Access Project

I had never used Access before doing this project. I understand why Databases are more useful than just plain spreadsheets, but for this project I could have done it a lot easier in Microsoft Excel personally. The queries and reports gave me the most problems. Getting things to filter and sort properly took a lot of trial and error. Still not entirely sure I did that part correct actually. The form worked, but seemed to add the new members to the queries section, not the original table. I think that may be because I had selected the queries group when I made the form.

If you couldn't tell already, I do not have much of a knack for Access yet, and I'm still not sure of all its' functionality so my ability to upgrade this database would be limited. I guess the ability to auto-add the join date into the database, instead of manually typing it would be one improvement. Maybe you could hide non-essential information from the employees as to prevent abuse.

Excel Project

During the Excel project, I was originally put-off by the large amount of data to work with. However Excel is unusually user-friendly for database software. It's like it has thought of everything you might need, and put it there. If only other programs were designed so well. I'm using Office 2010 but I didn't notice any large differences that would change anything.

I already knew most of Excel through previous computing classes, and my own experiences in trying to organize data. I had not used Pivot-tables ever before though, and they are an extremely useful add-on that made sorting the data by your specifications much easier. The ability to just drag things to column or row, and then set them to Average or Sum or whatever you feel is surprisingly comforting. I can rest assured I will be using that function many times in the future.

Web 2.0 Project

I'm still not entirely sure I've done this correctly, however what is done is done. I went through Vuvox, x-timeline, and finally settled on onetruemedia as my story tool because it was better suited to automatically making the story more interesting. Creating an interesting presentation has never been my forté. Onetruemedia was definitely easier, however the premium feature warning, and settings were definitely annoying and left me slightly annoyed at times. However, it seems a lot of others also liked onetruemedia, so they apparently know what they're doing.

I chose formspring.me as an interaction method because it allows a quick, and anonymous response to the story, and is in a minimalist format.

http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=a5f993cc56c125d146cd89&skin_id=601
is the Story.

http://www.formspring.me/ism3004 is my interaction method.