• Gain an understanding of business information systems with a focus on system development
• Understand the phases of system development life cycles
• Understand the differences between traditional system development methodologies like Waterfall and new agile object-oriented methods
• Understand and perform basic techniques of data modeling using entity relationship diagrams and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)
• Create process models to document the processing requirements of a business system using UML
• Create UML object models
• Understand computer-aided systems engineering (CASE) technology usage for information and process modeling.
• Understand "Best Practices" of client interface design
• Understand the genesis of project management and its importance to improving the success of information technology projects
• Understand the tools and techniques of project management such as:
  • Project selection methods
  • Work breakdown structures
  • Network diagrams, critical path analysis, and critical chain scheduling
  • Time and Cost estimates
  • Earned value management
  • Motivation theory and team building

Video-chip producer Novafora has agreed to buy once high-flying chip maker Transmeta for $255.6 million in cash, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Novafora is in stealth mode and won’t make its first product until next year, according to The San Jose Mercury News.

Transmeta was known a decade ago for its Crusoe chip that was considered a rival to Intel’s Pentium, but its products were not widely adopted. More recently it has been licensing its intellectual property for chips requiring extremely little power to former rivals. Transmeta also announced Monday it has entered a non-exclusive patent license agreement with AMD.

Novafora CEO Zaki Rakib told the Mercury News the company wants that low-power chip technology for its digital video chips.

SPONSOR: IBM Reduce Data Storage by 80% Green Business is Good Business

EMC Targets Consumers with Spinoff

EMC is spinning off two of its recent acquisitions into a separate company focused on helping consumers store and protect their personal digital information, whether that be family photos, financial records or whatever.
The Boston Herald reports it will be called Decho, for digital echo. It will combine the personal backup product of Mozy, acquired in

T-Mobile is gradually putting veils off from its secret line of products for holiday season. The latest to come from T-Mobile’s camp is Samsung Gravity. As was reported earlier, Samsung Gravity has arrived on T-Mobile on Nov17.

The handset has a slider form factor and is a perfect solution for text messaging.

Samsung Gravity is now available at T-Mobile retail locations in aqua and white or lime and grey color schemes. Loaded with multiple features, Gravity includes support for MMS, email support, video messaging and built in instant messaging. Among instant messaging clients, it sports AOL instant messenger, ICQ, Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger.
Also included in the handset is Stereo Bluetooth, a music player with supports for MP3, AAC and AAC+ audio files, microSD card slot for memory expansion up to 4GB and 1.3-megapixel camera with 4x zoom and video capture.

Samsung Gravity is available at T-Mobile retail stores for $49.99 with a two-year service agreement.

Rumor has it over at TechCrunch that Apple is working on some type of search engine.

If you think about it, the idea is not so far-fetched: Apple’s Safari browser has 6-7% market share and currently uses Google exclusively as the search engine for both the standard and mobile versions on the iPhone and iPod. Through the maligned MobileMe, Apple has a suite of personal productivity tools that bring more traffic to them on a daily basis, which means there is a lot of searching going on without a lot of monetization on Apple’s part, according to Michael Arrington.

Plus, there’s the Android factor.

Google’s Android-y competition to the iPhone is not to be ignored. Arrington notes that Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who sits on Apple’s board of directors, usually sits out of discussions involving Apple’s mobile strategy.

Big hole in the theory, though: if, in fact, Apple were building a search engine, where are all the search expert and engineer hires? No one’s losing any bodies to Apple…yet.

Plus, Apple is on the receiving end of considerable fees from Google for search marketing money earned from Safari — and without an advertising business, too, Google would still be relied upon.

So it looks like there’s no full-scale search momentum going on at Apple — but for a company built around innovation and UI (and marketing), perhaps this is working toward a new interface built around search.

What do you think?

Fastest all-around desktop we've tested to date; first PC to hit 60 frames per second on our high-resolution Crysis test; pristine build quality.

The bad: Costs roughly the same as a year of undergraduate in-state tuition.

The bottom line: Falcon Northwest's latest Mach V provides a model for the coming trends in high-end computing. From the latest Intel CPU, to solid-state storage, to copious amounts of memory, there's lot to admire about his PC. You will also have to pay for it, which unfortunately will thwart all but the most well-off gamers and enthusiasts.

The slim tower PC trend makes perfect sense to us. For those who only need a basic desktop, why bother with a clunky midtower design?

Each of these trimmed-down PCs will provide all you need to get online, create documents, and play around with your digital media. And all but two of these units (bad show, Slimline and Inspiron) invite you to bring them into your living room and connect directly to your television via an HDMI output.

None of these sub-$1,000 desktops is a multimedia powerhouse, so forget about watching HD video, 3D gaming, or intensive editing. But for the basics, in a small, easy-to-like package, these slim tower desktops have a lot of appeal.