Unlike traditional online courses that charge a fee, limit enrollment and provide credit or certification, Moocs (massive open online courses) are usually free or low cost and can host hundreds of  thousands global participants.  Although MOOC have been around for years in the form of collective techie learning gatherings, participation in 2012 has ballooned at a rapid pace likened to FaceBook in its heyday.  According to The Year of the MOOCarticle in the New YorkTimes, edX, a nonprofit start-up backed by Harvard and MIT, had 370,000 registrants in the fall of its first official courses. This paled in comparison to the amount of students that Courseraattained in its first year of online learning opportunities, 1.7 million!

Will MOOCs Replace education as we know it?

Like any new trend, massive participation in online classes has its challenges. Lynda Weinman has ample experience when pointing out that they are by no means a replacement for formal education.  As a former digital animator, special effects designer and classroom college teacher, Linda paved the path for an earlier version of MOOC education in the mid 90’s when she founded Lynda.comas an aide to her own students. Over four million students and 2,200 courses later she’s confident when clarifying that many of the collegespartnered with Lynda.com use the tutorials as added features to their existing courses.  When asked in an interview with ReadWriteBuilders, if high technical companies look at online programs in terms of advancement as a supplement to traditional education or as a way for people to further their careers, Lynda feels that “it’sjust one example of something that you can do to enhance your attractiveness to potential employers. But [it’s also important to have] a portfolio and body of work, references that actually work out, showing that you had success in the past.”

MOOC Benefits:

One of the most recent additions to the iPhone is the Photo Editor, directly in the iPhone. Added in the update that came from Apple over the summer, this new photo editor brings efficiency, and simplicity to photo editing, right in your phone. If you have a photo that you just took a moment ago of you with your friends, and you want to edit some features before posting it on a social networking site, it becomes simpler with this new addition, right in the Photos Application.

Open up the Photos application, and tap on a picture you would like to edit. Once your picture comes up, tap in the top right on the button named “Edit.” A user interface that deals with editing will show up, and you are ready to rock and roll. First off, many times we take pictures at weird angles, we take them sideways, upside down, to the right, to the left, and our phone doesn’t recognize them. In the bottom left, you will see an arrow that is pointing counter clockwise; this is the button that you want to press if you want to flip your picture around to the correct orientation. Keep in mind that this flips counter clockwise, and it doesn’t matter if you pass the orientation that you wanted. Just keep flipping!

Next up is the simple enhance tool. Sometimes colors get drowned out if we don’t have the right lighting in our pictures, and makes the photo look dull, and dreary. You don’t want your colors to look dull and dreary while you are celebrating your trip to New York and seeing Times Square! Tapping on the button that looks similar to a magic wand, your picture will begin to look brighter and fuller. With the tap of a button, the iPhone detects what points in the picture is, as we said earlier, “dull, and dreary” and enhances those colors to their predicted colors, if the light was in the correct intensity. However, if you are dissatisfied with the outcome of the enhance tool, if your picture is not handled well by the phone, you are able to tap on the wand again, and remove your auto enhance.

In the rare case of red eye in your picture, the new photo editor has a solution. Moreover, a one-tap solution. With a simple tap on the red eye correction tool, between the crop tool, and the auto-enhance tool, you bring up a screen where you are now able to tap anywhere on your photo where red eye exists, and remove it. As simple as that. Remember when you had to do crazy dragging, selection, and odd stunts to remove red eye? Not any more.

Computers. They’re a part of our everyday lives. Most of us couldn’t imagine living a day without them. We use them for school, work, and fun and use them to stay connected to those we love and care about. Since the invention of the web cam, millions of us use webcams to communicate with loved-ones and business contacts far away.

Web camera use has leveled the playing field for business entrepreneurs and given teenagers a fun way to chat with friends. However, solid citizens aren’t the only ones who make use of this popular modern technology. Recently, there have been reports of criminals using a type of webcam spy hack to insert themselves unseen into the living rooms and bedrooms of millions of unsuspecting users.

The Webcam Spy Hack

The most popular way criminals gain access to your webcam is through innocent-looking emails. You may receive an e-card from someone in your contacts list. When you click on it, you’re directed to another website to view the e-card. While you’re listening to music and watching animated puppies scroll across the screen, a Trojan horse is silently installed into your computer’s hard drive.

As part of our Java Tutorials program, we will list a number of interview questions to aid in a better understaing of Java and J2EE and, hopefully, provide a greater likelihood of getting a job.  Let us begin with the basics:

1. What is meant by J2EE?

J2EE is an abreviation for Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition

2.  What is the purpose of J2EE?

The purpose of J2EE is to provide a component based platform in a multitier application model with transaction management, web services and reusable component support.

3.  What is the tier structure of the typical J2EE application?

A typical J2EE application consists of the following tiers/machines:  the client machine (browser/non-browser application), the J2EE server (an application server such as Oracle, JBoss, GlassFish, Tomcat) and a database.