IC3 Key Applications

In this episode, Wes and Ronnie explore the world of working with applications. They start with how to obtain applications as well as identifying various types of common applications.

[MUSIC] Welcome back to another exciting episode here ITPro TV. I'm your host Wes Bryan and in today's episode we're coming back with more IC3 information. And that's right, today we're gonna be looking at working with applications. And joining me in the studio today is none other than Mr. Ronnie Wong. Ronnie, how are you doing, sir? >> I'm doing great as we continue on to take a look at the idea of working with key applications. Somebody that is just beginning the environment in terms of working with the computer, we need to understand of course the idea of working with applications. The majority of times as you begin your career in working with computers, you do not tend to work with the operating system directly. Don't get me wrong you'll use an operating system every day, but you don't tend to manipulate the operating system or change it on a daily basis. It really runs in the background and allows us to do the interaction that we want to. But on a daily basis, and even on an hourly basis at times, you will be working directly with individual applications depending on what you're actually doing, and that means you need to spend a little bit of time and understanding of course, the idea of applications and working with them. Now, when we start talking about the idea of working with applications. We're gonna show a few things, but really, today is more of a discovery of talking about how in the world do we get applications so that we can begin to work with them. And, then we want to talk about some of the key applications, as well, and then talk about the installation, as well as the uninstallation. And even a few different things that we have to worry about when we do get applications such as licensing agreements that we have to worry about as well. So we're gonna be spending a bit of time in going through several different categories and the idea of getting the applications as well and that's what we want to start off to take a look. Now, at one point in time. When we talk about the notion here of getting applications. There used to only be one way. And that was, you would go to your local retail store that sold software programs. And you would pretty much pick the software program that you needed. It would come in a cardboard box and the box would look as impressive as could be. It would tell you all the details and on that box a lot of that of course was a nice fancy cover but what you also need to look for of course was specifications such as the idea here of the minimum requirements needed to run that application on your computer. So you do want to pay attention to things like that when you go and take a look. Now when you start to talk about that then there's a couple of different things that we also need to know in today's world as well that will really help us out. You don't have to go to a particular retail store anymore to purchase applications. To tell you the truth, you really don't have to actually do much at all, except for being able to get access to the Internet anymore to get applications. And today's application market is so diverse because applications are not only dealt with on the desktop computer and laptop computers but also on mobile devices too where we tend to work with them as well. So we need to understanding at least in those context, how do we normally get applications if we are to do so? So we're gonna take a look at all these features, and show you, of course then, how to obtain different applications. >> Now, Ronnie, I've grabbed my mobile phone. I've decided that I need some kind of application. I'm not sure exactly what application. Where am I gonna start looking when it comes to acquiring those applications like you had mentioned? >> Well, when it comes down to the idea of working with a smartphone, you've really got to actually determine, well, two things here, okay? First and foremost you need to determine what smartphone system are you using. And by smartphone system, normally today it kinda breaks down into one of three different smartphones, right? We tend to either have some type of iPhone, okay, from Apple Computers. Or tend to run some type of Android-based device, and those have many different hardware vendors out there. But they all support what we call Android. And then, of course, there is the Windows mobile phone as well. Those are three different types of operating systems that also will allow you to install applications on them, but it also means that you have to know how to get access to them to do so. Now I've got an example of really the idea of the Android, but we can talk about the other ones here to help us out, too. When it comes down to things like smartphones, they do not run the standard applications that you normally find running on regular desktop computers. These are designed to be more streamlined, they're designed to be much more efficient. They are not designed to be very powerful types of systems that or types of applications that allow you to get a [INAUDIBLE] because most of them are actually working on a screen that's let's say five and a half inches, six inches maybe overall as a rectangle to be able to work on that. Don't get me wrong, can you accomplish a lot, definitely you can but overall they're not actually designed to actually be one of these powerful applications that eat up a bunch of system resources. They're really designed to be very efficient applications. So let's take for an example then, that you have an Android device well, what do you end up doing? Well, let me show you on my screen. I've got a piece of software here that's going to allow me