Keeping the campus connected to technology...
Welcome to the @NUInfoServices newsletter, offered as a service by Information Services (IS) to keep Northeastern faculty and staff connected to technology. This newsletter will be distributed to all faculty and staff on a monthly basis and provide insight into technology trends, new service offerings and helpful tips and tricks for using technology.
If you have any suggestions for future articles you'd like covered, feel free to contact us at isnewsletter@neu.edu.
JANUARY 2010
new & noteworthy :
techUpdates :
service spotlight : SharePoint
tips & tricks :
Information Services plays significant role in supporting President Obama's visit to Northeastern
Vice President Bob Weir received a call at noon on Saturday asking that IS support President Obama's event just 27 hours later, in a venue where the technologies requested were either not installed or were not configured to handle the projected demand.
IS installed four 802.11n access points in Cabot, completely covering the Court, in addition to the Secret Service Situation Room in 205 Cabot. Statistically, there were over 60 active connections leading up to the event. Once it was completed, the number stayed even, while bandwidth usage increased as updates were submitted to the news outlets.
In addition, a request for CNN service in the Secret Service Sit Room was made. This was difficult, as there is no Husky Cable or CATV service in Cabot. Through some creativity, a temporary IP-based solution was deployed.
IS staff from the Networking Group and Customer Services worked throughout the weekend to support and maintain this special event. A special shout out goes to Facilities electricians and Building Services who assisted IS in completing the required tasks. Excellent teamwork produced a fantastic result!
Clickers at NU
Many forms of audience response systems have been around for decades. Currently, clicker technology is used on the game show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". Individuals can make their selection with the use of a "clicker" and the results are electronically tabulated, displayed and stored. When applied to teaching, the response systems are also called student or classroom response systems.
In the past, Information Services had investigated the use of this technology in the classroom but the technology was not mature enough to implement as a supported service. With the increased interest and improvements in technology, a Click Task Group was formed in the Spring of 2009 to investigate which clicker technology would work best for Northeastern. After a six month pilot, it was determined that Turning Technologies would be the tool used to deliver clicker technology to the classroom.
This technology keeps teaching interesting and faulty have found many ways to use this technology in the classroom. For example, one faculty member gives a short quiz at the beginning of his class to guide the lecture on what is needed to review. The tool also connects with Blackboard to upload the results of quizzes, participation and attendance. The students are able to purchase (at the NU Bookstore) and register clickers that will then be recognized in the courses using this service. For more information regarding this new service, call the Help Desk at X4357 or read more about Clickers at NU on the EdTech website.
Select this link to download the clicker pilot final report in pdf.
For more information, visit the Turning Technologies website.
myNEU Portal Upgraded to Luminis 4
Earlier this month, Information Services performed an upgrade of the software product (known as "Luminis") that supports the myNEU portal to the latest release offered by the vendor (SungardHE). While there were no visual look and feel changes introduced with this upgrade, the latest version of the product offers several enhancements that will become apparent to the community as we further integrate the portal with UDC Banner services. The upgrade also allows us to support requests from other support organizations to provide content to the community quicker since portal outages will not be required to distribute content to select audiences which has been the case with the current version. We will also be able to better support various content sources such as RSS 2.0 feeds, etc. Information Services has also taken advantage of the upgrade to introduce new hardware and an operating system version that should provide additional performance improvements to the service.
Luminis 4 also positions Northeastern to take full advantage of the major look and feel changes that will occur in Luminis 5 that is expected to be released by SungardHE towards the end of this year.
This will be the first major change to the user interface since the product was introduced in 2002 and members of the Information Services staff have been working with SungardHE on the improvements to be introduced within Luminis 5. Information Services remains committed to introducing the latest software offerings in order to enhance the community's experience with the myNEU portal.
Marlborough Data Center
During the past year, Information Services (IS) has embarked on a project to expand its data center capacity and move critical administrative services to an above-grade location. Information Services (IS) evaluated several options for offsite data centers, ultimately signing a multi-year lease for data center space in Marlborough, MA. The offsite location currently consists of 500 square feet of raised floor data center space. The infrastructure provided mirrors the on-campus capability and includes highly available network capacity and long distance fiber channel to support storage requirements. As of January 2010, the space is fully functional and hosting several back-end enterprise services (including Exchange email services). Over the coming months, Information Services will be moving additional critical administrative services to Marlborough, freeing up capacity for academic services hosting on the Boston campus. This work also furthers the University's efforts to strengthen business continuity/disaster recovery capability. For more information about the Marlborough Data Center, please contact, Rajiv Shridhar at r.shridhar@neu.edu.
Major Enterprise Storage Refresh Completed!
