It's finally over! Or is it...

Today is the day that our Business Summatives are due!...Or at least they were until Mr. case gave us all an extension until Friday (That's FRIDAY not MONDAY, nothing is acceptable after Friday at 3:00 PM.) We have to present all our information in a professional manner and deliver it as a business proposal to the teacher. I've completed all my work to date and am ready to compile the work into one final presentation of the business.

From my knowledge the business package must include:

-Business Concept
-Registration Forms
-Domain Search
-Logo
-Letterhead
-Business Letter
-Mail Merge
-Business Cards
-Brochure
-Website

I'll be touching up everything tonight so that my business is presentable for Friday~.

Clarity In The Form Of PDF

Today we all learned how to download and install a free PDF writer so that we can use it to save our Mail merge files for our summative project. After creating the sources to complete a merge printing the document is necessary. A PDF writer allows you to print it to that, and have all your letters saved as PDF files. This is very useful information to me as I was having trouble saving the information in this format before today and it is needed for the final summative we have to hand in.

PDF writers can also be useful for creating a portfolio of the highlights of our work in this course, which is necessary to submit. Having a PDF writer will make it simple to compile all the work together and make it accessible to virtually anybody.

Sleep Deprevation Meets Malnutrition--You've got summatives!

This blog has been neglected lately due to the work I've been constantly doing on my business summative. The business is well on its way, which is a very pleasant thought considering how much work has gone into it. I have tackled stage 1 and have completed a logo and business cards for my business as well. Currently we have to be focusing on creating a brochure for our business and a website to go along with it. All my creativity seems to be needed to accomplish any of these tasks but it makes the job a lot better than having to do something dull.

There isn't much more that I can say right now as there is a lot of work to be done and a very small time frame to fit it all in. A taste of the life that awaits us? Oh well...it's always best to remember that all this effort will result in something beneficial!

Selling Ice to Eskimos...

Advertising is an important part of running a business. No matter what service or product your company is providing, it is effort wasted if the consumers don't hear about it. Getting the information to your consumers in an interesting and bold way is the goal of any advertisement. Creative ideas need to be put together, keeping in mind the audience that is being targetted.

Our job is to create a brochure for our businesses using Microsoft Publisher. Microsoft Publisher is part of Microsoft Office but needs to be bought separately from the other programs included in it. It is used predominantly for print documents (i.e. flyers, brochures, newsletters etc) but can be utilized for creating web sites as well.

This will be a good program to add to the ones I already have knowledge of and I hope I will be able to present a convincing advertisement. I'm currently unsure of what I'm going to usefor the assignment but I have to keep the consistency of my business all throughout.

Selling my business to people is very much like selling ice to eskimos...and it's time I gained that ability.

Dealing with Formal Matters

We've started looking at some rules and laws that will apply to us when we register our business with the province of Ontario. There are many regulations that a sole proprietorship is subject to, and we need to be aware of them. Below is a summary of some basic things to keep an eye out for.

The first issue is registration. We need to register a name for our business, unless the name of our business is just our legal name. This rule applies to all those creating a business in Ontario. In our case, we must think of an original business name and we are not allowed to use just our legal name.


Often a licence will be required for your business, it will be issued either from the municipal, provincial or federal government. It is most often required to serve as an operating permit and give you the right to run your business. Government permission will be compulsory for many small businesses and to find out whether this is the case for your business, you are to contact the SBEC or the Canada-Ontario Business Center.

After all this has been taken care of, it is time to consider property and where the business will be located. Thsi is where zoning comes in. There are all sorts of regulations about buildings and locations, it is the responsibility of the business owner to make sure that the chosen location abides by these rules and takes the actiosn necessary to legally operate their business at the chosen location. It is also important to have insurance for this property to protect yourself and professional advice should be sought out to resolve this matter.

