ATRC Podcast Notes

Podcast for September 14, 2007 - Episode 72

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Play time 44 minutes  - Program Notes

 

"War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."  ~Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann

On the show: The Ultimate Steal from Microsoft; Apple sells a whole lot of iPhones at the lower price; spammers direct zombie attacks; you can blog from your iPhone with TypePad or Moveable Type; Amazon launches Kindle; a new YouTubable-friendly flip video camcorder; Patch Tuesday was a whimper, not a bang; Microsoft releases new webcams and mice; a 416GB solid state drive from BitMicro; a new tool for reading ancient manuscripts: the diamond synchrotron; news of the fabled blue Zune; Google will give you millions if you can reach the moon; and we feature a book on search engine visibility as our tech book online.  David's Blackboard feature of the week is "When Things Go Wrong" about the Blackboard announcement feature.  Haydn's Teaching with Technology segment is titled "What Online Students Say About Assessment."  My Tech Talk Topic is "The Five Best New Things About Outlook 2007."

Technology News Briefs

• The Ultimate Steal.  Microsoft is making an offer students can't refuse.  Students can now purchase Office 2007 Ultimate edition for a mere $59.95.  Who is eligible?: "...students who are actively enrolled at educational institutions and have a valid e-mail address from the institution" (Microsoft press release).  Students, you will have to use your Palomar email for this one, so make sure there is room to receive an email in that dinky inbox.  The promotion is active in the US, Canada and the UK, and will become effective in France, Italy and Spain beginning September 20.  It will run through next April.  "Office Ultimate 2007 includes the entire Microsoft Office toolset that students are accustomed to working with and more, including Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager, Microsoft Office Access™ 2007, Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, Office OneNote 2007, Office Groove 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007."  Click here for the Ultimate Steal web site.
   

• News flash:  lower prices = higher sales.  The recent price slash on the iPhone, from $599 to $399 for the 8GB model, has caused a sales surge from 9,000 units per day to 27,000 units per day, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster (DailyTech).  
   

• File under: "Put down that wrench, Dave."  SpamNation, a prominent anti-spam site reported last week that distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are being launched by the Zhelatin gang via botnet zombies.  Customers of Zhelatin can, apparently, order attacks against sites.  So far, sites attacked include 419Eater, ScamWarners, CastleCops, scam.com, scamfraudalert.com, and Artists against 419.  "The distributed computational power of the Storm botnet is thought to have surpassed that of virtually all major supercomputers" (ars technica).  For an explanation of the types of denial of service attacks, click here for a thorough summary from CERT, and a here for a shorter overview from CastleCops.
   

• Amazon is launching the Kindle on October 15.  What is the Kindle, you may ask.  It represents Amazon's entry into the eBook reader business.  Are consumers ready for an eBook reader?  Sony's Reader (which retails for $300) introduced last year is doing not well, but respectably.  Sony continues to invest in advertising for it.  Now Amazon wants to get into the act.  The Kindle is based on the same E Ink technology as the Sony Reader, which mimics the appearance of type on paper.  It also consumes very little power, so there are no battery problems like their are with laptops and other portable reading devices.  Unfortunately, like the Sony Reader, Kindle uses a proprietary format tied to a specific vendor, rather than supporting open standards.  (NY Times).
   

• Typepad from Six Apart is the first blogging company to offer blogging tools for the iPhone and the new iPod Touch.  "The TypePad iPhone application was designed from the ground up to be optimized for Apple's innovative multi-touch iPhone display. TypePad bloggers can easily create new posts, edit existing posts, manage comments from their community, and configure settings to send photos directly from their iPhone to their blog. The TypePad iPhone application will also work on the recently announced iPod touch"  (TypePad press release).  Within a day, Moveable Type also announced an iPhone plugin for their service.
   

• A new YouTubable friendly Flip Video Ultra camera is now available from Pure Digital Technologies (CNet).  The camera is a "..."higher-end addition to Pure Digital's line of pocket-sized, easy-to-use camcorders features upgrades to all its software, including DVD quality video and advanced editing features. Still affordable, the Ultra line has onboard software that allows users to instantly upload video directly to YouTube and other video publishing sites like AOL."  There is a 1GB model, that can record 30 minutes of video, for $150, and a 2GB model that sells for $180.
   

