Tamra's Blog

Today I watched a TED Talk titled, " How Language Shapes the Way we Think ". The speaker, Lera Boroditsky, explains about communication across languages, and how languages influences its speakers. I already know that language is an ineffective method of communication, and find localization an interesting topic, so I was interested to hear her perspective. And it provided me some useful thought on how others outside of oneself may think or perceive the same text or speech differently. About the Talk The nature of the talk was more educational, informative, and insightful than argumentative. Boroditsky used several devices to serve the information in an understandable manner, and flowed them together seamlessly in a lighthearted and comedic manner. She paced the talk in a consistent manner, having no lulls in her speech, but also little time to think about what she'd said before she'd moved on to the next topic. First, she explained that there are approximately 7,000 ...

Recently, I watched Episode 660 of the This Week in Tech podcast , where, among other things, they discussed Apple's Education Event that was held on March 27 th . As someone who rallies for better access to technology, and is interested in how it can be applied to education, I wished to learn more about the event, and how others viewed the reveals. Competition Rather than compete with devices like Chromebooks, Apple's 2018 education edition iPads are meant to be their own niche. Apple's philosophy has almost never been to dominate the market. Instead, they work to provide the best experience possible for their smaller, more specialized market. These new devices are meant as ease of access for schools that were already considering them for educational use. Despite this, the next day, Google announced the first ever Chrome OS tablet the next day called the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 . It has a similar price point, but offers no advantages in terms of specifications or teaching...

Social media is not just a plaything. The way information spreads across it, and how content can be created and served for it, makes it a fitting platform for advertising and other business presence. And with most social media sites being free, even small business can have an advantage if they have a strong strategy. On both the business and consumer side, businesses can provide information about themselves, their products and/or services, and information relevant to their brand and field. To give an example of such presence, I will take a look at Speedway's and BP's presence on both Twitter and FaceBook, and how they accentuate their public image, garner attention, and interact with their followers. For starters, both of them present their posts in a way representative of the business's image. Speedway is often seen as friendly and casual. Their social media accounts have many fun and colorful posts, with polls, [Inter]nation x Day celebrations, games, and comedic ad...

A few months ago, a friend of mine was talking to me about a mobile game that had become popular, called Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, released by Nintendo. Although they're most well-known for their consoles and portable devices, and the video games meant for them, they had been recently dabbling in mobile development and microtransaction systems. "The game being monetized just turned me off from it," they said, leading them to never play it. I had played it for a short while, however, and told tell them the game's monetization is the least of its problems. "It can't be that complicated," they responded, "to make a cashgrab like this. What other kinds of 'problems' can they run into?" I thought about it, and realized just how many factors go into monetized systems and mobile applications. Developers have to consider the vast myriad of devices, their specifications, and how the user engages with the app content. Although I'm no ex...

Hello, and welcome! My name is Tamaralynn Nacker, or preferably, Tamra. I am an MATC student enrolling for Systems Analysis and Mobile Applications Development.  What drew me to programming was my helpful nature. Development requires cooperation and coordination, and consideration for a program's future users. I always had a general fascination with computers, video and mobile games, and most other technologies. When I was younger, I always wondered what made the Windows 98 computer and NES at my grandparent's house tick. How did it run my games? How did the screen display colors? How did the speakers play sounds? I found where all the files were housed on the computer, and wanted to know how they worked. The most I could do was open them in Notepad, and I thought that jumbled mess of characters was how computers were coded! I wasted hours trying to "decipher" them. It wasn't until high school that I got my first taste of what programming actually is.  My...