to connect. And I've got my particular smartphone connected to this, so that we can see it just a little bit better. So on this particular Samsung machine. You can see right here. This is pretty much what my phone. And actually, this is the dirt road that I live on as the background. But here, when you start to take a look, there's a couple of things that we want to take a look at. But when it comes down to obtaining the idea of applications there's really one central repository for us to be able to take a look at and that is what they call the Google Play Store, okay? Now, usually on your Android device there'll be standard icons that are actually loaded on there when you go ahead and you enter in your user account that you'll have to create at the beginning. And, from that point, it will connect you to these different places, and there it is. I am now connected into the Google Play Store. Almost said Gloogle. Google Play Store. And, it's here that you can see some of the different applications that are actually available for you to be able to download. Some of these will actually have cost associated with them. Some of them are actually for free. So most of the ones that I see right here are actually for free. But I'm pretty sure if I scroll enough, I can end up finding some that actually have of different cost. Okay. So you gotta actually take a look around and see what you really need. >> Ronnie, I've been to one of these screens before and one of the things it warned me, it said it may contain additional purchases in order to get the full user experience, what does that mean for us? >> Well, the way that this actually ends up working a lot of times, when we start talking about getting some type of application from the Play Store or from any store is that they have what to call In-App purchases. Now, that term In-App purchase may mean that they'll give you some functionality of that particular application for free, but if you want to access more functionality. They tell you that you have to upgrade to the pro edition, which means you've already gotten the application but now you need to pay a little bit more and get access to the pro edition instead. Then all those other features will be opened up. Now most of these applications that we're talking about they can actually run very cheaply from maybe 99 cents, but some of them can be incredibly expensive as well. Don't overlook that as far as a purchase goes, okay? Now when you start talking about purchasing them, of course there's a couple of things. Let me show you here the couple of things that you have to worry about You might be saying, well, if they're all free, do I need to do anything else? Well, once you set up your account on your smartphone, really one of the only other things that you might have to do is, let me see if I can select that. And that little hamburger button that you saw in the upper right-hand corner, what you want to do is you want to scroll down here to where you have some options here. And let's see if I can zoom in. Okay. One is your account and notice that you have redeem and send a gift and different things here. So on this idea of the account if I can select that, well here, let me scroll out, and notice you might have to add in a payment method, and usually this involves a credit card of some sort of. Now I'm not going to click on mine so you can see all the information. But, you get the idea here that you do have to get that set up for you when you are actually connecting to do this. Now, the other system that's also out there and let me see if I can scroll in. That way we get an example of both here is inside of the Microsoft world that we call the Apple app store, the app store itself, okay. The app store will pretty much show up like this. And what you'll also end up seeing is that you will have, of course, the different apps. So like right here, you can see some of these are actually gonna be expensive. So here's one for $13, and it's a pinball game. That doesn't sound super expensive, but you start adding them up after you click on these things. Here's excuse me, here is one that says 24.99. So, you can see where it's actually starting to get a little bit more. Here's one that's $30, 34.99. Here's one another one in here 45 bucks. So you can see where now all of a sudden these things can get expensive. You still do the same thing. You go to the App Store, whether you're on your iPhone. Here I'm actually on just a Macbook Pro. And you can of course download these applications and pay for them and the same thing you stop to set up an account and still gonna charge you for. >> So, Ronnie, you know, you talked about the old method that we used actually get into a car and drive to a store by a box and we will install our one piece of software on let's say, a desktop for instance. Now Ronnie, you're saying there's a benefit. I can actually go multi platform in some circumstances with these applications. So you can buy it once and have the potential to maybe use it on more than one device? >> It depends on that licensing agreement, whether or not it allows it to do that. So here for Apple, yes you definitely can. If you buy it for your iPhone, you can also, of course, have it download, even to your MacBook Pro as long as it works and does what it needs to do. It will actually have that function for you. So some of them will allow you to do that. Some of them may say look, maybe not. And then, of course, there's also the Windows, they just call it the Windows Store right, if I remember correctly. The Windows Store presents something fairly similar but instead you'll see different tiles instead of actually individual icons like what we're seeing here. And they will either have a cost associated with them or they would be free for you to be able to download. And