Archive for October, 2007

Take advantage of mobile phone savings and support by purchasing mobiles through the ITD Servicedesk.

UNE has negotiated with Telstra for the provision of mobile phones to the university. This means that mobiles purchased through the Servicedesk are often considerably cheaper than phones purchased elsewhere.

The Servicedesk is able to organise phone purchasing, account administration and international roaming. The Servicedesk can only provide support for mobiles that are covered by UNE’s contract with Telstra. The Servicedesk cannot provide support for privately owned mobiles or work mobiles not covered by the contract. For more information see http://www.une.edu.au/it-services/staff/phone/mobilephone.php

As more and more web browsers have the ability to ‘read’ RSS feeds built-in, it’s getting easier to take advantage of the ease of RSS feeds.

RSS feeds are fast becoming a standard way of distributing content on the web. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is a way of enabling your computer to automatically search nominated sites for updated content. So you can have the latest information without spending hours searching for it. 

You’ve probably seen lots of links to RSS feeds on websites – usually a little orange button. Until recently, subscribing to a feed was a tad complicated because it involved another bit of software (an RSS reader or aggregator) and some fiddling around. Well not anymore…

In a bid to make accessing RSS feeds easier most browsers have begun to incorporate the RSS reader into the browser allowing for a much simpler subscription process. 

Newer browsers such as Internet Explorer 7.0, Firefox 2.0 or Netscape 8.1.2 have built in RSS readers (To find out what browser version you are using go to help and then about (name of your browser).  

If you click on the icon for a feed and get a lot of code, you probably have an old browser – consider updating your browser or alternatively downloading an RSS reader (many are available free).

Here are the instructions for subscribing to a feed with Internet Explorer 7

1. Go to the webpage that has the feed to which you want to subscribe.
2. Click the Feeds button
    to discover feeds on the webpage.
3. Click a feed (if more than one is available). If only one feed is available, you will go directly to that page.
4. Click the Subscribe to this Feed button – the add to favourites button
5.  Type a name for the feed and select the folder to create the feed in.
6. Click Subscribe.
7. To view your subscribed feeds, click the Favourites button (yellow star), and then click  Feeds.

If you get stuck just check out Internet Explorer’s help information.

Firefox RSS instructions are available at:

http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html 

Safari RSS instructions are available at:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/

If, like me, you find the rapidly expanding array of techno-gadgets a tiny bit overwhelming - a quick visit to Wired’s How to wiki is a must.

Dedicated to understanding and getting more out of new technologies the Wired How to wiki has entries on everything from Facebook etiquette and getting big on Youtube to making an ipod nano case from a bike inner tube. Lots of fun and well worth a visit…

It’s at  http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi

Recent power outages put UNE’s new emergency power system to the test. Despite two prolonged cuts to the university’s power supply, there were no disruptions to IT services.

Ensuring an uninterrupted power supply is a central part of ITD’s emergency planning. The recent purchase of a Genset diesel generator and UPS ‘smart’ battery pack has proven that it has what it takes to keep UNE’s computing systems up and running when the power is cut.Country Energy cut power to the university for 4 hours over two consecutive days to carry out upgrade works in relation to the School of Rural Medicine. The UPS ‘smart’ battery pack kicked in providing instant emergency power while the Genset generator ensured that there was no interruption to power over the 4 hours.

It was no ordinary upgrade – more like a triple bypass – but this weekend’s upgrade of the Callista student administration system was a resounding success.

It involved new servers, new power supplies, an entirely new operating system, an upgrade to the finance system and even a new air-conditioning system. And then of course there was the upgrade to Callista, UNE’s student administration system, itself. So when staff arrived back at work today to find their computer systems working – some very tired technical staff breathed a sigh of relief.

Testing times… 

Because Callista is so central to the smooth running of UNE the new version of Callista had to be thoroughly tested before it could be turned on. Around 70 staff members checked and double-checked every aspect of the new system as well as it’s ability to work with other university systems such as Finance One, Web CT and Cognos. The project took 4 months to complete and the whole thing was co-ordinated by a team of four staff-  Daniel Watkins and John Baker from ITD, and  Bruce Gowar and Kylie Day from the Student Centre.The Callista student administration system is the administrative backbone of UNE. Callista performs just about all student admin functions, from admissions and advanced standing to exam timetabling and graduation.

Go-Live 

It may have been a peaceful long weekend for some but for ITD and Student Centre staff involved in the upgrade it was all hands on deck. It took around 100 person hours over the weekend to complete the upgrade. Project leader Kylie Day explains “We turned Callista off on Friday to retrieve all of the data within it. Then we had to build the new system and apply all the fixes we discovered during the test phase and then finally we had to transfer all the data into the new system.”