Systems & Production Services (SPS) began a twelve month, highly intensive project charged with the task of replacing the leased EMC storage devices with current technology geared to meet the University's growing storage requirements. Three-year projections forecasted that nearly 260TB of tiered storage would be required to meet future requirements, far exceeding the current 70TB of available storage. The challenge to meet these storage requirements was further added to by the need to do so in a less expensive manner without forsaking reliability or availability.
After a thorough investigation, which considered both main campus and the newly activated Marlborough Data Center (MDC) requirements, the decision was made to purchase the required equipment. The project implementation began in July when the new equipment began arriving. What followed was a methodical and coordinated plan designed and executed to migrate the data from the leased equipment to the newly purchased equipment, without disruption of existing services. Over the night of November 7th, all major services were switched from the old equipment to the new equipment. All other migrations were completed by early December. In addition to the much-improved storage capability, new data backup equipment was purchased and installed in the Richards and Marlborough data centers. This new backup equipment from Avamar complements the current backup disk library from EMC. Prior to the winter holiday break, all of the leased equipment had been powered down and disconnected. If you have any questions about the new EMC storage, please contact Rajiv Shridhar at r.shridhar@neu.edu.
Mobile Application of the Month
A feature written by Mark Staples, Director, Academic Technology Services
The iPhone is a great device with lots of applications and integrates very well into the Northeastern environment. I use it to help manage nearly every facet of my life - in particular my contacts, calendar, and communications. But two important functions were missing that would complete my mobility needs - the ability to manage tasks and notes which I maintain in Exchange.
The Microsoft Exchange messaging system using Outlook or Entourage clients to manage email, contacts, tasks, personal notes, and calendar. The native iPhone integration manages only email, contacts, and calendar. Now there are two separate apps to complete my messaging needs - iMTasks and iMNotes.
iMTasks
As mobile apps go, this app is about as complete as it can get. It is easy to setup, using the same information we used to setup our Exchange mail, calendaring, and contacts. It has the ability to sort projects by: Start Date, Due Date, Subject, Priority, and Category. Its viewing options are adequate: Show Active Tasks Only, Due On or Before, Starts On or Before, and Categories.
Entering a new task is simple. Set the start date, due date, priority, and category. There's even a progress bar.
Other Features:
- Tasks View: Allows you to keep on track of all your tasks and manage your objectives on the road. Reminders are not supported.
- Notes View: Gives you access to your Outlook notes in real-time.
- Out Of Office: Set your Out-Of-Office status and message remotely.
- Contacts View: Search your contacts and Global Address List remotely.
For $6.99, it's an excellent iPhone app. If you track your tasks in Outlook or Entourage and use an iPhone, this is a must have. There's also an iMTasks Lite that's free - a read only version.
iMNotes
I use "Notes" in Outlook/Entourage to manage information outside of email, calendar, or task. These are undated and informational notes - much like personal post-it notes. For example, I'm in a discussion and a book title comes up; I'll create a note with the title and author for future reference. I'll also create a Note with notes from a meeting or other reference material.
iMNotes provides access to these Exchange notes. Create, edit, view and search Notes in real-time. Create a note on the iPhone, press the sync button and and it shows up in Outlook or Entourage a few seconds later. Create a note in Outlook/Entourage and it shows up on the iPhone.
The cost is also $6.99. Because I use Notes fairly regularly, this was a must have for me. There's also an iMTasks Lite that's free - a read only version.
To read more reviews of technologies, visit Mark's TechHowler blog.
What is the new Droid phone?
If you were to go to an electronics store today to shop for a phone, the choices can be overwhelming if you have not done your homework. Depending on your Service Provider you could literally be looking at hundreds of phones. There has been much in the papers about the iPhone devices and the Blackberry devices, but have you read about the latest and greatest? The Droid?
To get a little technical, it has a 5 megapixel camera with flash, built-in software to manipulate those pictures, plays music, plays and records video. The standby time (when the phone is turned on but not actively using any applications or phone calls) is claimed to be around 270 hours. That is 11.5 DAYS of standby time before the battery would drain! If you are talking on the phone, Motorola is claiming 385 minutes (over 6 hours) of talk time.
There are two models that are nearly the same with one key difference; one only has a touch screen (HTC Eris) and the other (Motorola) has a slide out keyboard. Both are available on Verizon currently. The non-technical opinion is that both of these devices are awesome and definitely will be (and ARE) giving the iPhone a serious run for the money! :)
More information:
- Engadget provides a full review of the Motorola Droid device.
- HTC provides a full review of its HTC Eris device.
Kindle vs. Nook eReaders
There are a lot of eReaders out there, but you may have heard some buzz about the Kindle and the Nook. They both have some amazing features and qualities, but there are a few key differences, advantages and disadvantages in each. Listed below are links to two comparison reviews, which will hopefully answer your questions and provide some insight. Happy eReading!