then once they're download they will show up in your start menu and you should also be able to use that to do everything that you want to, but obtaining the apps, not difficult but you do need to know where you can obtain them from. >> Ronnie, I'm not sure if anybody's out there's familiar with my typing abilities, but you are talking about in the context of obtaining an application. What happens if I accidentally maybe type the wrong button, and I delete this application? Let's say, for instance, in your example here. The [INAUDIBLE], well, I almost said iTunes. But the app store here. Do I have the ability to reobtain that? Or have I pretty much just lost it? >> Usually, once you've actually purchased that. You should be able to go back and get it on that device again and it should be perfectly fine. Remember that what you're doing is you're really only downloading a copy of it, but you did purchase it for it's use, so that way they always have a copy and you don't have to store a copy of it on your smaller devices here. It's always available to you as long as you have Internet access, and that's kind of the key when you start talking about obtaining those applications. Now, are those the only places that you can get them from? Definitely not. So, there's also a lot of times where you might find out something that, it doesn't exist in one of those two places. Well, that's when you have to make a judgment of whether or not you should do this, or whether you shouldn't do this, and that does come down to a judgement call. Most of the time as far as beginners go, I recommend that you don't install anything that doesn't come from at least the official stores instead. As you get more advanced and you become a little bit more trusting in these places that you can download apps from you definitely can, and then that way, it will give you instructions on how to actually do that and get it installed onto your device sometimes too. And so you do need to pay attention, but overall though, we're not going that much in depth. But just realize that there are other ways that you can get applications on there. But the best way of course is to go through those stores. Usually once you click on it and you accept whatever the price is going to be, you normally end up downloading. For example, in the app store itself from Apple, it goes and tells you it's downloading and then it tells you it's installing. Then when it's done, it tells you, hey, you've completed the download and it's installed and all you have to do is go and run it, and then you're off and ready to go. Inside of that Google Play Store, it normally just tells you it's finished downloading, and it's installing. And, then it's ready for you to use. Sometimes, it's running in the background already. It just depends on what you really want to do with it. But that purchase of that is actually going to be key, okay? So just remember that either it's going to be free or you're going to have to pay some money for it. But the way that you do that is by setting up and account. So just realize you'll probably either make a Google account or you'll probably end up making an Apple ID account. And the key here is remembering those account passwords. Don't lose them, as easy as it sounds, they tell you, just click here where it says forgot your password and you're ready to go, you'll find out something as fast as you can type that in and send you something, you're almost expecting this world for it, to be instantaneous. You got to enter all that stuff back in. And then it tells you, okay looks like everything is done. You try and log back in and it may work automatically and immediately sometimes. Sometimes if you're like me, it takes a good 30 minutes and finally after a little bit of time it's like, okay. It takes some time to get through the system. But what am I expecting? It to work immediately. So Just kind of realize you have to deal with that. Obtaining the application is really part of the battle, but the good thing is on smartphones, usually the installation and it working is probably all done and you don't have to worry. Now, on the desktop environment though, It can change up a little bit. Let's go to a Windows 7 machine that will really help us to understand this a little more. Now from Windows 7 I went ahead and I've downloaded a couple of pieces of freeware that we can actually use to show us a couple of different things. So over here on the left hand side on my screen, I downloaded two different applications, okay? Now, if I had actually purchase these, It would come on some type of media, whether it's on a USB flash drive or whether it's actually on something like a CD or a DVD disk and I would have to be able of course to run that and install it. But here I simply downloaded it off the Internet and then I can go ahead and double click on this and here's the first thing that we do need to pay attention to which is right here. All right, so on my screen I went ahead and I've downloaded a couple of different apps from the Internet. And I'm just gonna use, well, one of these to show the installation process on a desktop computer instead. So on this one down here, this one is actually called TFTPD32. You're probably like, what the heck is that? Don't worry about it. It's just an application that we are going to run. And in the Windows 7 environment, here's the first thing it's going to end up doing, okay? So, you can tell that this particular application was designed with this security feature in mind. Which gives us this user account control. And when we take a look it's saying, look, are you sure you really want to do this? Do you know that this is going to end up making some type of change to the computer system? Are you sure? And you simply go ahead and select Yes. And now this is