• Patch Tuesday came and went for Microsoft and it was barely noticeable.  Only 1 critical and 3 important patches were released, and all were from old, very little used subsystems of older OS versions.  For those deeply interested, click here for the security bulletin.
   

• And speaking of Microsoft, they released this week a wide array of peripherals, focusing on webcams and mice:  "the LifeCam NX-3000 and VX-7000 products, both of which are heavily marketed as being integrated with Windows Live Messenger."  There are three new mice:  the Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000; the 2.4GHz Wireless Notebook Mouse 7000; and the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, and it comes with a warning: Prepare, ye consumers, to "Meet the mouse with a mind of its own."   The Microsoft marketing blather will explain it all (One Microsoft Way).
   

• Also from Microsoft, Hotmail was updated this week.  The big news is 5GB of storage for all users, 10GB for users of Hotmail Plus, and a set of new features users have been asking about for a long time:

  • Improved performance

  • The ability to merge duplicate contacts

  • An easier way to view blocked images

  • Phishing reporting

  • Smaller header (devoting more page space to read email)

  • Automatic forwarding of your mail to other Hotmail accounts (paid accounts can forward to Gmail, Yahoo, or anywhere else)

  • Branded email hosting for universities

  • Accepting Outlook meeting requests in the Hotmail Calendar

  • Auto-replies for when you go on vacation

  • The ability to go to your inbox by default, instead of the Today page (ars technica)
     

• The price has not yet been announced, but starting next March BitMicro will be selling 2.5 inch SSD drives with 416GB of storage, part of its E-Disk Altima family of flash solid state drives (businesswire).
   

• A new technology, based on the diamond synchrotron has been developed in the UK to read ancient scrolls that cannot be unrolled because unrolling them would destroy them.  "Intense light beams will enable scientists to uncover the text in scrolls and books without having to open - and potentially damage - them" (BBC).  The process uses X-ray tomography to "...recover the structure where we can see the words that are written inside the document."
  
   

• File under: "The Blue Zune Does Not Exist."  Engadget (that sometimes accurate news source) reported Wednesday that a blue Zune was to be marketed at Target, and evidencing the report on a "leaked" ad showing what appeared to be, in fact, a blue Zune.  According to a Target representative, it was just a Photoshop filtering boo-boo.  It is really a black Zune in really bad Photoshop light.  All those who had leaped to their feet may resume their seats.
   

• Google has announced a $30 million moon contest. The first prize winner of $20 million must land a craft on the moon, the craft must rove at least a quarter mile, and it must send video data back to earth.  A $10 million second prize is resreved for the first craft that can arrive on the moon, send data back, but cannot rove.  The prize will be administered by the X-Prize Foundation (USA Today).
   

• Featured Safari Tech Book Online: Search Engine Visibility, by Shari Thurow.  "Search Engine Visibility is about designing, writing, and creating a web site primarily for a site's visitors, and helping them find what they are searching for via the major search engines, directories, and industry-related sites."  Palomar maintains a subscription to Tech Books Online, and the books can be accessed from any computer on the campus network.  Contact the library for information about off-campus access. 

  Listen to the news [mp3 - 14:35]

Training Opportunities

• Academic Technology Workshops
   
  • On Wednesday, 9/19, from 11am to noon, in room LL-111, Haydn Davis will present "Using RF Polling Devices (Clickers) in the Classroom."
     
  • On Thursday, 9/20 from 2-4pm, in room LL-109 Terry Gray will present "Outlook 2007 Email Skills."

• Elluminate Training

  • Elluminate is our new econferencing system.  There are many excellent training resources available through the Elluminate training center.  Live, instructor led training seminars--conducted through the Elluminate interface--occur regularly and may be scheduled through their web site.
     

• @ONE Training

  • Multi-week, instructor facilitated online classes.
  • Lunch'N'Learn 1-hour webinars.
  • Self-paced courses.

Blackboard Feature of the Week - David Gray

When Things Go Wrong

Over the last two weeks the San Marcos campus has been hit with several problems; power outages and bomb threats just compound the troubles typical for the normal flow of campus life. Using Blackboard as an aid to communicating with your students can help when troubles strike.