- Nook Vs. Kindle: New Chapter In E-Reader Battle - NPR
- Kindle vs Nook Review - iReader Review
SharePoint Service Overview
SharePoint is a web-based collaborative workspace tool, available to all faculty and staff departments and offices. SharePoint allows users to share documents, post announcements, manage team calendars and organize team information in a secure environment. Some key features include document check-out and versioning, email distribution lists for groups, and calendar integration with Outlook. Site set-up, features, and permissions are easily customizable, and you do not have to be technical to use or manage your site. Any faculty or staff member can access SharePoint by going to sharepointportal.nunet.neu.edu; if you are on a NUnet machine you will be automatically logged in, and if not, you may login using your NUnet credentials. The sites that you have permission to see are listed in the left-hand Quick Launch navigation section.
If you are interested in having a SharePoint site created for your department or office, or if you have any further questions about SharePoint, please contact the Service Desk at help@neu.edu or 617-373-4357 (HELP).
ISCS also offers SharePoint introductory training classes. For more information, visit ISCS Training Services, or send an email to training@neu.edu.
SharePoint Feature Highlight
Calendar integration with Outlook
There are many departments and offices around campus using SharePoint to collaborate more efficiently and conveniently. One popular feature is calendar integration with Outlook. In SharePoint, you have the ability to create multiple calendars, so a different calendar can exist for each project, subject or committee within an office/department. It is then very simple to sync these calendars up with Outlook and view them all in one place, within Outlook. Another bonus is that when the calendars are viewed in Outlook, they are color coded, and can be displayed in overlay or side by side mode with your regular Outlook calendar. You will then have the ability to both view and edit your SharePoint calendars within Outlook, or SharePoint, and they will remain in sync.
February ISCS-Training Workshops
- Microsoft Outlook - Advanced Features and Tips
- Microsoft Excel Formulas
- Microsoft Excel Charts
- Microsoft PowerPoint - Introduction
- Creating Bibliographies with EndNote
- Using Twitter in the Classroom
- Introduction to Blackboard
If you are interested in registering for any of these sessions, visit the ISCS website - and click on the Register for Classes icon and login with your myNEU credentials. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at 617-373-5858 or training@neu.edu.
Outlook/Entourage Tip
Outlook Tip :: Quick Parts
If you repeatedly use the same blocks of text in Outlook (and/or in Word), you may be interested in learning about Quick Parts. This feature allows you to save blocks of text, called Building Blocks, to be reused at a later time. If you would like to utilize this time-saving feature, the Microsoft website has information about how to create and use Quick Parts.
Entourage Tip :: How to forward multiple e-mails
There are two ways to do this; using Forward or Forward as Attachment.
- Select the messages you wish to forward, and then right-click (or Control-click) to bring up the options menu.
- Select either "Forward" or "Forward as attachment".
- If you select "Forward"
- Each message will be opened in a new message composition window, and you must send each one manually.
- The recipient will receive each message as a separate forward.
- If you select "Forward as attachment"
- Only one message composition window will open, containing all of the messages as attached .eml files.
- The recipient will receive one e-mail message with several attachments.
Connecting to NUwave on an iPhone
If you're using your iPhone on campus, you can use NUwave for a fast and secure network connection. Go to the Settings menu and click the Wi-Fi button. Slide the switch to On (if Off), then select NUwave. Enter your NUnet username and password. Click 'Accept' to finish authentication. NUwave will appear with a check-mark in your list of Wi-Fi Networks.
Pro Tip: Shutting off Wi-Fi or turning on Airplane Mode when not transferring data conserves power so you can go longer between charges. Another option is to configure your settings to use Wi-Fi instead of 3G. This can be done by going to Settings--> General--> Network. Just slide the 'Enable 3G' switch to Off.
Be sure to connect to connect to NUwave instead of NUwave-guest for a more secure connection whenever connecting to wireless.
A Simple Way to Add Software to your NUnet PC
Do you need to use a program like Adobe Acrobat Professional or EndNote on your Information Services managed NUnet PC, but don't have that software installed? For many applications, you don't need a disc: Use 'Add New Programs' in Control Panel.
- Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel, then choose Add or Remove Programs.
- Select 'Add New Programs' from the options on the left panel. A list of available programs will appear.
- Select the program you would like to install. Once selected, an 'Add' button will appear.
- Click 'Add.'
There are a number of new versions of software available -- check out 'Add New Programs' on your PC and see what's available!
If you have any questions about any of the topics in this month's articles, please feel free to contact the IS Service Desk at 617-373-HELP (4357) or help@neu.edu. For 24x7 access to technology help, visit myKnowledge, the knowledgebase service on myNEU.