what we want to take a look at as well, okay? Notice that this one says European Union Public Licence. But this is also something else that you may also see. Here in the United States we tend to call this the idea of the end user licensing agreement. Okay? In short EULA, the end user licensing agreement is another part of it. Now what is that about? That is about the legal right that that particular company or person that has produced this. They're saying what you can use this for, and what you shouldn't use this for. Now it doesn't mean that if you start using it for some of your own nefarious purposes, that they're going to come out and just bite you. No, it doesn't mean that they're sending the police after you immediately. But, it does mean that they can. And, that's the key on some of these. Now, when we get into this a little bit further and we've actually gotta, there's another exam that's coming along with the IC3. We can talk about this idea of the proprietary and the open source, I was trying to remember what those terms were, software. And it actually says a little bit more about those details. And normally this one right here, if you actually go through, and you can see that with the European one. Instead of actually calling that an EULA here they call it an EUPL instead. But it's the same functional idea that we're talking about. And this is just letting you know the legal requirements here, okay? That you have to understand as you go through this. >> Ronnie, is it fair to say with the U, PLL, let me see if I can say that again. >> [LAUGH] >> EUPL. I'm so used to calling it the EULA. That this is a legally binding contract and you can be either charged or held accountable with some kind of litigation. >> It is very possible. And that's the key is to understand that everything that's written here as you were to scroll through that, it's all written by, well, lawyers. And so, you have to understand that what they're telling you is, I do have the ability to do this if I need to. But here's what you can do with it, and here's what you shouldn't do with it. And so, they are just telling you that if they want to one day, they can come and get you, as far as bringing charges against you, if they choose to. So you're either going to agree or cancel, if you select Cancel, if we take a look at my screen again. If you select Cancel, it means, well, it's not going to install. You select I Agree, that means you agree to it. And then from that point on you can go ahead and take a look at the installation options and then select what you want to actually select here. Okay? So at this point I might go ahead and click Next and then I select Install. You can select a different path for the file to get installed, but I'm just going to leave it at its default and let it install. And you might say, why did you choose that file? Cuz it installs almost immediately here and you're not just watching a green bar go across the screen. And once that's done, I can click Close. And then, when I scroll back out. And let me show you one of the things that I did that changed the system that Windows 7 really doesn't like. It created this little desktop icon for us, a shortcut is also what it created. And also, modified something in that program file path. And said, look, you're actually installing something that's changing. Are you sure you want that as well? So that particular installation and the way that you can verify that it works is you simply double-click on it. And then it's telling me there's a couple of other things that it wants to do. This one wants to open up the firewall. So you might go, yes I want it to or no you don't. Well, you gotta make those decisions as well. Now on a desktop computer that you're using at work, it's not your choice, okay? Do not install something on there that is not going to be approved. But if you ever have a question about this, you do need to ask your IT support personnel. To say hey, I've just installed this program, is that okay or not? And let them tell you. >> Ronnie, you mentioned just a few minutes ago in this about knowing who you're downloading from. Is this right here what we see? A prime example, is it, to know and trust who it is that you are communicating. Because it could open some kind of security vulnerability? >> Well, it's a part of it, right? The very fact is that, yes, you should only download from trusted sources and that should be absolutely clear. But here is something that I'm just letting you know. This picker program is now saying, look, I need to request access through your firewall, and that's when you have to be careful. If you know that it's gonna do that, perfectly fine as long as you understand that. But it's not fine if you don't understand what that actually means. Don't do it. That's what it really means when it comes down to it, okay? So just realize that there's a couple of different things when you start talking about the installation of what has to go on when you start to see that as well. >> Ronnie, you started to scroll a little bit through to one of the application stores, if you will. And I know there's a few of them, and the first thing I did is I got lost in the sea of the mix. What application is what, what application does what? Can you help us out on there, helping us kinda know some rhyme from reason. And what all these different applications might fall into? >> Yeah, there's a bunch of different categories of applications that you need to be able to understand as you start working with computers. Now when it comes down to it, it breaks down into several kinda big categories here, and we're gonna go through some different examples of them. But the biggest category by far, since you're starting your work in the realm of computing is gonna be the idea of what we call