iPhone user where on prepaid plans with about 6~8 GBS of high-speed data and had felt comfortable with their phone carrier because it was affordable and they were able to cancel at any time. Finally, when asked about the other phones on the market they gave the same response as they did before when asked how they did do research when it comes to tech products as they knew vaguely about the other popular products on the market and most of their information came from Google. When asked about the popular phone brands overseas (ie OnePlus, Poco, and Xiaomi) they answered homologously, with no knowledge of what made these phones desirable overseas and what made many popular American phones undesirable.
Now after completing the interview process, I still feel my service is a necessity as even though I had interviewed only 3 people I feel the general consensus we get most of our tech information from Google which is a search engine and lacked the knowledge of trusted sites or reviewers to whom they could gather their information from. I am not saying Google is a bad resource to find information but it limits the knowledge of the user. In this day and age, people should have a greater understanding of what is in their hands and what it is capable of and what their options are. With this site, I want to a universal platform to where users can find both trusted articles and reviews while also being able to vocalize their own point of view and perspective on the current state of technology.
3A – Your Entrepreneurship Story
My Entrepreneurship Story
What drives me towards entrepreneurship as a course of study is the idea that entrepreneurship is the key to motivation as in order for you to be considered an entrepreneur you need action/commitment. To be an entrepreneur you need to have a goal in mind with a problem and solution that you can accomplish. In order to reach these goals, you must take the necessary steps in order to reach each step and eventually helps you achieve your goal; which in turns to motives you into creating a new goal.
Even though my experience as an entrepreneur is limited, the closest thing I have in terms of starting my own business was back in high school when I sold candy to fundraise money for my many wrestling camps. Even though this sounds fairly basic and even trivial, in order to make this profitable, I had to do a lot of planning. This planning included restocking/inventory management, tracking sales, and responding to the demands of the consumer base. I had to do these things on the daily as if I didn’t I would underprepared for the next day and most times meant I would sell out before the end of the day, losing out on many potential sales. Sales were essential in terms of maximizing profits as a buy one get one would save me anyone from 10$ to over 100$. I also had to mindful of competition and had to arm myself with the goods they could not provide. Even though I kept my prices along the universal school standard of 1$, by keeping my prices consistent I was able to obtain regular customers while as being able to undersell many competitors as they eventually rose their prices to 1.25$ and the inevitable 1.50$ price rise. Within 6 months of selling candy, I was to accumulate over 1000$ of revenue.
Another example of my of entrepreneurial experience would be soap drive I conducted my senior of high school to which was a fundraising event to bring soap to children in need. Even though this originally wasn’t my idea I quickly became one the main organizer for the project. As I had to manage the other group members and helped design incentives to encourage both the student body to participant in the event.
The main reason why I chose to take ENT3003: Principles of Entrepreneurship was further improve my entrepreneurial skills. Even though I don’t plan on opening my own business I personally feel having these type of skills on the ready will prepare for anything life has to throw at me.
2A – Bug List
You know what really grinds my gears
>Blog post 1
>Bugs list
In our everyday life, we come across hundreds, if not thousands of “bugs” that plague our society from minor inconveniences to major delay-inducing annoyments. These “bugs” reside in the very fabric our society, yet many require very simple solutions. These simple solutions are being we, entrepreneur strives as it is our duty to find and eliminate these bugs. In my everyday life, I witness many things to which I feel to be changed and here are just a few.
Public transportation in major cities is good but in towns, the bus service is terrible As someone who was born and raised in suburban Kissimmee, FL the bus systems are notoriously bad. Even on days with little to no traffic, the bus would still arrive anywhere from 30 to hour late.
Why do wireless products degrade faster than most cable-based products Personally, I listen to music everywhere I go and I will agree that Bluetooth is very convenient to carry around as you don’t have to worry about the cables getting caught or tangled.
Why inside various supermarkets or building (ie Best Buys) is mobile data so inconsistent. While working at BestBuy, a very frequent problem was the inability to access the internet while inside the store. This made the job unnecessarily harder as customers would try to explain what they were looking for without having either the name or image of the item they would looking for. Why do whole foods cost more than a week's worth of fast food This is fairly straightforward as its hard to promote a healthy living style when 20 Mcchickens cost the same a week’s worth of groceries (or less).
Why do supermarkets/restaurants/stores in university areas have either terrible service but a good price or terrible prices and offer the same food I’ve noticed this recently when I went shopping for food as both the prices and deals of many products in the Publix store where being sold at a high price than the products being sold at the same store about 2~3 miles away.
Why doesn’t the Publix down 13th street honor any of the deals offered by other Publix’s even though there is another one a couple miles away that does.
How can we circumvent the issue that plagues the android os without resorting to custom firmware The Android software suffers many of the same problems as any another piece of software but the biggest problem I have with Android and why I think so many people like Apple products is that each phone has a different version of the same software. This means every type of android from Lg to Samsung have their own version of the Android software, but what makes the problem worse is that every carrier has their own version of android for that phone. Maling troubleshooting problems for many Android devices more problematic as a fix for a T-mobile device may not be the same fix for a Sprint device even though it is the same phone. This also makes getting updates harder as each update has to go manufactures first then the update is made for their devices which then pushed to the service providers, to whom have to make their own version of the same update to be released to their customers. This can cause delays up to 6 months of when the update was initially made and by the time the update has become available a new update is probably already finished.
Is there a way to make a wireless connection just as good as good as wired
A way to make over the ear headphones without messing up your hair. This is another personal grip as I love to listen to music on the go but hate having a depression in my hair when I take off my headphones.
How do combat the current wave of diminishing features on smartphone/mobile devices I'm just annoyed by the fact that every year new phones are being sold with less and fewer features yet being sold for 1,000 +. How we can prevent the lethargic process of introducing universal updates to open source projects.
Way to consistently prevent unwanted objects from entering the washing machine/adding a way to preserve or restore objects that enter the washing system. I'm just tired of losing pens to the washing machine :(
The creation of a universal charging adaptor/ The lack of product capable to convert to various charger types to other charger types. This problem has been somewhat circumvented with the introduction of wireless charging, but it is still annoying to go to a friends house and they do not have a compatible charger.
Why is it that people commit to new year resolutions for only a week then abandon the who project a month later.
Ways to increase cybersecurity without self-hosting. Emails and personal information getting leaked more and more frequently and with the shut up of various user hosted sites having a private email is becoming more and harder.
Making ads less intrusive or creating a way for ads to be blocked whilst also being able to generate revenue for the viewing site. I use Adblock. I want to keep using Adblock. I also don’t want many of the sites I visit to get shut down because I don’t like ads.
Why isn't there a site the easily translate technological lingo into something that most people could understand; which can be used in assisting the average population in making technological purposes. How we make the write speed of a hard drive the same as one of an SSD/or making SSD’s available in much larger sizes without it costing an insane markup. Why can Hard Drives go all the way up 17 GBS for 500$ but SSD’s could barely reach over 2tb and cost thousands of dollars
How can we create a VR system with inducing motion sickness Making portable charging more realistic/ making battery life longer/more reliable This creation of list comes from any aspects from both my daily routine to problems faced when pursuing my hobbies/research.
The biggest bugs I face in my are heavily based on the inconveniences of many technologies brings as it seems in this modern age of constant updates and new releases many developers are not taking the time to ensure the best possible product to the point in which features are being removed from many devices in the name of “innovation”. Whereas the developers who do try to make the best quality product cannot compete with the fast pace market making it undesirable to pursue such strategies. Worst of all are community based software as they meant for to be made by the community and for the community yet when it comes to basic security updates or bug fixes updates seem to be rather inconsistent as some have same day resolutions while others require many months of workarounds/bypasses/hotfixes until the problem is “eventually” fixed.
Saturday, January 12, 2019
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