IT Trends for Thursday, October 28, 2004

IT Trends

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In This Issue

OPINION

The Newest ‘Information Technology’ Is Actually the Oldest

Terry Calhoun, Commentator
Society for College and University Planning (SCUP)
University of Michigan

During a trip to Portland last week, for the North American Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education, I read several books. (I always carry reading material to handle any amount of down time at airports or in the air.) One of them was a science fiction novel that reminded me, in terms of the science involved, of the sort of stuff that was being written about mechanical space travel in the decades before we actually ended up going to the moon.

More specifically, this book extrapolated out from some of the current research that is either minimally-developed or only now seen as near-term possible due to the sequencing of the human genome and the kinds of multidisciplinary research that is going to be happening in all of those “life sciences centers” popping up on campuses. At some point down the line, and not in the far future, we’re going to have to be thinking a little more carefully about what we now consider to be “technology.”

Read more


IT NEWS

Europe Expected to Agree to Deal for PeopleSoft

The European Commission is expected to okay Oracle’s takeover of PeopleSoft. And in a Delaware Court, a judge may soon rule against much of PeopleSoft’s “poison pill” defense. Seems like the beginning of the end. (New York Times)
Read more

UC Berkeley System Suffers Biggest Hack Yet

Personal information about 1.4 million California citizens, including social security numbers, was taken from a university faculty researcher’s hard drive as a result of a compromise of the network. (CNET News.com)
Read more

Virginia Tech’s System X Faster, but Falls Behind

This new supercomputer passed the 12.25-teraflop benchmark to take fourth place in the world’s fastest computer competition, and first place in the academically owned supercomputer competition. It consists of 1,100 custom-built Xserve Apple servers, each with two G5 processors running at 2.3 GHz. (Wired News)

Read more

Google Takes On Your Desktop

“The program can recall any bit of text that ever passed in front of your eyeballs, in a fraction of a second. You don’t even have to remember where you read something (e-mail, Web, instant message, document); you have to remember only what it was about.” (New York Times)
Read more

Dartmouth Student Government Overhauling BlitzMail Terminals

The 48 seven-year-old terminals are more and more frequently causing problems and crashing. The student government plans to replace them with eMacs by offering $10k if the college matches with another $10k. (The Dartmouth Online)
Read more

University of Michigan’s West Quad to Get IT Upgrades

$12.2M will be spent on fire protection, electrical, and information technology enhancements to the huge old dorm, which had its last major update in 1985. West Quad houses 1,200 students. (The Michigan Daily)
Read more

Raising a Ruckus On Campus

Alfred State College (State University of New York), Bentley College, and Northern Illinois University are launching Ruckus Network on their campuses to provide a wide spectrum of programmed entertainment for students and others, delivered via the Internet. (PR Newswire)
Read more

RESOURCES

America’s Most Connected Campuses

Forbes has released a special report that identifies the most connected campuses in the US.

This survey’s Top Ten are:
1. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
2. Bryant University
3. DePauw University
4. Temple University
5. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
6. Cornell University
7. Duquesne University
8. The Catholic University of America
9. University of Pennsylvania
10. University of Georgia

“These schools aren’t just teaching technology, they are embracing it,” the report says. (Forbes.com)
Learn more

DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

Score One for the Penguins

Regis University in Denver has installed CanIt-PRO, Roaring Penguin’s Anti-spam Product, to help protect e-mail for its 16,000 students.
Read more

CalTech Signs Multi-Year eProcurement Agreement

The university will implement the complete suite of SciQuest’s Higher Markets eProcurement solutions, adding to its existing Oracle Financials system.
Read more

Macromedia Partners with MERLOT to Extend Portal

MERLOT and Macromedia announced a collaborative agreement to strengthen MERLOT’s online academic communities. MERLOT will use Macromedia’s Contribute 3 to build a set of Internet portals—one gateway for each of its 15 academic disciplines.
Read more


Thursday, October 28, 2004

Sponsored by:
Meeting the Wireless Challenge
How are campus IT professionals keeping up with changing technologies, the demand for Wi-Fi and the funding challenges that go along with that? Read what some colleges and universities are doing to meet the wireless challenge on a special Syllabus microsite sponsored by SBC. This special section on the connected campus looks at networked technologies through articles, case studies, white papers and more.

Click here for details
Sponsored by:

FREE Webinar: Efficient Online Application Management
How can your campus strike the balance between the need for quick adaptation to evolving admissions strategies and the need to streamline the day-to-day activities of its technology staff? This webinar will address ways your campus can increase efficiency in the building and posting of online applications, while maintaining independence from outsourced developers.

Click here to read more and register online.


Upcoming Events


TDWI World Conference in Orlando, October 31– November 5, 2004

Syllabus2005 in Los Angeles, July 24-28, 2005

Events Calendar


Sponsored by:
HP offers negotiated contracts for colleges, universities and states.
That means your education department can purchase HP products at prices far below consumer rates. What's more, HP authorized partners and resellers can also utilize specially negotiated contracts to better serve the needs of their campus' and students.

Click here for details

Sponsored by:
Collaboration Brings Students, Schools Closer Together
Collaboration technologies can extend the classroom and change the ways students and faculty work together. In this new article on collaboration, learn how you can meet the challenges of a growing and diverse campus community. Read three examples of how collaboration technologies are evolving and changing the way groups meet and work, in and out of the classroom. Visit this special Campus Technology micro site sponsored by Oracle to find resources on the latest collaborative tools and technologies redefining the campus enterprise. Bookmark this special section.

Click here for details

NEW PRODUCTS

Sonic Foundry Releases New Real-Time Recorder

The Mediasite RL400 allows organizations to take a modular approach to building a powerful rich-media communications system. As a stand-alone presentation recorder, it allows users to instantly capture and replay presentations without a backend server connection, and immediately burn them to a CD.
Read more

SCT Luminis Content Management Suite 3.0

The new version offers enhancements targeted at streamlining tasks associated with content contribution, content management, and Web site management. It provides new tools and features for less technical users.
Read more

Roving Planet Releases New Scan and Block Module

The new module in Roving Planet’s wireless LAN management and security software suite prevents unknown and potentially infected devices from accessing the network.
Read more

SonicWALL’s New Content Security Manager

The Content Security Manager 2100 CF is a content filtering appliance with a range of capabilities designed to scale for organizations of different sizes.
Read more

Sponsored by:
Share your expertise: Speak at Syllabus2005
Plan to speak at Syllabus2005, July 24-28 in Los Angeles. Call for Papers is now open and we are accepting proposals until November 30 in five tracks applicable to higher education technology.

Click here for details


The Impact of Wireless Network on Instructional Computing
Howard Strauss, manager of technology outreach as Princeton University

Despite the popularity of the technology, wireless is only beginning to show its potential uses for instruction. Howard Strauss comments about the use of the technology, both in the classroom and remotely.

Click Here to Listen


Current Topics in Our forums include:
Networking

Collaboration in the Education Space

Mobile Computing

Campus IT Security

Tablet PCs

Discuss with us


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