The last matter to be concerned with is business communications and advertising. A good business needs to have avid communications so that it can connect with the right people in the right way and keep everything linked. Computers and computer software and people who have knowledge of these are crucial to your business. Fax machines, photocopiers and etc should also be present and accessible to your business. Advertising also needs to be done appropriately and to suit your business. If your service of product is unheard of, no matter how wonderful it may be, nobody will buy it!

That's a basic summary of what we need to know. Today we also looked over the registration process for our business.

Electricity Jolt

Now that my business concept is final, it's time to design a logo and a name for the company. A logo helps identify a company or business in a simple and recognizable way. Logos are very important for marketing because they are easily remembered and often make a more significant impact than just the name of the company. Logos also create a consistency as they are always the same, but may have some variation from time to time.

There are some points that should be remembered when creating a new logo. A logo should be simple, obvious but arranged in a way that appeals to the customers. It should be relevant to the company it is being created for; for example, a company selling cat food should not have a dog as their logo. The logo can consist of basic shapes however, since those do not direct the mind to any specific idea.

Once you have a design for your logo it is critical to pay attention to colour. Colour isn't restricted to rules but both colour and black and white copies of your logo should be kept in mind due to the nature that it might be advertised in. Depending on where and the amount of money that is spent the logo may be presented in black and white or colour.

**I have chosen the name "Pin it" for my business after much thought, and search.

HTTP (Hyper Test Torture Protocol)

**Pssst, this is about our "surprise" test on Monday on Flash, Dreamweaver and HTML tags.

I'm going to take this time to review some basics on Flash, Dreamweaver and practice my HTML.

Flash
-Used for animation/encoding video files
- .FLA for Flash project
- .FLV for flash projects + you can view the video
- .SWF for final animations
- Keyframes mark movement in the animation
- Frame rate = the number of frames per second
- Standard frame rate for theatre 25/s, and for internet (Youtube) 12/s.
- Motion Tweens: Allow the user to move an object without filling in every specific frame.
- Shape Tweens: Allow the user to change the shape of an object gradually without filling in every specific frame.

Dreamweaver
- Used to create webpages
- Simple to use as HTML coding is created for you.
- Three views to remember: Code(Only HTML), Design(Only Webpage), Split(Half code, half design)

Since I haven't really gone over FTP in my blog yet, I'll take this chance to review it as well:

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

FTP is probably the simplest name out of all the protocols we've learned about recently. File transfer protocol has been named accurately and it does exactly what it's called. It transfers files over the internet and it can also be used to upload files onto the internet using a server. This is the most basic way to explain FTP and probably the easiest to understand as well.

Now to practice HTML tags!

Bold
Italic
Bold&Italic

Align Left

Align Centre

Align Right

TEST TEXT

Paragraph Spacing

Paragraph Spacing

Paragraph Spacing

Single/Line Break


Single/Line Break

That shall be the end of this very strange looking post of mine...

Making My Mark

Lately we've been smoothly moving through the process of creating our own business. Our first few tasks are to come up with a Business Concept and a Rough Budget for the Business. I have decided to work with the Customized buttons business. For the concept we'll have to include:
-The Main Idea of the business
-The Major Costs involved
- Income
- Obstacles and
- Viability

The Budget needs to go over the different types of expenses needed to start and run your business including:
-Capitol
-Consumable
-Operations

After all this has been taken care of, it is time to consider property and where the business will be located. This is where zoning comes in. There are all sorts of regulations about buildings and locations, it is the responsibility of the business owner to make sure that the chosen location abides by these rules and takes the actions necessary to legally operate their business at the chosen location. It is also important to have insurance for this property to protect yourself and professional advice should be sought out to resolve this matter.

The last matter to be concerned with is business communications and advertising. A good business needs to have avid communications so that it can connect with the right people in the right way and keep everything linked. Computers and computer software and people who have knowledge of these are crucial to your business. Fax machines, photocopiers and etc should also be present and accessible to your business. Advertising also needs to be done appropriately and to suit your business. If your service of product is unheard of, no matter how wonderful it may be, nobody will buy it!

That's a basic summary of what we need to know so far.

--Amna