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Features
Mobility
11/29/2005
Supporting hundreds of applications...
on more than 5,000 desktops and servers, Northeastern University (MA) was challenged to ensure that its faculty and students had the applications they needed—anywhere, anytime. Northeastern spokespeople state that initially, managing the diverse environment posed many difficulties. For instance, at the beginning of each semester, the school received the latest applications for teaching and classroom support, which it systematically rolled out campuswide. Administrators were faced with some last-minute requests for updates that they found difficult to tackle, as well as installation incompatibilities and support and resource constraints. Enter SoftGrid from Softricity . According to Softricity reps, the school needed a system that would solve its application deployment and multi-versioning issues, and enable IT to quickly and easily service needs for the latest applications. Also, SoftGrid allows NU administrators to accelerate each step of the application management process by "compressing the time necessary for packaging and preparing applications, deployment, patch management and updates, support, and termination." Read the article
Taking maps to the next level
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is truly on the wireless "map." MIT will now "provide information on exactly how many people are logged on at any given location at any given time" via a new map service, reports the Associated Press, regarding MIT's new iSpots project. "It even reveals a user's identity if the individual has opted to make that data public." Carlo Ratti, director of the school's SENSEable City Laboratory (creators of the map), informed AP that one can even "watch" an individual go from room to room, if he has a handheld device that's connected. "Laptops and Wi-Fi are creating a revolutionary change in the way people work," said Ratti in the interview, explaining that the maps help to "visualize these changes by monitoring traffic on the wireless network, and showing how people move around campus." More on the iSPOTS project
Wall street simulated
Tulane University's (LA) A.B. Freeman School of Business brings Wall Street to the classroom with a training center that simulates the activity around the financial hub. The school uses Christie Digital's projection cubes to create a screen that spans the walls of the school's trading center. A separate controller can display multiple images on different screens, or one large image across the entire wall— bringing the real world of high finance right into the classroom.
21st century learners
CT's IT Training columnist, David Starrett, and his colleagues at
The Foundation for California Community Colleges (FCCC) has awarded a statewide emergency alert notification contract to Waterfall Mobile. The contract establishes Waterfall's AlertU as an approved technology through the official non-profit foundation for the California Community College (CCC) system office. Through this partnership, individual colleges may directly implement emergency communication services, eliminating lengthy technology evaluation and RFP processes. King's College and Arizona State University have switched to Omnilert's e2Campus for emergency notification. Omnilert also has introduced a new program called the ENS Conversion Service that allows schools to bulk upload data from their previous emergency notification system into e2Campus at no charge. Saint Joseph's University has begun deploying a Meru Networks wireless local area network across its Philadelphia campus as part of a multi-year effort to bring wireless coverage to every building on campus. Organizations may have been slow to adopt Microsoft Windows Vista, but expect that to change by late 2008 to 2009, according to a Forrester Research report by Benjamin Gray et al., published last week. Talisma Corp. announced version 8.0 of its constituent relationship management (CRM) application for higher education. The new release includes application management, a revamped user interface, two-way text messaging, personalized Web portals, and an ADA-compliant Web client, among other enhancements. Two Pennsylvania teaching colleagues with an interest in music and technology are bringing remote experts into classrooms at almost no cost, using Skype's free videoconferencing technology.
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