business productivity applications. Now when you think about that, that sounds like a big long technical term, but it really isn't. If you think about the idea of business, it's software that you're gonna use during business and getting your job done. And then the idea of productivity is to make it much more efficient, and then of course it's software based. Now when you start thinking about some of these different types of business application products. Normally what that means is, there's actually several different products that allow us to actually be more efficient than the way we used to do things. So for example, let's talk about the idea of working with a typewriter today. Even though you and I might, because of working with a computer, we could see the translation back to a typewriter. But if somebody were to put a typewriter in front of us we would probably still feel a little bit lost in how to get started and how to do everything. And so our productivity wouldn't go up, okay? But in today's world we use things like word processors, that's a business productivity app, that allow us to actually be, well, more productive with our typing. Not only can we actually put words across on paper anymore, but we can change it and modify it and do several different things that we actually need to as well, okay? Along with that of course, is the idea of desktop publishing. It used to be at one point in time, if you ever set up a newsletter of some sort, and a manual style of everything that you did, it took a lot for that setup to actually work on a typewriter. And I know, cuz I used to do it manually when I was in college. I used to actually set one of these things up. These little newsletters that I had. But at the same time, it's not very productive. Well you can take that same word processor and make it make three columns if you want to. Make it flow from one page over to another page without you having to turn paper over and do a whole bunch of different things. As a news typist, typesetter would have to actually have to end up doing. So there's a lot of different things you can do there. And working with numbers. You might think about a spreadsheet program instead of using columnar pads that are out there. And then manually having to add up numbers. Most of these spreadsheet programs are fairly powerful in crunching numbers for you that you can use to help you to become much more efficient. Of course there's also presentation software as well as database programs. And we're gonna see a lot more of that business productivity in this particular key application exam test and series that we're doing. And we'll be spending a lot more time on each one of those types of applications that we've been talking about. So just realize that that is probably, by far, the one that's going to benefit you the most as you start working with computings. >> Ronnie, I've seen in some businesses where they have a lot of employees. I can't even remember sometimes a handful of numbers, my kids' birthdays. Now when you have a big business, right, or it could be a small business. And they have a lot of employees, how are we gonna keep track of all of that information? >> Well there's a lot of different ways that we can do that, and a lot of times it's specialized software or accounting software. And they even have very highly specialized software that may work only for that only one particular type of business. So don't just think that generic business productivity is all about just the things that we do everyday. For us, if we're just getting started, it will be. But as you become more and more specialized and working with your field in whatever you're doing. You'll find specialty applications that are out there that are really purpose driven, you'll end up seeing that. You work for a tax firm, you're gonna find tax software out there. You work for an accounting firm, you'll find special accounting software. You work for a team in which does a lot of sales, whether it's cold calling or anything else, you'll work with different types of customer management or resource management. No, what they call it, customer relations management, I couldn't remember what the word was. Customer relation management types of software that will be out there for you, and those are highly specialized. That's all done around the notion of productivity, getting you to work much more efficiently. Getting you to work better with the systems that are actually out there. And that's kinda the key category that we're gonna be spending a little bit more time and focus on. But there's other ones that are out there as well, okay? So when we start talking about the purpose driven types of apps, operating systems have been very good at doing this one thing, too, okay? They provide for you some functionality by taking a look at what they expect users will want to do when they run something like Windows 7 on their machines. And they provide for you some of it. They don't provide for you the most detailed nature of things so that you actually produce the most fantastic thing you've ever seen. But they provide for you at least a basic understanding of what has happened. For example, the idea of the Calculator feature that you can find inside of Windows. It's a basic calculator, but then they also added in the ability for you to change it in to a scientific calculator. They added a little bit more features to it. There are some things that are out there that are really designed for high end very specialized things. So let's take for an example the idea of photo editing. Now if you've seen somebody that's really good at it, and we have a marketing person here really good at working with something like Illustrator. And the other program that she runs, I don't remember what it is, but it allows us to