eNews Volume 120 - 5/14/2009

The following announcement was posted on http://news.its.psu.edu/ on May 13, 2009.

"The next generation of Penn State's wireless service was released to students, faculty and staff on Monday this week. The new service (known as Penn State Wireless 2.0) is designed to incorporate cutting-edge authentication and encryption methods aimed at improving the level of security and performance for laptop and desktop users.

In contrast to Penn State's original wireless service, Wireless 2.0 no longer requires use of the University's Virtual Private Network (VPN), therefore enabling instant connection to Internet resources and consistent wireless coverage for roaming within and between 2.0-enabled campus buildings. Participants will also experience improved Web page response time and decreased “timeout” issues — plus the new service is easy to use and only requires a one-time download and configuration for wireless users to be up and running.

Because some kinds of laptop software may not yet be able to easily support the 2.0 service, the original 1.0 wireless service will continue to operate simultaneously with the new version for a period of two years (until June 30, 2011).

Penn State Wireless 2.0 is initially available within portions of University Park's Willard Plaza, Shortledge mall, and east sub-campus areas, until additional departmental requests for the service are received. Individuals who are in these Wireless 2.0 designated buildings (or noted surrounding areas) are encouraged to open up their laptops, search for the new "psu" network identifier, and try out the next generation of the Penn State Wireless service!

More information about each of Penn State's wireless services, including instructions and locations, is available at http://wireless.psu.edu//."

To read the rest of the article, please see http://news.its.psu.edu/story-1115.

Penn State Wireless 2.0 includes "Visitor Wireless" access. To read more about these options, go here: http://wireless.psu.edu/visitorwireless.html.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Registration is now open for the technology workshops offered over the summer by ITS Training Services. Popular topics include Access, Excel, Dreamweaver, Outlook, Flash, ANGEL, Web 2.0 technologies and many more. Some sessions are available via Adobe Connect so no travel is required. To view all available sessions, visit the online catalog at http://its.psu.edu/training/catalog/ and click "Summer 2009" in the black bar at the top of the page.

Jacki Weikert, Ron Matason, Peg Shuffstall, and Sherry Crum
The Educational Technologist Team

The conference day will begin at 8:00 a.m. at the Penn Stater with poster sessions and a continental breakfast. This year, we are again gratified by the outstanding quality and the breadth of topics that were proposed for the conference.  If you view the conference agenda (http://webconference.psu.edu/program), you will get some idea of the amazing things going on in the world of Web development at Penn State, as well as other higher education institutions. An overview of the conference includes 24 sessions falling into six tracks in the general topics of Usability, Accessibility, Standards, Penn State Services/Higher Ed Future Directions, Web Project and Information Management, Social Networking Integration, and much more. A delicious lunch buffet will be included.

Once again a highlight for conference attendees will be a Town Meeting. The conference will host the town meeting with our invited speakers from other Higher Education Institutions and our own Christian Vinten-Johansen. A description of the town meeting may be found at http://webconference.psu.edu/keynote.  This year, you may submit questions in advance and/or vote on questions submitted by others by going to http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/questions/PSUWeb09.  This tool will allow for the most pertinent questions to be discussed during this lively meeting based on your feedback.

To learn more and to register, visit the conference Web site at:

http://webconference.psu.edu/

Registration deadline is May 29.

Patti Fantaske, Information Technology Specialist, Consulting and Support Services, Information Technology Services

County servers have UPS (uninterruptible power supply) battery backup devices from APC. A typical battery should last for three to six years. Every now and then, these batteries will fail and Support receives a question on what to do when the 'replace battery' indicator light appears.

If your APC UPS unit is still under warranty (most of these batteries had a one year warranty), you will need to contact APC either via phone or their on-line chat service. They will need to walk through some troubleshooting steps before they can authorize repair or replacement. You'll need to provide the model number and serial number. Both are located on the rear of the unit on a white sticker.

Contact info for APC: http://www.apc.com/support/

Note:  If you contact APC...they have trade-in programs so you aren't stuck with the old unit. You do NOT need to get a larger unit, but the trade-in program leads you that way.

If the battery is no longer under warranty, the web page below will guide you through the steps to buy one from the company directly - or you may have a preferred vendor locally that you'd rather buy from - your choice!

http://www.apc.com/tools/upgrade_selector/index.cfm

Please use the Upgrade Selector link to enter your own Model # to find the correct replacement battery cartridge. But, if you have an APC Smart UPS 750, Model # DLA750, you can get the APC Replacement Battery Cartridge #48.

The Computer Store at PSU also carries some UPS models as well as replacement battery cartridges. They even offer free shipping. You may want to check what they have available. Click this link (http://computerstore.psu.edu/) and then from the Hardware drop-down menu choose Power. You can browse either the UPS Backups or UPS batteries.

