IT eNews #85

CAS News: Updating Your Passwords

Password change questions continue to come into Computer Support. We did feature a password article in the November 29th, 2007 eNews issue entitled CAS News: Password Reminder. Please click this link to refresh your memory, but the high points are:

College of Ag Science faculty and staff normally have TWO computer accounts. The first account is a Penn State Access Account. The second is a College of Ag Sciences' AG account.

The password reminder email sent to faculty and staff does not come from Ag IT Support. The reminder is sent by Penn State's ITS HelpDesk. They instruct you to change your PSU Access Account password.

The Ag IT staff does recommend that you change your AG password at the same time as your PSU Access Account password.

To change your PSU password, go here: https://www.work.psu.edu/

To change your AG password, go here: http://work.ag.psu.edu/

I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify the email reminder from the ITS HelpDesk. The following text is from the reminder that I received for my PSU Access Account deadline. Please note that the email list TWO separate dates. It is the second date and time (in the example, 01/03/08 04:59:53) which is the worst case date (i.e. when a PSU password expires). You need to update your PSU password before the second date and time!

-----Original Message-----
From: ITS HelpDesk [mailto:helpdesk@psu.edu]
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 10:26 PM
To: Vince Verbeke
Subject: Your Password Deadline Is Approaching

Dear Penn State Access Account Holder,

Penn State's password initiative requires that you change your Penn State Access Account password periodically. Please change your password before 12/06/07 04:59:53. If your password has not been changed by 12/06/07 04:59:53, you will be required to change it when you log in to any application that uses WebAccess (WebMail, ANGEL, ESSIC, etc.)

Your current password will expire on 01/03/08 04:59:53. If you do not change your password by this date, your password will expire.

The first date listed (in the example, 12/06/07 04:59:53) is a month earlier than the "your current password will expire" deadline. The inclusion of this date in the email adds confusion for folks. Let me try to explain.

From our How To Change your PSU Access Account password and College AG password, we list the following services that use the Penn State's WebAccess for login:

Angel, Breeze, CASPAR, eCommerce/ePay, Email (for PSU mail accounts), ESSIC, FIT, ITS-managed computing labs, VPN, and Web based AIS system.

If you attempt to login to any of the above services between the first and second date, you will be required to change your PSU password at that time. If you don't, you won't be able to login to that service. By having this month long window, ITS is attempting to help you avoid an expired password.

Bottom line; don't wait to update your passwords. When you receive the ITS reminder, change your PSU and AG passwords right away. Better yet, update your PSU and AG passwords every six months (or every three months). Then you won't receive a reminder email at all!

Finally, if you have an EN notebook, we recommend that you change your AG password while you are in your office. Why? When you update the AG password and then restart the computer (steps 11 and 12 from the How To), the computer needs to be on your office network in order to validate the updated password. If you're on the road or at home and change your AG password using the web address, you won't be able to login with the 'new' password until the notebook is back on the office network.
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

CAS News: PowerPoint 07 and Adobe Connect Alert

PowerPoint 07 and Adobe Connect aren't compatible yet.

If you are planning on sharing a PowerPoint 07 document in Adobe Connect, make sure you save as or save down to the 97-03 format. See our How To for steps.

http://ict.cas.psu.edu/training/howto/excel/saveas9703.html
Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

CAS News: Outlook 2007 Email has Apostrophes Returned as Question Marks

If you're using Outlook 2007 and have received an email reply where words like WE'LL and DON'T are returned as WE?LL and DON?T (the single apostrophe is converted to a question mark), please read on.

The issue is the use of CURLY apostrophes (e.g. smart quotes) that are being sent to others in your emails. If you use straight apostrophes, they will be sent and replied without issue.

Office 2007’s smart quotes are interpreted correctly by other Office programs. But, they follow a non-standard coding format. When they are read by a non-Outlook email program, they do not display correctly. Since this email program can't interpret the non-standard coding, it will convert a word like DON'T to DON?T instead. The question mark is that email program's way of saying 'I don't understand this character.' When they reply to you, that's when you see the ? mark.

A default auto-formatting setting in Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 converts "straight quotes" into “smart quotes”. If you communicate with customers that don’t use Outlook, you can tell Outlook 2007 to not use the smart quotes. Then, when you send emails, only straight apostrophes will be used. When the person receiving your email replies to you, you will see the correct apostrophe in a word such as WE'LL.

1. Open Outlook 2007.
2. From the Tools menu choose Options.
3. Click the Mail Format tab.
4. Click the Editor Options button (at the bottom of the dialog box).
5. On the left, click the Proofing option.
6. Click the AutoCorrect Options button
7. Click the AutoFormat tab.
8. Under Replace, uncheck the "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes" box.
9. Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
10. Under Replace as you type, uncheck the "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes" box.
11. Click OK. Click OK. Click Apply. Click OK.

