ITSC Retreat. ITSC is launching several new IT Services in the near future. Launch Date. Web Content Management System (CMS)

Transcription

1 A Newsletter of the Information Technology Services Centre, Lingnan University Announcing the Launch of new IT Services ITSC is launching several new IT Services in the near future 2003 Announcing the Launch of new IT Services ITSC Retreat New Web Services (Campus Pipeline) Coming Soon!! New features of the new Lingnan intranet or University portal Video Conferencing Advantages of Video Conferencing IT Helpful Hints Latest Virus Alerts Web Content Management System (CMS) Wireless LAN Launch Date August August Campus Pipeline (CP) intranet/portal September 1 New Lingnan Homepage September 1 Classroom Timetabling integration with Banner September Alumni-Net Project (Banner, , web) October 1 New web-based NoticeBoard software October 1 Banner software version 5.5 and Oracle upgrades IAS hardware and Storage Area Network (SAN) upgrade Exam Timetabling integration with Banner Novell to Linux server migration November November December December Integration of WebCT, CP and Banner - single sign-on Early 2004 ITSC Retreat ITSC held a full-day retreat on June 25 at the Gold Coast Hotel. We were honored to have both the President and the CIO attend and give presentations to ITSC staff. Many issues were explored on the day, including the problems of the past, current issues and recommendations for the future. Past successes, current strengths and the positive aspects of ITSC were reviewed, with a view to building a more responsive ITSC structure in the future, including convergence with the Library. This will include the outsourcing of some IT services, as well as extensive Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) projects for the future. The President reflected on the need to review all operations of the university and stated that outsourcing of IT services may be required in the future, if substantial changes in ITSC s operation and cost cannot be achieved by internal restructuring of ITSC. The CIO also highlighted the future IT needs of the university.

2 ITSC Retreat The ITSC Director facilitated the day, with very active participation by all attendees, with 32 out of a total of 36 ITSC staff attending. A most successful day promising much for the future of ITSC! New Web Services (Campus Pipeline) Coming Soon!! We talked about revamping our intranet earlier in the year and we are now moving towards that goal and bringing a new face and services to the start of the new academic year. This will be Campus Pipeline (CP) that we demonstrated in May and there are many new features in the new version to be implemented. We would like to deliver highly personalised information, web services and community interaction to every campus member, from faculty to students to administrators to alumni! New features of the new Lingnan intranet or University portal Campus Pipeline or CP includes the following web-based web-based calendar targeted announcement system course portal and course consolidator applications group portal and group maker applications message boards virtual chat rooms handheld sync application. The CP web-based system will not be implemented as it conflicts with the present webmail facilities. However the icon will re-direct to our present webmail system. A brief description of the applications available in the Campus Pipeline is as follows. Calendar This is an integrated individual and group calendar application that allows users to create and manage personal web-based calendars. This could be integrated with the Banner Student system where course data and events can be populated. The calendar application provides group-scheduling features that allow users to invite other users to events. Users also have access to Class Calendars that are automatically created by the system and managed by instructors. 2

