IT Trends September 8, 2005 -- Campus Technology

IT Trends September 8, 2005

09/08/05

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OPINION

For Campus IT: Early Lessons From Katrina

By Rich Seeley

Planning For The Next Katrina May Not Be As Useful As Developing IT Flexibility

Disaster planning will undoubtedly be a hot topic for campus IT, following Katrina. What lessons can be learned? What can be done differently? Is it possible to be prepared for every contingency?

Some lessons may be fairly obvious. Coming up with better plans and being able to execute them may take more time. Here are a few preliminary thoughts about what we’ve learned from Katrina so far.

IT NEWS

Free Phones, Buses, Web Assistance for Katrina Victims

Cell phone and other high-tech communications companies are engaged in an effort to bolster communications among those displaced by Katrina. Turns out that if you want to use FEMA's online aid request form, though, you'd better not be a Apple user. (USA Today) Read more

Outside of the 'Mainstream' But Helping Out in the Gulf

More about what people are doing to try to restore networking to the New Orleans area: "the ad-hoc culture of open-source wireless, mesh networking and free mumicipal Wi-Fi" is playing its part. Read more

Despite Overseas Outsourcing, Community Colleges See Help-Desk Support as a Growing Career

So many community colleges, like Northern Essex Community College, in Massachusets find the need to create or grow pre-existing training programs. Read more

Supremes Don't Scare Music File Swappers

Despite high-profile court cases, including the recent US Supreme Court ruling, on any given day as many as 9.6M people are logged into file-sharing programs, up from 6.8M last year. (USA Today) Read more

RESOURCES

Universities Hit by Katrina Tap Technologies To Stay Afloat

"In spite of a lack of electricity, a hugely damaged telecom infrastructure, and increasingly explosive civil unrest, university staff and students in Louisiana are applying what technology they can use to communicate with each other and helping in the arduous process of rebuilding their state," writes Dian Schaffhauser in CT exclusive Web coverage. Read more

DEALS, CONTRACTS, AWARDS

Sacred Heart University--Campus IT Pioneer --Takes Another Step Forward

The on-campus "actory," houses a notebook service and support center and IT call center on campus, offers Lenovo-certified technicians that provide over-the-counter repair services for greater flexibility and decreased costs." (Sacred Heart Pioneers) Read more

Swarthmore Revamps IT Support System

Among other changes, it is using a local outside vendor to supplement the pre-existing but overworked and often unavailable 'dorm consultants.' (The Ph'enix, Swarthmore College’s Online Student Newspaper) Read more

Thursday, September 8, 2005

Featured

Microsoft Reduces Copilot Integrations in Windows 11

Microsoft is dialing back its aggressive Copilot push in Windows 11, promising a sweeping quality overhaul that puts performance and reliability ahead of AI feature expansion .
Why AI Strategy Belongs in the President's Office

Institutions that are succeeding with AI share one thing in common, and it is not a better committee, a larger budget, or a more sophisticated technology stack. It is a president who never handed off the steering wheel.
The Institutional Knowledge Shift Is Reshaping Higher Ed IT

Higher education IT leaders are navigating a quiet but consequential transition: Experienced team members are retiring or leaving for private-sector roles, and the teams replacing them are smaller, newer, and often stretched thin. The result is a structural shift in how technology decisions are made, executed, and sustained.
Cloud Security Alliance Expands Focus on Governance and Assurance for Agentic AI Systems

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recently announced a series of CSAI Foundation milestones aimed at securing what it calls the agentic control plane, including a new catastrophic risk initiative, CVE Numbering Authority authorization, and the acquisition of two agentic AI specifications.