Also, if you often copy and paste text into emails from Word, you should turn off the AutoCorrect options in that application as well. The text from the Paste will still use the non-standard coding for the apostrophe. The issue might still resurface as a result.

1. Open Word 2007.
2. From the Office Button menu choose Word Options.
3. On the left, click the Proofing option.
4. Click the AutoCorrect Options button
5. Click the AutoFormat tab.
6. Under Replace, uncheck the "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes" box.
7. Click the AutoFormat As You Type tab.
8. Under Replace as you type, uncheck the "Straight Quotes" with "smart quotes" box.
9. Click OK. Click OK.
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Action Item (Maintenance): Disk Defragmenter

Note: 'Maintenance' action items are semi-regular articles designed to encourage staff to perform routine tasks on their EN computers.

By running Disk Defragmenter you are making your computer access the files faster and your computer uses storage space more efficiently.

You should choose to analyze your hard drive first. This will take a very short time. Depending on what's reported, you may be asked to defragment the drive. Please note that the defragmentation process can take time to complete.

Close all programs.

Choose Start menu | All Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Disk Defragmenter.

Select the volume you want to analyze. In most cases this would be the (C:) drive.

Click Analyze. This may take several minutes.

If the drive doesn't need defragmented, click Close. You're done.
If the drive DOES need to be defragmented, click Defragment. Wait for the process to complete. This may take several minutes to several hours, depending on the number of files to consolidate.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU DO THIS TASK?
Disk Defragmenter should be run four times a year on your EN machine.

Final note, I just received a new Latitude D830 notebook. After completing the setup, installing extra programs, transferring data, etc., I decided to analyze the drive with the Disk Defragmenter utility. To my surprise it reported that the drive needed defragmented! So, even if you have a new EN machine, run through these steps at the end of the day. You may be surprised that your C: drive needs defragmented as well.

Print this article (opens a new window).

Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

How Do I... Control Word 2007's Automatic Superscript

The Ed Tech's were posed with these questions not too long ago. It ties in to the first article in this eNews as well.

Q. We have been searching for quite some time now and decided to contact you about where to change some things in Office Word 2007.

Where do we go to change the 'th', 'st', 'rd', 'nd' when used in words like 5th, 1st, 3rd and 2nd to be normal fonts and not superscript? Where do we change the long dashes to short dashes and finally, where do we change the straight quotes to squiggly quotes?

A. These settings are under Word Options:

Open Word. Click the Office button (in the left corner) and click the Word Options button (lower right corner).

Click on Proofing on the left side.

Click the AutoCorrect Options button. Most of the settings are here.

Look at both the AutoFormat and AutoFormat As You Type tabs.

Uncheck or check what you want. Then click OK 2 times to close the dialog box and Word Options.

Print this article (opens a new window).

Jacki Weikert, Educational Technologist

How Do I... Use Instant Search in Outlook 2007

Outlook 2007 offers a new search tool, called Instant Search, and its pretty slick.

Near the top of the Information Viewer Pane, in the center of the screen, you see the Instant Search box. This box has a little magnifying glass on the right and some text on the left. Click the box and type the first few letters of a word that you want to find. Almost immediately, the Information Viewer screen goes blank, and then shows only the items containing the text you entered. For example, if you're in the Contacts module and you type jon, you see only the records containing names such as Jones, Jonas, Jonquil — any word containing the letter combination j-o-n. When Outlook displays the items it found, the magnifying glass is replaced by an X. Clear the search results by clicking the X.

In some cases, searching for a certain group of letters isn't specific enough. For example, you may want Outlook to show just the people named Jones who work for XYX Company. You can create a more detailed search by clicking the double arrow just to the right of the magnifying glass, revealing a group of labeled boxes in which you can search for specific types of information. The exact collection of boxes varies according to which Outlook module you're searching. If you're in the Contacts module, you have choices such as Name, Company, Business Phone, and so on. To find all the Joneses at XYZ Corporation, type Jones in the Name box and XYZ in the Company box; instantly, you're keeping up with the Joneses at XYZ.

If the items Outlook offers don't meet your needs, you can make different choices by clicking the label for each type of information; then you see a list of other kinds of information for which you can search. For example, when you're searching your Contacts List, you can pick City or State to find people in a certain location.

The best way to learn about the Instant Search feature is to try it out. Just type some information into the box to see what you get, then click the X to clear the search results and create a new search.

Adapted From: Outlook 2007 For Dummies

Print this article (opens a new window).
Lori Pudliner, IT Specialist

Tech Spotlight: "Turf guys" at the World Series

Note: This article focuses on educators or teams that are using new technologies to work with their clients. If you're doing something cool and exciting with technology, let us know so we can include you as we showcase these technologies.