3 New features of the new Lingnan intranet or University portal Group portal and group maker applications Group Portal includes message boards, chat functionality, a photo gallery and news postings. These applications allow campus groups to conduct group interaction through a private portal that is secured both for the group itself and for content created within the group portal. No programming knowledge is required for group members to add content. Chat room This acts as a forum in which the instructor or leader can conduct synchronous, online discussions with students and members. This is Course or group based and it is secured and maintained by the system. Each comment is identified with the author s name. A whisper utility allows participants to conduct sidebar discussion, while a gag utility enables the instructor or group leader to prevent further participation by a student or group member. Message Boards The message boards are course specific and they function as an online bulletin board with sections for topics, messages and replies. Instructors can moderate message board discussions. Course portal and course consolidator applications Besides the course chat, message boards, and calendar services, Campus Pipeline also provides instructors with an automatically created course home page where they can add announcements and links. Course rosters and lists are automatically maintained from Banner Student. Instructors who teach multiple sections of a course can manage the course portals for all sections centrally on a single screen. Handheld Sync Application Handheld Sync synchronises the calendar application with PDA devices running either Palm/OS or Windows/CE, giving PDA users access to Course and school data stored within the calendaring system. We will launch a competition for students to design the new face of the Campus Pipeline in mid-october The best design will be implemented in the second semester and the winner of the best design will win a PDA. In the meantime, please stay tuned to ITSC News and its new web development. A demo version of Campus Pipeline is available for staff and st udents to tr y at U RL - h t t p : / / c a m p u s p i p e l i n e. l n. e d u. h k. Please note that the new version of Campus Pipeline should be available by 1 September Video Conferencing Video conferencing (VC) is a medium where individuals or groups can meet face-to-face in real time and interact over the Network. It requires a computer with a video camera or a set-top VC box and an Internet connection. Bringing people around the world closer together through the use of this technology is becoming increasingly popular. The Lingnan VC Resources The video conferencing centre is located at Library Room G103. The existing setup can support both Point-to-Point and Multi-Point video conferencing over the IP network. The recommended connection speed is 768 kbps. Inside the centre you will find: - 1. Polycom ViewStation FX, 2. Polycom ViewStation remote controller, 3. Polycom microphone, 4. Panasonic Plasma TV, If you are going to make video calls, you can choose either Polycom ViewStation FX, for point-to-point & multi-points connections; Desktop PC, which only supports point-to-point connections. 5. A pair of computer speakers, 6. A users guide, 7. Desktop PC installed with the Polycom Via Video software. or 3

4 Advantages of Video Conferencing Instant Access: Planning ahead can save you traveling time and you can meet multiple parties simultaneously without the hassles of finding large and convenient conference rooms. Low Cost: You can enjoy our high-speed video link at no charge. While we have a dedicated network to link up local universities, a higher bandwidth network, Internet2 has connected us to oversea universities, which make quality meetings-on-demand easy. Types of Conferences Person to Person (Point to Point): This is the simplest form of conference where two computers connect directly with each other using conferencing software such as Polycom or Netmeeting. All you have to do is type in the IP address of the person you would like to connect with for a conference, in much the same way you would dial up a friend on the phone. Group Conference (Multi-point): This is where many people can participate and collaborate. To do this, each party has to connect to a site that is running as the HOST. The connection is made by typing in the IP address of the HOST. The HOST receives everything that is transmitted by different parties and then re-transmits to all in the group. Coming Events Together with the Video Conferencing centre launch in July, ITSC and Library will organize two introductory sessions (Cantonese and English) on the use of VC for staff and students. These sessions are aiming at introducing what VC can do and how to use it. A live demonstration will also be presented by ITSC. The demonstration is tentatively scheduled in the 1 st semester. Booking of Facilities Lingnan University Staff and Students are welcome to make bookings of the Video Conferencing centre at the Circulation Counter on Library 1/F. IT Helpful Hints End-of-Semester Checklist Before you go off on your vacation, how about taking a few moments to consider summer cleaning your computer. Backup your Important Files One of the most recommended, but most neglected computing chores, is backing up your important files. Make copies of your files on floppy, ZIP, Jazz or CD-R disks. Set up your Re-direct and Auto Reply Heading for vacation, do remember to set the re-directing and/or the Auto Replying where you can inform the sender that you are now on vacation/leave and will not be able to respond to ema il. On t he other hand, you can still ac cess your via WebMail ( 4

