SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, November 29, 2006
News & Product Updates
Call for Entries
Good news for schools in need of high-end projection capability. Campus Technology magazine will be following the campus use of four Canon REALiS SX6 multimedia projectors – equipment that boasts new levels of razor-sharp projection for intricately detailed applications (including small text) – to see how advances in “smart classroom” technology (such as Canon’s brand-new “AISYS Enhanced” LCOS technology) are actually impacting classroom work...
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Grad Student Web Site Helps Split the Dinner Bill
Three Carnegie Mellon University graduate students have designed a program that could make haggling over dividing the restaurant check or utility bill a thing of the past, the Associated Press reported. Ashwin Bharambe, Amit Manjhi, and Shashank Pandit created Buxfer, short for “bucks transfer,” a social networking site with a personal finance angle that allows users to form groups of friends or housemates and track online who owes what for expenses like utility bills, dinner tabs, and movie tickets.
It quickly became popular with friends and colleagues, many of them college students or young professionals on a tight budget. So Bharambe, Manjhi, and Pandit started a Web site in September offering Buxfer to the general public at no cost. Since its launch, Buxfer has grown to about 2,200 users who have completed transactions worth almost $700,000, said Pandit, 24. Most users are university students, some from as far away as India and Australia...
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Melbourne Institute of Tech Integrates Library Management
Australia’s Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) chose Voyager, an integrated library system from Endeavor Information Systems Inc., to strengthen enterprise library automation, and integrate library access and management across its campus library hubs. RMIT officials said they wanted a library automation system that would support their plans to integrate six branches of the campus library network. They also wanted interoperability with other university systems and external organizations such as the National Library of Australia.
Craig Anderson, director of the University Library at RMIT said the Voyager system was picked because of its functionality, but also because of the “focus [Endeavor] brings to bear on the global library market.” Endeavor is a subsidiary of the science publisher
Reed Elsevier. Anderson added that a “number of system-wide improvements will flow from this implementation and we’re confident [the deal] will enable us to increase student satisfaction and streamline internal processes.”...
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