essentially manipulate photos. Well, yeah, you can spend a lot of money on that, but you don't have to. Let me show you what I'm talking about on my screen, okay? So here on my computer, I went ahead and I downloaded a picture. And I tried to think of something that absolutely would be something nobody's really gonna get upset at, at least I hope not, okay? Which is a cute puppy, okay? So if I right click on that link right there where it says cutepuppy behind it, notice my third option here is Edit. And if I select that, well look at that, it actually brings up a picture of a cute puppy, okay, right there on the screen. At least I think it's cute, look at that, that thing's adorable, okay? >> Yeah, that's my dog by the way, I am thoroughly offended. >> [LAUGH] So there you go, this particular picture, though, well, it's all about editing the photo. Look, I can actually drag it out just a little bit, and in a moment here, it doesn't allow me to do it. Nevermind, so I can't actually drag that. Sometimes you actually get it where the image won't allow you to drag it out and expand it it any larger than it is. But then you can also be able to edit this in a couple of different ways. I can rotate the image, let's see if I can rotate that if I want to. Now notice that this is not anything that's what we would consider the biggest idea here, okay, of saying that this a full photo editing suite. But notice the basic features are here for us, and we can even go in now and, let me see if I can do this. Just make a simple, at least I believe simple, here, meme. So everybody loves memes, so why not? Oops, I thought I chose the right color, I'm hoping I did. Let's try a color number 2 here, all right, so we'll try it this way anyways, all right. So I can't believe it's, It's only Monday! There we go, and let me change the font size here so we can see it a little bit better. Let me select it then change it. I was hoping that that would allow me to change the font color, but apparently I can't actually change the font color. There we go, let's try that. Yeah, that worked incredibly well, so, but you can see here that there it is, we've got at least this picture. And so now you can see where you might find applications like that, and there's plenty of them out there. And a lot of them actually are based on what they actually do as well, okay? So when you're working with an image like this that's generally a picture that you have available to you. When you start to do this, this is what we call a some type of bitmapped image, okay? And it's also what is called raster graphic as well. Now that idea of the raster graph means that there's only so many pixels that are on here. And as you continue to stretch something out, the computer will try and fill in those gaps and try and make it look like a single image again. But it's really guessing what that image is actually going to be, and so it will get blurry. And if you go ahead and squish it in, it will actually squeeze out some of that and still maintain that picture as much as possible. And then when you try and pull it back out into the original size, it tries and it fills it back in again. The more often you do that, the blurrier the picture is going to get. And so you have that ability, but just kinda realize you do have to be careful with things like the raster types of images. But I also want to show you something else, here, too, let me just take this as an example. Okay, now here, on this one, it's not so much, does it really matter, but I'm just gonna put it on this picture right here so that we can see it a little bit better. On this one, though, it doesn't do that, regardless of what size it is, it's not gonna lose any image. Or anything else that we have here, as far as pixels go. And that's because this is what is considered a vector graphic instead. A vector graphic says, look, I'm not actually storing exactly where every pixel is. It's actually doing it based off of a mathematical calculation on what you do. So this allows you to be able to draw, and expand, and collapse, and do everything that you want to. But you will generally be dealing with, essentially, those two types of elements when you start working with something like a picture type of graphic creation in anything that you do as well. There's also things like web editing or web authoring page, web authoring software which I can't say [LAUGH]. Types of software out there that allow you to create a webpage, allow you to manipulate, and do things like this as well. So there are a couple of different ones as far as categories out there. And this one is more specific to, like I said, more of the graphics type of element. I don't think that this is the most complicated one that's out there, but this is at least one of them that we can think about. But there's plenty more for us to take a look at. >> I was gonna say, Ronnie, it does look like we've got a lot more good information coming up. But judging by that clock it does look like we're gonna have to go into a part two. But before we do, Ronnie, do you have any additional words you'd like to put into that or are we gonna save that for part two?. >> Well we're just gonna take a look at more of these, so do be ready for that. Because it is encumbent upon us, as we start working, we're gonna see some different things. But overall, though, just be ready as you get into that work environment. You are going to be dealing with, well, some of these different applications. And understanding at least the basics is gonna help you out. >> All right, Ronnie, we appreciate you joining us in the studios here. But we're gonna go ahead and take the time and wrap up here at ITProTv. So signing off for ITProTV, I've been your host Wes Bryan. >> And I'm Ronnie Wong. >> And we'll see you next time. [SOUND]