5 IT Helpful Hints Power off your Desktop CPU, Monitor, Printer and. Just a reminder that when you leave for your vacation, please remember to turn off all the computer peripherals in your office. Don t forget your monitor; it has its own switch!!! Delete Old Messages that you no longer need You probably have hundreds or even thousands of messages that you no longer need! Please delete all unnecessary s. Another good exercise is to take some time and remove messages with attachments from your account. Need to install NEW / UPGRADED VERSIONS of Teaching Software in the Computer Labs??? ITSC will be preparing the images for the Teaching Labs for first semester soon!!! If you have software and would like to have it available in these General/Teaching Computer Labs next academic year please do not delay. You have to forward the original CDs (with sufficient licenses, of course!!!) to ITSC no later than 31 July We expect the new images to be ready for testing by mid-august, at the latest!!! Otherwise, you will have to wait till the Christmas break!!! Check and Remove any Unwanted Cookies and Internet Cache Cookies are small files placed on your computer by web sites that you have visited. This helps the web sites to keep track of information. A cookie may remember your name so that the web site will be able to recognize you, and then call you by your name the next time you re-visit the site. Some people don t like cookies because they feel they are being monitored. Unfortunately, some sites require cookies to be able to operate correctly, and the use of cookies is so widespread that trying to do without them can be more annoying than the cookies themselves. Browsers can be set up to warn you before accepting cookies, but this option often results in seeing dozens of warning messages. Internet cache is the temporary Internet files on your hard disk, which reside in the Temporary Internet Files folder. This is where Web pages and files (such as graphical files) are stored as you view them. This speeds up the display of pages you frequently visit or have already seen, because it is faster to open them from your hard disk than from the Web. The downside of this is that it takes up space on your hard disk and it can sometimes cause problems loading a page that you have visited many times before. If that is the case, it is time for you to remove them from your hard disk. How to Remove Cookies and Internet Cache? For Internet Explorer 5.x/6.x: 1. After launching the Internet Explorer, select Internet Options under the Tools menu. 5

6 IT Helpful Hints 2. Click the General tab and hit the Delete Cookies button in the Temporary Internet files session. 3. Hit the OK button to confirm the deletion of cookies. For Netscape 7.0x: 1. After launching Netscape, select Preferences under the Edit menu. 6

7 IT Helpful Hints 2. In the Preferences window, expand the Advanced option by clicking the triangle sign next to it, then click the Cache option. 3. Hit the Clear Memory Cache and Clear Disk Cache buttons to remove the cache. Latest Virus Alerts Here are some of the most frequently transmitted viruses. W32.Sobig.E Discovered June 25th. This is a mass-mailing worm. If the attachment is executed, it sends a copy of itself to all addresses found in the.txt,.eml,.html,.htm,.dbx, and.wab files. The has the following characteristics: From: support@yahoo.com (but it could by any address) Subject: various (i.e. Application, Re: Submitted, Re: Movie, Re: document.pif, Re:ensaver) The attachment will be one of the following: 7 your_details.zip movie.zip screensaver.zip application.zip document.zip

8 Latest Virus Alerts The following screen is an infected message sent by the worm: Note: A later version of the W32.Sobig.E virus has attachments with.zi as the extension name, a ploy to get around software that automatically scans for.zip files. W32.Bugbear.B Discovered June 4th. It is still spreading in the wild form last week. Symantec Security Response has upgraded this from a Category 3 to a category 4 threat. [Category 4 is defined as Severe, dangerous threat, difficult to contain. Damage or Distribution: High]. W32.Bugbear.B@mm is a mass-mailing worm that spreads through network shares. If the worm is executed, it will install itself onto the system. It may overflow shared printer resources, which causes them to print garbage. It also contains key-logging data and a backdoor capability, which includes cached passwords and confidential data. It will send s with an attachment that have extensions beginning with EXE, PIF or SCR. The s can look like normal s or they may have no body text and the subject will be one of the following: Get 8 FREE issues - no risk! Your News Alert $150 FREE Bonus Your Gift New bonus in your cash account Tools For Your Online Business SCAM alert!!! If your computer has been infected with either of these two worms, please contact the ITSC Hotline on Also here is a URL link to the removal tools, so that you can download the tool to remove these viruses. See Here are some tips for preventing your computer getting infected... Do not open any attachment files from unknown sources. Scan the attachment files before opening it. Do not open files with unknown file type such as pif or scr. Scan the hard disk and floppy disk periodically using an anti-virus program. If you find somebody sends you an with another and there is a file attached, do not open the attachment file. The sender may already get infected with virus and he/she may not know it. 8 Ref links: Editor: Jeff McDonell, ITSC