eNews Volume 130 - 11/12/2009

I would like to send a BIG thank you to all of the Extension Annual Conference (EAC) "video testers" in the counties and University Park offices. Also, I'd like to THANK the County Room Contacts who logged on early to confirm that all your equipment was working as expected. I appreciate you all taking the time to help me and the rest of the EAC planning committee confirm that the technology was going to work ... AND IT DID!

Just in case you missed the conference, want to watch the opening video again or would like a copy of the handouts, you can find everything about the conference on the main Cooperative Extension SharePoint site. But, below you will see direct links to the Conference resources as well.

Thanks again and I’m looking forward to working with you again next time around!

• Conference Recording
• Link to Extension Annual Conference Opening Video
• PowerPoint Presentations
• Extension Annual Conference Feedback
• Revenue Enhancement Discussion

Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

Join the Ag IT team and invited speakers for lunch conversations about different technologies and their uses. We will be meeting monthly for a new ITChatter series.

Participants are asked to arrive in the Adobe Connect meeting room (http://breeze.psu.edu/ITChatter) at noon. The chatter gets started at 12:15 and will wrap up by 12:50.

You can join us each month or participate in just the chatters that interest you. We've listed the ITChatter session leaders beside the session name.

ITChatter Dates & Topics:
Dec 15 – PBworks – What can a wiki do for me? (Lee, Horticulture Educator from Washington County)
Jan 19 – Blogs – How to dress them up for effect! (Jacki & Sherry, Ed Techs from Ag IT)
Feb 16 – What’s in your Closet? A look at the hardware in your office (Mike & Vince, Support Specialists from Ag IT)
March 16 – How to keep up with it all with Start pages (Peg, Ed Tech from AgIT)
April 20 – Twitter Lingo (Panel discussion from PSU, NC State and Auburn)
May 18 – New employees: How many accounts do I have? (Support staff from Ag IT)

No need to register but if you do then you’ll get a nice reminder!
http://go.cas.psu.edu/training/

Hope you can attend and hear the chatter!

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

"“E-portfolios are dynamic, developmental spaces representing your professional ‘self’ on the Web,” said Jeff Swain, instructional designer with Education Technology Services (ETS). “Here at Penn State we use the Blogs@Penn State platform to create e-portfolios because it is easy to use and allows you to update and contribute to your e-portfolio wherever you have an Internet connection.”

Swain said that the use of e-portfolios is growing. They are becoming standard practice for students, academics, and professionals, and typically include examples of work, skills, and achievements. They often include a reflective blog element, making them a great way to communicate with others in your field.

“For faculty and staff, e-portfolios are a place to showcase your work but, even more importantly, they are a place to establish yourself as a leading thinker in your field,” Swain said. “This is where the reflective blog element comes into play.

“A reflective blog is a place to think out loud and invite others into the conversation, building up to and then upon more formal professional things such as publications ad presentations.”

The e-Portfolios at Penn State site makes the creation of e-portfolios much easier by offering users a complete tool set. Among the features include:

• Featured spaces with clickable thumbnail images, providing examples
• Video tutorials
• Links to external resources
• News, events, and community tabs containing information related to portfolios

E-portfolio workshops have been held and more are planned for the future, Swain said. “The open workshop in November is full but you can get on the waiting list. Also we will be offering the workshop during Winterfest in January. You can check out the ITS Training Services home page for more information,” he said.

Faculty or staff can request a session on e-portfolios for their department or class. A request form for this can be found under the Contact tab of the e-Portfolio at Penn State site.

As for what is next for e-portfolios at Penn State, Swain said that he foresees them becoming part of actual courses. “We are exploring ways to tie e-portfolios into the academic fabric so they can be used not just as a showcase but also as a viable means of doing class work and assessment,” he said.

For more information on e-portfolios and for help getting started, go to http://portfolio.psu.edu/."

To read the rest of the article, go here:

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/about/news/2009/eportfoliosite

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

This November 3, 2009 blog post from Sunbelt Security, The state of Internet (in)security, brings to light a number of trends in the world of malware. The post draws on two reports. One report is from Microsoft, Microsoft Security Intelligence Report Vol. 7 (January through June 2009). The second report is from McAfee, Third Quarter 2009 McAfee Threats Report (pdf).

