OPINION

From ‘Duck and Cover’ to ‘Flip and Power'
to . . .

By Terry Calhoun

SINCE CELL PHONES, PDAs AND WATER DON'T MIX, HAIR DRYERS MAY BECOME MISSION CRITICAL IT TOOLS

About eight years ago I learned that there was a basic computing skill that had to become part of the training for each new employee in my department: What to do if/when you spill a liquid onto the keyboard. This is serious. Every new staffer in my department, and I employ a lot of work-study students, had to learn the routine: Quickly flip the keyboard upside down and stop power to the machine as fast as you can, whether by hitting a button or yanking on a cord.

Our mantra became a computer era version of the early Cold War “Duck and Cover” – except that we said, “Flip and Power.” But I am at a complete loss as to what to tell people who keep on dropping their cell phones into toilets, puddles, and sinks – or who run them through the laundry. Read more

IT NEWS

Giving Students the Legal Media Download 'Jones'

Many institutions (and the music industry) are finding legal (and relatively cheap) downloads to be a win-win-win (university-industry-students) situation. (CNN)
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Boston College Fundraising Takes a PR Body Blow

An external vendor slip-up potentially exposed 100,000+ contributors' records recently. Forensic analysis indicates that the hack was probably not aimed at those records but at using the machine in question for further attacks. We hope that nuance is understood by the donors in question. (The Boston College Chronicle)
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Cornell Dorms to Get CUTV - for Windows Machines, Anyway

Students will pay for it, but the college is glad to be able to offer it to their computers rather than having to rewire dorms with new cable. (The Cornell Daily Sun)
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At ASU an Outage Slows Internet, Computers on Campus

The cause was apparently a piece of router equipment, but we were unable to quickly learn more because our link to this kept timing out. Hmm. (Web Devil Online)
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When Nature Calls, Cell Phone Owners Should Answer Carefully

We bet that our colleagues in the Human Computer Interface design area (or would it be ergonomics?) are all over this. (AP)
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RESOURCES

Website Spinoffs: Flickr, Mappr, Flicker Postcard Browser, and more

Taking a clue from last week's guest column about "content in motion," this commentator notes and describes several websites where the content owners are serving up the same content from other sets, but with twists. Anyone want a collection of photos in mauve? (Christian Science Monitor) Read more

DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

Get Your Brand New Laptops, for Only $100 US, at MIT!

MIT has three corporate sponsors who want to be suppliers and who've already committed $2M each for the project which would create $100 laptops (purchased by governments in bulk) for children around the world. The pitch: Think of how many textbooks you don't have to buy! (CNN)
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