Article submitted by Jeff Fowler, County Extension Director in Venango and Forest counties.

"Over the past ten years during the heat of August a group of "Turf guys" have assembled themselves in South Williamsport to prepare the stage for a world-wide sporting event, the Little League World Series. The group manicures the two stadium fields in preparation for 35 games over a 10 day period. All 35 in 2007 were carried by the ESPN family of networks broadcasting them around the world. The field crew spends 4 days before the lights come, the first pitch is thrown or the first crack of the bat preparing the fields. During the 2006 series Little League Baseball approached me about putting together a presentation that could be posted on their web site going through step by step what the crew does to the fields before the series.

We were excited about the opportunity to present information to Little Leagues around the world on how they could make their fields safer for play. Especially excited were the educators in the group. So we started plotting out the story board and taking pictures, Harry Carey you would have been proud of the planning we did. As the series continued we took more pictures and expanded our story board.

Once the final game had been played and the champion crowned we went to work methodically putting together a PowerPoint presentation that told the story. The story of how fields back at the local level should be cared for. Once we had the presentation together we went back and used the voice recording feature in PowerPoint and narrated the script onto the slides. Once completed and edited many times we turned the presentation into a flash media and posted it on line. Little League Inc. then included the link in one of their summer newsletters that goes out to organized leagues around the world.

There were many ways we could have accomplished the same results. We could have done video, or written articles with pictures, we could have made some podcasts or for that matter just used still pictures. However, in this situation with input coming from field managers in multiple locations working on the same presentation we were able to best accomplish our task with PowerPoint and the voice over feature. If you have a chance, check it out. The link is http://www.littleleague.org/fieldcare/fieldcarepres/index.htm (opens a new window)."

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

Tech Spotlight: On Line Translators (Advanced)

Note: This article is for blog and web developers. Others may only want to read the article to see the translators in action.

Do you have a large Hispanic audience for some of your web pages? Would you like your new blog to be read by an audience from another country? Both Microsoft and Google allow you to embed code (i.e. place their 'gadget' or 'widget') into your pages that will allow visitors to translate your pages. Both services are free as well. These 'translator' sites also allow you to enter text to be translated or place a web page link into a box to be translated too. But this article will show you how easy it is to copy and paste the translator code.

Click here to open Microsoft's Windows Live Translator site (opens in a new window). Click the Add the web page Translator to your site link. You will be taken to the page with the code that can be added to a blog or web page. Copy this code. To save it as a reference, you could paste it into a Word document.

Click here to open Google's Google Translate (opens in a new window). Click the Tools tab. Select the language of your web page. Copy the HTML code from Step 2. To save it as a reference, you could paste it into a Word document.

To see these add-ins, go to IT Tech Alerts (http://icttechalerts.blogspot.com/ - opens in a new window). Scroll down slightly. Look in the right column for the translators. Test the translators by choosing a language from the drop down list. For the Windows Live Translator, you need to click the right pointing arrow. Google will translate immediately.

The Tech Alerts blog should then be translated to the language you selected. Google simply shows you the translated page. The Windows Live Translator has a view that displays the original and translated pages side-by-side.

These widgets will work best for blogs. You can add the code once and it will stay on the page in the same place. Unless you add the code to a web page template, you would need to add the code to each individual web page that you want to translate.
Finally, if you use Dreamweaver to edit web pages, you can't paste the code into the page in Design view. You must add the code to a web page in either the Code view or Split view. If you are unsure what these terms mean, look in Dreamweaver Help for more info.
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Tech Spotlight: eXtension's Jan 2008 Professional Development Opportunities

eXtension's professional development opportunities are open to all Cooperative Extension faculty, staff and employees. No pre-registration. Please share this announcement with others and encourage them to pick a topic and try it out!

SPECIAL TOPIC -- Prediction Markets
Join us at 2:00 p.m. ET on January 30 to learn how organizations are using prediction markets to chart their strategic future. Adam Siegel, co-founder of Inkling Markets (http://inklingmarkets.com/) will share how prediction markets are being used to forecast the answers by buying and selling shares in stocks representing alternative outcomes. Using a stock market-like mechanism allows people to express their opinion as a "weighted vote" over time in response to new information or a change of opinion. Unlike a poll, a prediction market is asking "what will happen?" vs. "what do you want to happen?" Join us to learn how progressive organizations are using prediction markets to guide their decision making.

30 MINUTE SESSIONS
This month we are offering "30 Minute Sessions" on a several topics including the collaborate wiki and search engine optimization. Give us 30 minutes and we'll teach you something useful! These sessions will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn and your telephone. Plan to join the session 5 minutes before the starting time. Each session will be held at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time unless otherwise noted.