• Microsoft’s monitoring of more than 400 million PCs (via Malicious Software Removal Tool) showed that 55.5 percent of attacks for the half year were aimed at unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office applications. Most of the holes the malware was targeting were in unpatched Office installations, some as old as 2003. In many cases, victims had upgraded their operating systems, but neglected Office updates. Other highly targeted applications were WinZip, Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader and RealPlayer.
• Web threats are getting worse. Distributed denial-of-service attacks for extortion are back, the proportion of spam in email has reached 92 percent and 13 million computers were taken over by bots in the quarter, according to McAfee. The U.S. is the country with the most bot-infected computers.
• The number of infections from worms has increased and there were 20 percent fewer infections from rogue security software.

What can you do to protect your computer?

You should Install High Priority (Critical) Updates when they appear. You should actively update any 3rd party application installed on the computer throughout the year as well. To help you with this, several new How To's have been created. See this Action Item: Help Prevent Drive-by Downloads by Updating Software for steps and links to these How To's.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

By now you have hopefully seen Adobe Connect in action (either participating in a Reframing webinar or the recent Extension Annual Conference). You may be wondering how you get your Adobe Connect meeting space to hold trainings, meetings, seminars or webinars. YES…Adobe Connect can be used for any of these activities, plus more!

In order to create meeting rooms in Adobe Connect, you need to have a Meeting Creator license. The University granted a number of meeting room creator licenses to each college. Our college received enough licenses to distribute one individual in each dept, unit and county.

To find your Adobe Connect Meeting Creator, you can visit this webpage http://tinyurl.com/AgMeetingCreators . If you don’t find a name listed for your department or your county, please contact Ag IT Support.

Work with your Meeting Creator to get a meeting space setup for you. Then take a class on Being a Host or Hosting a Webinar (dates and times given here http://go.cas.psu.edu/training/). You’ll be ready to go with your own meeting or webinar.

If you have questions, feel free to contact me.

Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

The following are SharePoint 2007 Calendar view shortcuts:

To activate or place focus on the Day view link              ALT + PERIOD
To activate or place focus on the Week view link            ALT + MINUS SIGN
To activate or place focus on the Month view link           ALT + EQUAL SIGN
Move to the previous day, week, or month in a view        ALT + [
Move to the next day, week, or month in a view             ALT + ]
In a date picker control, move to the previous month      ALT + <
In a date picker control, move to the next month           ALT + >

Note: The behavior of keyboard shortcuts differs depending on the Web browser that you use. For example, in Windows Internet Explorer, the shortcut key combination that is assigned to a hyperlink places the active focus on that hyperlink. You must then press ENTER to follow the hyperlink. In Firefox, pressing the key combination follows the link automatically.

To see more keyboard shortcuts for common tasks in SharePoint Server 2007, go here:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA101733621033.aspx

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.

This "wristwatch" will ship by February 2010 and cost $149.

Is the inPulse a BlackBerry on your wrist?
No. Sorry to disappoint, but this is not a full BlackBerry watch. inPulse is a BlackBerry smartphone accessory, you must already own a BlackBerry to make full use of the product. inPulse allows you to view key information from your BlackBerry on your wrist.

Does inPulse actually work like a watch?
Yes! It's actually one of the most user friendly watches you could get. Instead of fiddling with tiny buttons on your watch, you're free to set the clock, timers, multiple alarms, and more all from the comfort of the large keyboard and screen on your BlackBerry.

To read the rest of the FAQ, go here: http://www.getinpulse.com/faq.php

To learn more about the inPulse, go here: http://www.getinpulse.com/features.php

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

In this Monday, October 26, 2009 blog entry entitled Data Liberation, "Mark as viewed", and New! Google announced several new features for Google Docs.

The first new feature allows you to export Google Doc files as HTML, Open Doc, PDF, Rich Text, Plain Text, or Microsoft Word. Second, Google has also added "unviewed" or "viewed" files indicators. Lastly, when documents are initially shared to you, a "New!" indicator will be displayed.

To read more about these new features and see sample images, go here:

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/10/data-liberation-mark-as-viewed-and-new.html

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

"Facebook games — Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Restaurant City — have become surprisingly effective at diverting timewasters among the social networking crowd. More than 63 million people play FarmVille alone. But now accusations have surfaced that the games can lead some more gullible players, including children, into Internet scams, especially if they have a cell phone."

To read the rest of the Time article, go here:

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1935698,00.html

To read what Facebook is doing, see:

Continued Action Against Deceptive Ads

Finally, to hear another view, see this Michael Arrington post on TechCrunch:

Facebook To Increase Enforcement Of Anti-Scam Rules

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

This Tekzilla Daily Tip shows you how to keep your photos from being used without permission. You can add a watermark to them with this free online tool, Picmarkr. Note: Site may be slow to load.

http://revision3.com/tzdaily/2009-10-13picmarkr

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Amazon has plans to release a version of their electronic book reader as a Windows application. 

Read Kindle Books on Your Computer

• Get the best reading experience available on your PC. No Kindle required
• Access your Kindle books even if you don't have your Kindle with you
• Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
• Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle

To learn more, go here.

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

"Barnes & Noble has officially entered the world of ebook readers with its very own device, the Nook. Featuring a 6-inch E-ink Vizplex display and a second 3.5-inch touch-sensitive color LCD screen for navigation, the Nook offers a serious alternative to Amazon's Kindle reader. It can be pre-ordered now, and is expected to ship by late November 2009."

To read the rest of the TidBITS article, go here:

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10665

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

This article from Inc. magazine outlines Jason Fried of 37Signals work day. Jason "hates lame meetings, tech companies that don't generate revenue, and companies that treat their employees like children."

To read the article, go here:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20091101/the-way-i-work-jason-fried-of-37signals.html

People often ask me where I find eNews content. In this article's case, it was from a tweet by eXtension's Kevin Gamble. He tweeted this at 8:20 pm. I read it, and then added the article to this eNews issue at 3:30 am. But do any of us in today's world work traditional hours? I would guess very few. And as I've said before, I've never worked traditional hours. Growing up on a dairy farm teaches you 24x7 work habits really early. (Thanks Dad)

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

From PCWorld: "It's the 30th anniversary of this 8-bit PC classic. We celebrate the occasion as we always do, by tearing the product apart and showing you the pieces."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181421/inside_the_atari_800.html

Did your Atari have both the left and right cartridge slots?

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Hopefully Steve Williams of Theoretical Agriculture fame will try this out and report back on its use.

"If there's ever been a more necessary place for good photo-editing, it's probably for cell phone camera pictures, which almost always need improvement. Adobe plans to help with its new Photoshop.com for Mobile app for the iPhone, which became available today.

The free app lets iPhone users adjust the pictures on their camera roll with relative ease. What you can do with the app is limited compared with full-featured Photoshop, but the average user who wants to crop, rotate, or change the exposure on iPhone photos will find something to like here. When you're done editing, you can save the photos on your iPhone or upload them to your account at Photoshop.com.

Photoshop.com for Mobile certainly isn't the first photo-editing app for the iPhone, as notable apps PhotoForge and EffectsLab came before it. But, the Photoshop brand is a trusted one that will attract numerous downloads--especially because the app is free. Here's the iTunes Store link."

From http://www.appscout.com/2009/10/adobe_photoshop_app_now_availa.php

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] Water Drop at 2000 Frames per Second
A water drop filmed in ultra-slow-motion at 2000 frames per second.
http://www.flixxy.com/water-drop.htm

Veolia Environment Wildlife Photos
Check out the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year online gallery.
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/onlineGallery.do

[Video] Food Ad Tricks
Why does that burger and fries look so good on TV?
http://www.flixxy.com/food-stylist.htm

[Video] How Sound Affects Us
Julian Treasure shows how sound affects us in four significant ways and the effect open-plan offices have on productivity.
http://www.flixxy.com/how-sound-affects-us.htm

[Video] Camel Poo Cure-All
Dirty Jobs Mike Rowe learns more than he wants about the benefits of camels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWe136CYYnY

[Video] Spring Break
Kelly's future self gives her advice about the consequences of copying music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYWnECtVLWs

[Video] Kitten Hiding
But I WANT to be in the couch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wswE4fFvJ8

Big Kitty
This cat will not fit in the couch.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/maratriangle/4063654418

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist