Week 10: Flying Used To Be Fun and Cheap

Recent hikes in airfare prices have made traveling more difficult. Until a few years ago you could find deals to Europe, during the winter time, for under $600 round-trip. However, Europe is not alone when it comes to expensive air fares. My wife was in Montreal for a few days this week on a business trip, and I wanted to join her, but I quickly changed my mind after checking Kayak and looking at the outrageous round-trip fares. The cheapest ticket I could find was a $900 round-trip, non-stop flight from DC to Montreal. The one-stop and two-stop tickets were even more expensive! I couldn't believe my eyes. A round-trip to Montreal from DC used to cost around $200 not that long ago. Is the price of oil making traveling so expensive? Or, should we blame it on the new security measures and airport taxes after 9/11? I don't know what is causing it.

Flying has turned into a somewhat stressful experience, specially if you are like me, always flying couch and looking for the cheapest fare. First you have to deal with huge security lines, which I don't mind because I want to be safe, but it does add some time to your trip. Then, you have to deal with the airlines customer service, which has severely declined in the last 20 years. I remember when I first flew in the late 80s. If your flight was longer than two hours, they would serve you dinner or lunch with metal silverware and free alcohol. And all that happened in the economy class. If you took an overnight flight, they would give you a free toothbrush, free toothpaste, and slippers. Flying used to be a fun thing to do. I can see the time coming when airlines will start charging passengers to use the lavatory.

Week 10: The Olympics

The 2012 Summer Olympics will start this Friday in London. I have always enjoyed watching the Olympics, particularly the swimming, gymnastics, volleyball, and track and field competitions. The opening ceremony is something that cannot be missed because every four years they come up with a more elaborate version of what was seen four years earlier. It is really interesting to watch the parade of athletes, walking down the stadium, representing their respective countries.

I just wished the TV coverage was more about the sports and less about the personal stories of each athlete, which NBC insists in portraying during their live coverage. It is interesting to know about an athlete's struggle to be in an Olympic team, but I just think they devote too much time to it, and in most cases it becomes way too melodramatic for my taste. That being said, I find the Olympics a fascinating event in the sense that it unites people from different corners of the world, from different cultures, and from different backgrounds.

The vast majority of the athletes competing in the Olympics do not have a shot at winning a medal. They are there to represent their countries, to make the name of their countries heard, and sometimes to make a political statement. I think it is said when politics mixes with sports, though. In 1980, the U.S. and a few other countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Four years later, the Soviet Union along with countries from the communist Eastern Bloc in Europe and Cuba boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Fortunately, those events have not been repeated since then. The Olympics should be about sports and not about politics.

Week 9: My ideas for Turning Desktop Apps into Web Apps

As I posted on this week's discussion forum, I would love to see an app for Photoshop, or for some of the other Adobe image editors such as Fireworks. Then, Moses, our classmate, told me about this online app called Photoshop Express, which is a light version of Photoshop, but with all the features needed by even some of the most advanced users. I tried it, and it worked really well! Photoshop and Fireworks are very heavy programs, so I was impressed by how well Photoshop Express handles all those features online, and by how easy it was to edit an image. After you are done editing your images, you can either save it to your computer or share it on Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, or Photobucket. You can also create an account with Photoshop Express and store up to 2GB worth of images. I am yet to find an app for Fireworks though.

The amazing thing about Web apps is that you are not restricted by your hard drive. As long as you have an Internet connection, you can make changes to your documents from any computer. It is really nice to be able to make changes to an image on the fly without having to load up a heavy program from a specific computer. I believe Photoshop Express and Google Docs are making people's lives a lot easier. For one, people will no longer need to carry their laptops around anymore when they are away from their offices and they need to make changes to a graphic or a document.

Week 9: My experience this week with JQuery

I think JQuery would be very useful for setting up online calendars and photo galleries. So, JQuery uses Ajax (a combination of CSS, HTML, and Javascript) as one of its features. I have used some free Ajax libraries in the past for creating online photo albums. The CSS Play web site gives you some good examples of that. At work, we use an online database from a third party vendor that has a calendar feature, which looks like something created out of JQuery -- you click on the date field and the calendar pops up. Lightbox was all the hype a few years ago, and it still is the most used script for adding photos to a site. Lightbox enables pictures to overlay on top of the current page.

I followed the instructions on this week's video and played with some of the features on the JQuery website. It does make your site look totally interactive. I can see the draggable feature being used in shopping carts, for example.

Menus are the other cool application for JQuery. The Moo.Fx accordion menu, for example, which uses Ajax, is similar to the accordion menu featured on the JQuery website.

Week 8: My experience with Javascript this week

This week's exercise on Javascript refreshed my memory on function calling, and writing functions. I took a Javascript last semester, and I have already forgotten some of it. Programming has never been my strong suit, I am really not a big fan of it, but it helps to know the basics when you work on a site as a designer.

Without Javascript sites would be completely static. Things such as image swapping, menus, cookies, and form validation, to name a few, would not be possible without the use of Javascript. I recommend everyone who is into Web design to take a class in Javascript. I would say it is almost mandatory to know a little bit of Javascript if you plan to become a web designer. You need to know where the code is inserted on a page and how to make small changes to it without interfering with the logic of the program.

Online charts and graphs used to be created in Flash. Nowadays, most online charts are created using Javascript. The hicharts website provides users with a great way to create and make changes to an online chart on the fly. It then allows you to copy the Javascript code and paste it into your page. You can manually change the online code, and preview the changes you made to the chart.

The other advantage of Javascript over other dynamic technologies is that it is really light, and it does not require any plugins. Flash, for example, is a dying technology and it will soon no longer be offered by Adobe. There are several issues with Flash. For one, Flash does not play on some smart phones, such as the iPhone, and then you have the issue of plugins. We have pretty much the same issues with Silverlight from Microsoft. Javascript, on the other hand, does not pose any of these problems.

Week 8: My Idea for a Site Using Javascript

I've seen quite a few sites that provide you with your expected income after you retire, but none of them take into consideration your life expectancy and/or how you plan to invest your money. If there is, I haven't seen it yet. So, my idea for an interactive web site would be a site that could give you financial advice on how to save and invest your money for retirement based on your current income, expenses, and life expectancy. The page would have three modules.

First, it would ask you for your current income, current age, chances for promotion and future salary increases, inheritance, schooling, degrees intended to be earned, etc. It would also ask you what percentage of your monthly income you currently invest in pension plans, 401ks, saving accounts, etc. Based on the information provided, it would come up with your total projected yearly income for the year you plan to retire based on your age (62.5, 67, 70.5, or an age that you would enter).

Then it would rate you as an investor based on your answers to a questionnaire, and based on your current age (conservative investor, medium investor, aggressive investor). It would then provide you with an expected rate of return on your investment from now until you retire, and the rate of return after you retire, considering you would have less money/no money to invest after you retire.

The third module would calculate your life expectancy based on information provided by you on a questionnaire such as current age, life style (exercise/no exercise, stress level at work and at home, vacation time, etc.), smoking habits, drinking habits, illegal drug use, family history of degenerative diseases (cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.), and other chronic diseases.

The page would then compute your monthly income after you retire based on information provided in all three modules: total projected income for the year you plan to retire, investor rating, life expectancy.

Week 7: Rio - The Marvelous City

If you like traveling and experiencing new cultures, Rio is a must see. My last trip to Rio was in 2000 to watch the carnival parade.

The Brazilian capital moved from Rio to Brasilia in 1960. However, Rio remains the main center for culture and entertainment in the country.

Rio is known to Brazilians as the "Marvelous City." Rio's natural setting, its people, and its way of life make this city one of the most fun and exciting places in the world. The inhabitants of Rio, known as "Cariocas," are amongst the most friendly, hospitable, and extroverted people in Brazil.

The land of the biggest show on earth, carnival, Rio is an exhilarating place to be during the summer. Its famous beaches and neighborhoods such as Copacabana, Ipanema, and Leblon gave birth to the Bossa-Nova movement in the late 1950s. Bossa-nova, which means "New Trend" or "New Thing", is a fusion of jazz and samba rhythms. Composers such as Tom Jobim and Joao Gilberto became famous worldwide by writing songs such as Girl from Ipanema, Wave, Desafinado (Out of Tune), Corcovado, and many others.

Rio is undergoing a major transformation right now as the city prepares itself for hosting the two biggest sporting events in the world - the 2014 World Cup (Rio is one of the 12 hosting cities in Brazil) and the 2016 Summer Olympics. I would love be there for either event, but chances are tickets will be very expensive.

Week 7: Building Online Forms

For this week's assignment, we built two online forms and added them to our Web sites. We used JotForm for the first form, which is an app for building online forms, and then we built the second one from scratch by entering the HTML code directly into the page.

My experience with JotForm was really positive. I had never heard of JotForm before, and I was really surprised by how easy it was to create a form and add all the required fields using the app. It seems that they have upgraded the system though since the tutorial video on Blackboard was first published. They now have a source code button, which allows you to easily copy the code and add it to your forms page. On the tutorial, I believe the instructor went to another screen to get the code. I was also looking at the Survey Tools options, and I noticed that you can add fields such as star rating reviews, scale rating, grading review, etc. Under "Power Options" you can add password protected fields and payment options, which I thought it was really amazing.

Building the form from scratch was not that hard for me because I have built online forms before in previous classes. It was a good way to refresh my memory though on all the different input tags.

I received very good feedback on my site. Moses gave me a very good idea on how to improve the form by adding first and last name fields to it in order to identify who provided the feedback.

All in all, it was a fun and educational assignment. It was great to know there is such a great app out there for building online forms.