* January 8 at 3:00 p.m. ET, a “30 Minute Session” on eXtension’s Collaborate Wiki: the place for the whole Cooperative Extension System to work. This session will show you what you need to do to get started working in the collaborate wiki and show you some examples of how others are using it today. (For all Extension)

* January 15 at 3:00 p.m. ET, a "30 Minute Session" on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips and Techniques by Brian Webster, Iowa State Extension, in conjunction with the ACE IT SIG. A large percentage of the hits to your web site come from search engines. This session on search engine optimization includes tips and techniques that will help people find your pages. We'll talk about things that you can do on your pages to help boost its ratings, things you should never do and things that other people do that help your site. (For all Extension)

* January 17 at 3:00 p.m. ET, a "30 Minute Session" on Collaborative Search Engine. This session will show you how simple it is to use Google search technology to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests. It will also show you the Cooperative Extension CSE, teach you how to place a custom widget on your own site, and show how you can participate in a collaborative environment to further customize and make it better. (For all Extension)

* January 24 at 3:00 ET, a "30 Minute Session" on Tagging by Kevin Gamble.
It seems like everywhere you go on the Internet today someone is asking you to tag things. This session will discuss the philosophy behind the tagging and compare it to the older methods of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies, how and why it works, strategies to help you tag more effectively, and the power of collaborative tagging. This session is targeted for people just getting started with social networking software, and is designed to get you off to a good start, and to help you avoid the most common pitfalls. (For all Extension)

OTHER SESSIONS
In-MoodleMeets: January 7; January 21. Held the first and third Mondays of every month from 2-3:30 p.m. ET, in the chat of the Moodle 101 course. Enter as a guest. During the In-MoodleMeet we get together in Moodle text chat to share stories, ideas and provide support for Moodle. To join go to http://courses.extension.org/mod/chat/view.php?id=96. Past chats are also available from the "View past chat sessions" link from within the chat. To get a course shell to begin developing in or get more information about Moodle email moodlehelp@extension.org. The recording of last month's “30 Minute Session” on Moodle is at http://about.extension.org/wiki where you can search on Recordings.

Second Life Round-table: January 10. We will have our next meeting, using Web conferencing, at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn at 11:00 a.m. SLT (2:00 p.m. ET). Please add discussion to the Collaborate wiki at http://tinyurl.com/ytsp2s.

Second Life Meet-ups: January 11 and January 25. On the 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month the CES Second Life educators meet in-world to learn new skills and visit interesting educational builds. The learning parts of the meet-ups are led by fellow participants, and are designed to be lightweight and appropriate for all skill levels. Meet at in Second Life at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/165/136/29.

ADD these dates & topics to your calendar, and plan to join us on for one or more of these sessions in January!!

TO PARTICIPATE in any of the sessions held in our Web Conferencing Center...
1. Five minutes before the start time, go to our Web Conferencing Center meeting room at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

2. You will be presented with a login screen that has an "Enter as Guest" option.

3. Enter your first name, your last name, and your institution/university, and then click the "Enter Room" button to join the conference.

4. To hear the audio of the workshop and participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using a built-in teleconferencing capability of Adobe's Connect Pro conferencing software. Once you log into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back number, your phone will automatically be called. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference on your phone.

EMAIL LIST:
If you or a colleague would like to get notices about upcoming professional development sessions offered by eXtension, go to https://lists.extension.org/mailman/listinfo/learn and subscribe to the "Learn" email list.

RECORDINGS:
Recordings of many past professional development sessions can be found at the main eXtension wiki at http://about.eXtension.org/wiki and scroll down under Professional Development heading and find "Recordings of eXtension Professional Development Sessions", or search on the word Recordings.

Looking forward to having you join us to learn something new in January!!
Beth Raney, eXtension

All Interest: Green Buildings Make Employees See Red

"Forget about having your own printer, coffee pot or a mini-refrigerator in your office. Heck, you can forget about having your own office, too, because you’ll probably get assigned a modular desk in a big, open space.

That’s what it’s like to work in a green data center. IT workers are finding that they have to make sacrifices for the greater good of cutting back on energy usage in these facilities."

Read the entire article at:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/120307-green-hate.html
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist

Lighter Side & Interesting Links

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.

Top 10 New Year's Resolutions
Is your New Year's resolution on this list?
http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/holidays/tp/resolutions.htm

100 (Legal) Sources for Free Stock Images
100 websites where you can find free stock images.
http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/100-legal-sources-for-free-stock-images/

Woman Spends 3 Days in Wal-Mart
Really, she did.
http://madconomist.com/wacky-records-woman-spends-3-days-in-walmart

[Video] Bored At Work
Stroke, Stroke, Stroke.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2325894770573552479

The Duchy of Avram
Did you know that this existed? Wish I could have a 'Micronation' at times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Avram
Vince Verbeke, IT Specialist