Now, don’t get me wrong, during a power outage on campus there really isn’t much that Blackboard can do to help. The Blackboard system is hosted on campus, and without power it does no one any good. But during the bomb threat situation yesterday we actually got phone calls from students asking why they hadn’t seen an announcement in Blackboard warning them not to come onto campus! So, it isn’t too farfetched to claim that at least some students are already looking to the Blackboard system as an information source for campus events.

When lesser problems crop up, such as a professor coming down sick (and therefore cancelling class sessions) or the professor’s computer going on the fritz (and therefore making response times to emails take longer than normal), posting an announcement in Blackboard can be very helpful. But, of course, students won’t be in the habit of looking for announcements unless you post them on a regular basis.

It is easy enough to check the box to email a copy of the Announcement to all the students as well, but… unless you are regularly emailing students from within Blackboard they may not have their correct email address listed. (To get the email addresses in Blackboard updated students must go into the eServices system and change their email address. The changes take place in Blackboard about an hour later.)

So my suggestion for facilitating communication when things go wrong? Get in the habit, now, of posting announcements and email students, before things go awry. When things go wrong, you’ll be ready. If things don’t go wrong? Have you ever had a student complain that they were having too much contact with you about your class?

Didn’t think so.

	Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 4:20]
	See the index of Dave's previous "Blackboard Feature of the Week" segments.

Note:  To get to David's vodcast site, click here.

Teaching with Technology - Dr. Haydn Davis

What Students Say About Assessment

	Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 10:40]
	See the index of Haydn's previous "Teaching with Technology" segments.

Tech-Talk-Topic - Terry Gray

The Five Best Things About Outlook 2007

On first blush Outlook does not look like it has changed as much as the other Office 2007 applications.  You will notice a new "To-Do Bar," and the new ribbon appears inside the mail form, but not in the program shell itself; but there are some significant, less obvious changes in the Outlook 2007 feature set that are worth mentioning.

Instant Search.  My candidate for best new feature is indexed searching for email.  It speeds up the search enormously.  If you are using Windows Vista you have this automatically, since the same indexing service supports Vista and the new Office programs.  If you are still a Windows XP SP2 user, you will need to download and install Windows Desktop Search to get indexed searching.  Once you have done so, you will see an option to enable "Instant Search" below the search box.  Do so and you will enjoy much quicker mail searches.

Flag for follow-up.  Flag for follow-up is now more powerful and works more consistently across the program.  It allows setting reminders from the right-click menu, and the reminder actions can be customized.  Flag for follow-up choices now include the ability to set a reminder to check for replies to messages you send, and to flag your recipient for follow-up with the same reminder for you to check for replies. 

Color categories.  The ability to add color categories is now greatly expanded.  You can apply the same color categories to emails, calendar items and tasks, and can search by color category to find all related items.

Integrated RSS.  You can now subscribe to RSS feeds right within Outlook, and the feeds you subscribe to in IE are available to you in Outlook.  This makes subscription and reading of news fees easier than ever.  You can also configure Outlook to download any RSS enclosures (like mp3 podcast audio files) along with the news item.

Calendar overlays and calendar snapshots.  I couldn't decide which feature I liked best, so I included both.  Calendar overlays permits you to open calendars other than your own (if you have permission) and overlay it on your personal calendar to locate conflicts and identify scheduling commitments you might not have been aware of.  Calendar snapshots let's you send your calendar for an upcoming period in an email to someone else in one of three levels of detail so that the other person can pick a time for your meeting.  This meets the need for scheduling with those who do not have outlook.

While Outlook has changed less than the other Office programs in the 2007 edition, it has still changed some.  These are my nominations for the best new features.

	Listen to this segment only [mp3 - play time = 5:35]
	See an index of previous "Tech Talk Topics" segments.

Music

The music for today's show was provided by Magnatune.com, and is used through their Creative Commons license for podcasts.  Today's album is "14 Days" by Plunkett.  "Warm, melodic, and artfully crafted songs are in the best tradition of British Folk-Rock...a lovely cross between Nick Drake and Syd Barrett."

"The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided"  ~ Casey Stengel

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