Also, the APC UPS unit has an easy to replace hot-swappable battery tray. Battery replacement is a safe procedure, isolated from electrical hazards. You may leave the server on to replace the battery in the APC UPS unit.

Deb Sinkus, IT Specialist

The Workbench service from Penn State's Information Technology Services (ITS) group offered faculty, staff, and students hardware evaluation and software problem resolution for their PERSONAL machines. This service did not provide support for departmental machines.

The following announcement was posted on http://alerts.its.psu.edu/ on May 13, 2009. For the most current information regarding this alert, please see http://alerts.its.psu.edu/alert-1108.

"In order to provide extended (24 x 7) Help Desk services for the Penn State community, Information Technology Services (ITS) plans to decommission Data Recovery Services and the ITS Workbench on June 1. Personnel from these offices will then be transferred to the Wagner Help Desk location. Adding personnel to this location will enable the University to better address around the clock needs of students, faculty and staff - as well as meet the growing demand for encryption, security, ANGEL, and other types of consultation expertise.

ITS plans to work closely with Workbench and Data Recovery Services customers to ensure the transition runs smoothly and that any current needs are fully addressed. If you have a computer under repair at either location, please be assured that your work request will still be completed on schedule. However, the two offices will no longer accept new work orders, after May 15th.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the decommissioning process, please submit your questions via E-mail to helpdesk@psu.edu."

Note: The College of Ag Sciences IT group will continue to work with faculty and staff in our College as we have in the past on hardware evaluation and software problem resolution for College owned machines.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Steve Williams, Senior Photographer in Ag Communications and Marketing, publishes a blog called Theoretical Agriculture. According to his description on the blog, "Theoretical Agriculture is a tool I use between assignments to sustain an ongoing exploration of Penn State and the College of Ag Sciences."

Here are links to his most recent entries. The first blog entry has some great photos. Be sure to check it out.

April 24, 2009: Green Walls, Orchids and Other Cute Little Things
April 14, 2009: A Big Crane Appears at the Arboretum

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Adobe shipped a critical security update to its Adobe products on May 12, 2009 that addresses a vulnerability that can cause the application to crash and allow an attacker to take control of the affected system.

Note: To determine the version of any of the above applications, open the Adobe program. Then from the Help menu choose About Adobe, (name of program). You should see the version listed in a new box. Then, you can click anywhere on this box to close it.

The current version of the Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader is version 9.1.1. If you have earlier versions of Adobe Acrobat Professional, version 7 or 8, Adobe has released 7.1.2 and 8.1.5 updates as well.

Action Required: Ag IT recommends that College of Ag Science faculty and staff update any Adobe products to their current version.

You can view this IT Tech Alerts blog post for steps on updating these Adobe programs:

Updates for Adobe Reader 9 and Adobe Acrobat Professional 7, 8, & 9 Are Available

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

A SharePoint Document Library is a place where team members can create, collect, update, and manage files. From within a document library attributes of each document (such as file name, file type, last modified date and last modified user) are available. Typical SharePoint sites have at least one document library. By default, when a SharePoint site is created a Shared Documents document library is included in the Quick Launch area.

We have a How To that will give you steps to:

• Add a File to a Document Library
• Create a Folder within Shared Documents
• Check a Document in and out
• Delete a Document
• Recover a Deleted Document

Take a look here - http://it.cas.psu.edu/1055.htm

To learn more about SharePoint, you can take a class on June 3 via Adobe Connect or visit our Self-Paced training page at http://it.cas.psu.edu/SelfPaced.htm then click on SharePoint 2007.
 

Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

I’ve been using Word 2007 since we first started testing it and one thing that still bugs me …I can't remember where the insert section break command is! I don’t use it as often as insert page break but still, when you need it, you need it! I have since added this to my quick access toolbar (http://it.cas.psu.edu/964.htm).

In Word 2007, click on the Page Layout tab and then the Page Setup group. In the area you should see a Breaks button. You have options for a page break, column break, and various types of section breaks.

For those of you who haven’t found the insert page break command yet… Look on Insert tab, Pages group, then the Page Break button.

For more information on Section breaks see here (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100310731033.aspx).

Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

In this April 30, 2009 eWeek Security Watch article, it is described how a group of spammers have been indicted by the Department of Justice. These individuals are charged with specifically targeting over 2,000 colleges and universities to illegally collect more than 8 million student e-mail addresses.

"A federal grand jury indicted four men charged with running a $4 million spam campaign that specifically targeted college network users yesterday. The indictment marks the federal law enforcement agency's latest success in finding and pursuing mass-mailers seeking to rip off unsuspecting end users.

With cooperation from FBI investigators, three Americans and a Chinese national were charged with violating the Can-Spam Act through an enterprise that started in 2004 and spammed almost every secondary school in the U.S., DoJ press agents reported."

