Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
by James Connors
James Connors
Contact Information
- Email: jconnors@bu.edu
- Phone: (207) 712-1674
- Mail: P.O. Box 15054 Boston, MA 02215
General Information
James Connors is a Junior in the School of Management at Boston University. He is currently majoring in Business Administration with a dual concentration in Finance and Management Information Systems. This semester, I have played the role of the “tech guy” and have supported the technical portions of the project. I’ve also built our website, mailing lists, and helped my teammates with their IT tasks. I think it’s interesting that I’m been a part of a Search and Rescue (SAR) team through Civil Air Patrol for the last five years, I’ve spent a month in Australia, and I was accepted into the Boston University Management Internship Program in Dublin.
Hemisphere Security(Team Website)
http://www.hemispheresecurity.com
Favorite Links
http://www.collegetechcentral.com (My Podcast)
http://www.flock.com (A really cool browser everyone should check out)
Monday, October 8th, 2007
by James Connors
So here’s the thing, college kids are lazy and very NOT-proactive about finances. Mint, a new web-based financial tool, makes it easy to bring into one place every financial account that a student is likely to have. This means you can pull in your credit cards, your bank accounts, loans and investments coming soon. They say they support over 1500 different financial institutions/services and it’s all as easy simply logging in.
I have a couple different bank accounts and a couple credit cards that I like to keep tabs on. Each account has a web-based interface where I can go online and check balances, reconcile accounts, or even pay bills. To use them with Mint, all I need to do is provide my log in credentials for those services. Within minutes, Mint has grabbed the account balances and recent transactions for those accounts and starts building a clear, central picture of your financial situation.
In the main screen, you get an overview of your bank accounts, the available money as well as the available credit. Furthermore, you’ll see your credit card balances and a debt to cash indication. This would be amazing enough but then Mint goes ahead and computes some very interesting information. First, they’ll establish your spending patterns and display them on a running basis where you can compare your current spending with average spending. They’ll then bring you alerts that you set for low balances, bills about to come due, major transactions, and even when checks clear. These can be sent via email or mobile alert to your phone. Finally, Mint brings some interesting offers to your door.
Every website needs to make some money and this is how Mint monetizes their service to pay the bills. By analyzing your spending trends and current financial situation, Mint presents a number of offers that can always save you money for which they may or may not give you a commission. Different offers provide Mint with different compensation or none at all but they pledge to always display offer that will help save you, the user, money even if they aren’t getting anything out of it.
I was so excited by this service that I had to write an article about it. Each of you should do some research and make sure that you’re ready to trust some websites with your information and then sign up and add some Mint to your diet!
Monday, October 8th, 2007
by James Connors
It has been far too long for this blog to get updated. It’s true, weeks and months have moved past and settled without a single update, not a word. I kept promising so many things and didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry about that everyone, I feel badly. That all said, I want to show you a couple of the projects that I’ve been working on.
Number 1: SCHOOL!
Some of you know that I’m in Boston University School of Management’s Cross Functional Core Curriculum program. For those of you who don’t know what this innovative program is, let me fill you in. CORE, as it’s known, is a comprehensive class sequence that integrates four different classes together as you work in a team towards building full business plan. What constitutes an integrated program? Well, let me put it this way: I take four classes that are in different subjects but the topics, the goals, of each class is to provide you with more information about your business plan. Marketing, Operations Management, Finance, and Information Systems classes feed us bits of information that we must assimilate and coalesce into a complete and manageable business plan.
My team is working on a product known, right now, as the Portable Laptop Lock. Without going into details right now, let me say that seven other teammates and I have worked countless hours designing, developing, marketing, building, and all the other applicable verbs, for this one little product that culminates in 30% of our grade. Which is silly since we spend 80% of our time on the team project. It’s unique in that having one common thread throughout the course gives examples in real time, something solid and tangible to tie the business concepts to that we’re working on.
Our product will be able to be found on our team website at http://www.hemispheresecurity.com where we’ll be able to show off what it takes to be a real presence in e-commerce.
Number 2: College Tech Central
My other baby is my new podcast, College Tech Central. But, James, what is a podcast? A podcast is very similar to a blog, sometimes called an audio blog. I first got turned onto the idea over the summer when I was using a MacBook Pro provided by my office at ISPS. It was so easy to play in the digital lifestyle. Unfortunately, I didn’t get out any shows before I had to turn the computer back out. Macs make it so easy to build a podcast and produce and distribute the entire system. Well, I finally got it up and going. If you run over to the website you can see some of the great content that we’re putting out over there. I’m recording Information Systems lectures from Professor Shankar, with permission, as a student study resource.
Once the class winds down a bit, I’ll be able to produce a more robust podcast that brings together so many more bits. College Tech Central, Technology on Campus, is your home for technology news, tips, tricks, reviews, and secrets where we demystify computers and make it easy for students and young professionals. Tune in sometime soon for some great content.
Well, that’s all for now, everyone. Thanks so much for surfing over and taking a look. I hope that you bear with me as I try to get more work done and still maintain these blog posts at least on a weekly basis. Until next time, take care!