To read the rest of the article, go to DoJ Cans College Spammers.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

From http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/04/microsoft-97-percent-of-all-e-mail-is-spam.ars

"Spam makes up close to 100 percent of all E-mail traffic on the Internet, according to Microsoft. In a new security report, Microsoft said that 97 percent of e-mails sent were destined for the junk folder, though most never made it to their destinations thanks to server-side filtering."

To watch the original Microsoft report, go to http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/sir.aspx.

On this page, Microsoft also states that "Infections by rogue security software (sometimes called “scareware”) spiked dramatically worldwide in the second half of 2008."

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Jeff Monday, http://www.jeffmonday.com/, has a blog called MondayDots.com that explores educational and organizational models.

In this entry from May 11, 2009 called education model: student generated content, he proposes ways to better engage students with today's fast changing technology.

http://www.mondaydots.com/2009/05/education-model-student-generated-content.html

The above article asks that you go to the site StudentGenerated.com to learn more.

http://www.studentgenerated.com/Main/About.html

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

The Everything search engine is a small, freeware file-search utility. The utility allows you to locate files and folders by name almost instantly.

The downside for the folks in our College whose My Documents are stored on a server is that the program only indexed files and folder names stored on the C drive.

Even with this limitation, you might find it useful. Look at the Everything FAQ for more information and tips in using the program. You can download the program from here.

http://www.voidtools.com/

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Google is going green one small step at a time. One small bone to pick with their blog posting; they refer to the goats "eating the grass." The goats are eating weeds and brush, yes. Grass NO! California Grazing's page gives the correct behind-the-scenes story to what goats will eat.

"At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we're not "kidding"). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers. "

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

How many sugar cubes are in your favorite foods? This website uses cubes of white sugar to show the grams visually.

http://www.sugarstacks.com/

Their blog also discusses high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) vs. table sugar. They point out:

"We do actually have a disclaimer on the home page discussing this issue. To quote:

Note: We don't differentiate between different types of sugar - i.e., sucrose, fructose, cane sugar, corn syrup, honey, etc., although there are differences in how these sugars are metabolized. We just used cubes of white sugar as a visual aid."

http://www.sugarstacks.com/blog/2009/05/the-hfcs-controversy.html

Deb Sinkus, IT Specialist

"The U.S. electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines. Aging infrastructure, combined with a rise in domestic electricity consumption, has forced experts to critically examine the status and health of the nation's electrical systems."

My only complaint with this map from National Public Radio (NPR) is the inability to zoom in. So, when you click the Power Plant tab at the top and then choose Coal as the type of Power Plants, I can't really zoom in on PA to see some of the smaller plants.

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Microsoft has a website that purports "to automate solutions to common software problems in an easy, intuitive way that is available when and where you need it. So whether you are looking for a solution in help or support content, or an error report, Fix it provides a way to apply automated fixes, workarounds, or configuration changes so you don’t have to perform a long list of manual steps yourself."

http://support.microsoft.com/fixit

You might want to use this for a home machine rather than a University owned computer though. That said, if problems can be resolved with a click, that's just fine by me.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Ecofont was designed to use less ink than other fonts, about 15 percent to 20 percent less, by placing small holes throughout the typeface.

From http://www.ecofont.eu/look_at_ecofont_en.html

"The picture illustrates how the Ecofont was created by omitting parts of the letter. At the shown size, this obviously is not very nice, but at a regular font size it is actually very usable. Naturally, the results vary depending on your software and the quality of your screen. The Ecofont works best in OpenOffice, AppleWorks and MS Office 2007. Printing with a laser printer will give the best printing results."

Here is the download page. They have links to help pages to install the font in Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux.

http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Disclaimer: Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation or endorsement.

[Video] Record Breaking Model Rocket Launch
The rocket then lands upright at the end. Wow!
http://www.flixxy.com/record-breaking-model-rocket-launch.htm

Manhattanhenge
The setting sun aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid on these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge

Evidence Technology Online
This trade publication showcases evidence collection, processing, and preservation issues.
http://www.evidencemagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=57&Itemid=77

Infinite Photograph
Dive into this photo-mosaic portrait of the Earth. You can just keep clicking, clicking, and clicking.
http://www.thegreenguide.com/infinite-photograph

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's ArtScope
Here is an innovative approach to bring a museum's collection to the Web.
http://www.sfmoma.org/projects/artscope

[Video] Test Driving an EcoMobile
Test drive the EcoMobile, a motor bike with a full car body.
http://www.flixxy.com/ecomobile-test-drive.htm

[Video] Milton Berle vs. Statler & Waldorf
How far back do you want me to go? Do you have a car?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGfx3QAV64M

USA States Trivia
I scored 413,035 out of 500,000 points.
http://www.umapper.com/maps/view/id/31051

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist