OIT News

November 1, 2007

Firewall and Network Issues

During the Fall 2007 semester the UMBC campus firewall has experienced intermittent problems resulting in networking outages ranging from 5 to 30 minutes. The most recent issues have been occurring on Wednesday and Thursday mornings at 1:00 a.m.

These network outages have resulted in interruptions to services such as Blackboard, e-mail and the Internet.

We have been actively working with our firewall vendor to isolate and resolve the problems. Unfortunately, due to the transient nature of the problem, finding a solution has been difficult. At this time the vendor does not have a working solution for these issues. While we would like this update to be more positive we wanted to ensure you that OIT is taking this problem seriously and that we are actively working towards a resolution.

Posted by mikec at 10:43 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

September 13, 2007

Weekly Blackboard Maintenance Begins Sat., 9/15 (6-9 a.m.)

Starting this Saturday, September 15, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) is implementing weekly Blackboard maintenance on Saturdays from 6 to 9 a.m. While OIT may not always use all or part of these weekly maintenance "windows," Blackboard users should plan accordingly.

Since 1999, UMBC has used Blackboard which now supports more than 1,000 courses and 350 organizations every semester, making it one of the largest, most mission-critical technology services on campus. However, there is no good time when OIT can perform necessary patches, upgrades or even simple reboots because the academic semesters all overlap (except the third week in August, which is too close to the start of Fall).

OIT will continue to implement major upgrades in January, when the small number of winter courses can be run on a separate Bb server. But we need regular weekly maintenance and think the 6 to 9 a.m. window on Saturdays minimizes disruption to users while giving OIT staff access to the system to maintain it.

For the next month, OIT will post system-wide Blackboard maintenance "reminders" on Thursdays, develop a generic "Blackboard is Down for Maintenance" message for anyone who logs in when Blackboard is down, and continue to note any changes to the system.

Long term, we think regular maintenance will help improve Blackboard's performance, and appreciate the campus community's support and patience as we move forward.

Posted by fritz at 8:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

August 23, 2007

Lab Upgrades

During the summer OIT upgraded many labs across the campus. In total 180 new Dell GX745s and 74 new Macs were installed. The Macs all have Intel based processors and have been configured to dual boot between Windows XP and OSX.

The existing and new Dell desktops are running a dual boot configuration with Windows XP and a fresh install of Redhat RHEL5. Click here for more information about our Redhat install http://www.umbc.edu/blogs/oitnews/archives/2007/08/linux_changesup.html
Dell Installations
Office of Information Technology
ENG 025 15 units
ENG 021 41 units
ENG 122A 25 units
ACIV 219 10 units

Information Systems
ITE 457 17 units
ITE 467 21 units
ITE 469 26 units

Computer Science/Electrical Engineering
ITE 240 25 units

Apple Installations
Office of Information Technology
ENG 005B 18 (Mac Pros)
ENG 021A 17 (iMacs)
ENG 025 1 (iMac)
ENG 336 28 (iMacs)
ACIV 219 10 (iMacs)

Posted by mikec at 3:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Resnet Upgrades

This summer OIT staff upgraded a major portion of the Resnet network. In total, 107 new network switches were installed. The new switches were installed in:

Chesapeake Hall
Patapsco Hall
Potomac Hall
Susquehanna Hall
Erickson Hall
Harbor Hall
Hillside Apartments
Terrace Apartments
Westhills Apartments

The upgrade provides 100Mb to the network jacks throughout all of Resnet along with a 1Gb Resnet backbone. In addition these upgrades will prepare the core Resnet infrastructure for wireless installations that are planned for next summer.

Posted by mikec at 2:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 20, 2007

Mail Upgrades To Begin August 20th

Overview
OIT will begin migrating all of its central email users to a new mail system on August 20th, 2007. The new mail system is built on an open source platform named Cyrus. The entire migration should take a little over one week, during which each user’s account will be taken off line for a short period of time (Average is 3 minutes or less) while their mail folders and filter settings are migrated to the new system.

Why the New System?
We are moving to a new backend mail system so that we can provide enhanced features, performance, and reliability to UMBC email users. During the Fall 2006 semester UMBC’s mail servers suffered extreme performance degradation in part due to increases in Spam. In an effort to address these issues we are aggressively moving to an entirely new mail system with the following benefits:

• Dedicated Storage (separate from AFS)
• Increased Base Quota (1GB for Faculty & Staff, 400MB for Students)
• Increased Web Mail Performance
• Easy to Use Shared Folders

FAQ
Please click here to find answers to the most commonly asked migration questions.

Posted by banz at 11:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 13, 2006

SPSS Workshop (10/18)

SPSS for Windows provides a powerful statistical analysis and data management system in a graphical environment.  SPSS allows the user to access descriptive menus and simple dialog boxes which do most of the work for you.  SPSS is a great tool for the social sciences.

A free hands-on workshop on SPSS will be offered on Wednesday, Oct. 18, from noon-1p.m. (free hour) in the Engineering building, Room 122. This introductory workshop is intended to demonstrate how to do the basic data analysis and data manipulation using SPSS for Windows. Nagaraj K. Neerchal, professor of statistics, and Justin Newcomer, a graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Statistics, are the workshop's facilitators.

This workshop is a service of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Consulting (CIRC) in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UMBC. For more information on the workshops and on CIRC, visit http://www.math.umbc.edu/circ.

One week after the workshop, Wednesday, Oct. 25, from noon-1 p.m. in
the Engineering building, Room 122, CIRC staff will offer a walk-in clinic for additional questions and discussion of participants' own projects.

Posted by anna at 5:36 AM

October 10, 2006

How to Spot a Fake E-Mail

Phishing emails often pretend to be from your bank, credit card company, eBay or PayPal. However, you also get legitimate messages from these companies, so how do you tell the real ones from the fakes? Real emails often contain your name and may start “Dear John Smith”, but phishers don’t know you, so fakes have something general like “Dear customer”. If an email isn’t addressed specifically to you, you should suspect it is a fake.

Many phishing emails talk about technical problems that require you to click a link and enter your account details. Banks, eBay, PayPal, and so on, never lose your details and they don’t need to ask you for them. The links in phishing emails point to fake websites with wrong addresses, so check the status bar when the mouse hovers over a link or the URL in Internet Explorer’s address bar if you do actually
find yourself on a phishing site. It is best not to click links in emails because fake addresses can be disguised.

Phishers’ response to advice not to click links in emails is to provide a bogus telephone number and ask people to ring the bank instead. An automated response asks you for your account details, which they then use to relieve you of your cash. Another common attribute of phishing scams is poor English – if an email is badly
written it is probably a fake.

The best way to avoid being caught out by phishing scams is never to click links in emails relating to sites that might hold sensitive information about you, such as credit card details. If you get a message supposedly from your bank, eBay or PayPal about a problem, just start Internet Explorer and type the usual address into your web browser. Log on and you will soon see if there really is a problem or not.

If you are in doubt about an email’s legitimacy or think you have inadvertently given away your personal details, contact your bank or the company immediately via contacts on their official websites.

Posted by anna at 12:47 PM

October 9, 2006

Burning Data CDs in the Computer Labs - For Macintosh and Windows

NOTE: This instruction is only for burning data CDs, e.g. documents. If you want to burn ISOs or create audio CDs, please use iTunes for Macintosh or Roxio Easy CD Creator software for Windows.

Writing to CD — Macintosh

All Macs in the OIT computer lab have CD recorders in them, to enable you to save your work to a CD(sometimes referred to as ‘burning’ a CD). This is often useful for transferring files between the
university and home, or for archiving your work.

To prepare files for burning:

1. Insert a blank CD into the CD drive.
   
2. In the Action box select Open Finder, enter a name for your CD e.g. ‘My CD’ in the Name box, Click OK.
   
   
3. An icon for your CD appears on the desktop. Drag files and folders to the CD icon.

Hint: Before burning your CD, you can double-click the CD icon to view and revise the items that will be burned. If you delete anything,
remember to empty The Trash.

To burn your CD:

1. In the Finder, click the CD icon, then click File then Burn Disc. You can also drag the CD icon to the Trash (it turns into a Burn CD icon).
   
   
2. Select the Burn Speed and click Burn. Wait a few moments while the CD is burned.

You can also use applications which support disc burning, such as iTunes and iPhoto. For more help with making CDs, click Help then Mac Help in the Finder, in the Search box type burning a CD. Click Search.

Writing to CD — Windows

All PCs in the computer labs have CD recorders in them, which enables you to save your work to a CD (sometimes referred to as "burning" a CD). This is often useful for transferring files between
the university and home, or for archiving your work.

To prepare files for burning:

1. Insert a blank CD into the CD drive.
   
2. When the dialogue box appears, click Take no action, then click
   OK.
   
   
3. To add items to your CD, right-click on a file or folder, and choose Send To then CD Drive.
   

Hint: Before burning your CD, you can click Start then My Computer, then open the CD icon to view and revise the items that will be burned.

To burn your CD:

1. Click Start then My Computer.
   
2. Right-click the CD icon and choose Write these files to CD.
   
   
3. When the CD Writing Wizard opens.
   Give the CD a name, click Next. Wait a
   few moments while the CD is burned.

For more help with making CDs, click Start> Help and Support, then type in in the search box making a CD. Click the green arrow to begin your search.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

September 5, 2006

More Functions Available in Oracle Calendar Web

The Oracle Calendar Web client ( http://calendar.umbc.edu )provides you with all the tools you need to effectively manage your time, in an application you can access from anywhere through the Internet. Using the Web client's intuitive interface, you can schedule meetings with other users, schedule and join Web conferences, check for conflicts, book resources, assign designate rights, create notes and manage tasks. Agendas can also be published for people without a calendar account, offering added functionalities such as sending a schedule to a partner or publishing resource availability for all employees. The Web client connects directly to the calendar server so all your changes are updated in real time. Documentation is available on http://www.umbc.edu/oit/software/pages/Calendar.htm.

Posted by anna at 9:31 AM

August 9, 2006

New IT Support Specialist

James Keys is joining our Help Desk staff and will be working closely with technical support. James brings a technical experience from the Maryland Military Department and is well prepared to meet your specific needs. James will be a technical resource to our student staff. Please join us in welcoming our new fulltime staff. His office is in Engineering room 020.

Posted by anna at 8:40 AM

May 25, 2006

Parental Controls within a Web Browser

A lot of the information available on the Internet is not suitable for children, such as violent or pornographic sites. Most Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer allow you to filter what sort of materials can be displayed within a web site.

To set parental controls within Internet Explorer

1. Open the Internet Explorer program, by clicking on the Internet Explorer icon displayed on the Desktop.
   
2. Click on the Tools drop down menu and select the Internet Options command, which will display the Internet Options dialog box. The appearance of the dialog box will vary slightly from one version to another.
   
3. Click on the Content tab within the dialog box.
   
4. Within the Content Advisor section of the dialog box, click on the Enable button, which will display the following dialog box (or similar).
   
5. You can set levels for Language, Nudity, Sex or Violence. To do this select one of these four options and then drag the level pointer to the right. In the example shown the Language has been set to Level 1 (Mild expletives).
   
6. You should be aware that very often these parental controls will not work properly and inappropriate material can still be displayed on the screen. They are better than nothing, but sometimes not much better!
   
7. You will be asked to set a password; this is to prevent users from disabling the Content Advisor without your knowledge.
   
8. Once parental controls are in place and you try to access an inappropriate site, you will see a message similar to that illustrated below.
   

Posted by anna at 1:45 PM

May 18, 2006

Adding Features to Firefox with Extensions

Plug-ins allow Firefox to use third-party software to display multimedia and other programs in the web browser, and themes change the appearance of Firefox. Extensions, on the other hand, provide Firefox with new features, or take existing features and extend them in new ways.

There are several ways you can acquire Firefox extensions, but the official way is by selecting Tools -> Extensions to bring up Firefox's Extension Manager. When the Extension Manager window opens, you will see a list of currently installed extensions (of course, when you first install Firefox you don't have any extensions installed, so this part of the window is blank). At the bottom of the window are three buttons Uninstall, Update, and Options and a Get More Extensions link.

If you select an already installed extension and press Uninstall, the extension will be fully removed once you restart Firefox. To see if an extension has an update available, select it and then press Update. Firefox will check, and if there is an update, you will be prompted to install it. Finally, if an extension has preferences available, the Options button will be available to press in order to access those preferences; otherwise, the button will be grayed out and will not work.

The Extension Manager actually allows you do more than just uninstall, update, or view options. Right-click on a selected extension, and a contextual menu opens with several other possibilities.

Three of the choices on this menu duplicate the buttons at the bottom of the Extension Manager window: Options, Uninstall, and Update. Most of them, however, are new. Visit Home Page takes you to the home page of the extension, which can be really useful if you want to gather more information about it. The About choice opens a small window that lets you know who worked on the extension, what the current version number is, and what the extension is designed to do.

Disable is a nice addition to Uninstall and Update. What if you just want to turn off an extension temporarily? Maybe it's causing a problem on a web site, or maybe you think it might be causing a problem with Firefox. Disable the extension and see what happens.

The last three options help you position the extensions in the order you'd like. By default, extensions are listed in the order in which you added them, with the oldest at the top. To reorder your extensions, right-click on an extension and choose Move to Top, Move Up, or Move Down. If you have a lot of extensions, this can grow tedious, and most people probably won't care what order their extensions are in. For those of you who like to have everything just so, however, I'm sure you'll appreciate the ability to reorder your list of extensions.

Firefox gives you a lot of power with extensions, but thankfully, a couple of features greatly reduce the likelihood that an extension will cause a security or stability problem. First, Firefox comes with a built-in whitelist of sites that can install extensions, including update.mozilla.org by default. If you find a cool extension at a site that isn't on the whitelist and try to install it, Firefox shows an alert at the top of browser.

Firefox does everything it can to ensure that extensions don't damage your installation of the web browser. Still, if you want to install multiple extensions, we recommend installing them one at a time and restarting the browser and testing each extension as you go, and then repeating the process with the next extension. Yes, it's entirely possible to install 10 extensions at a time before restarting Firefox, and things may well work just fine, but if you do have a problem, it'll be far more difficult to diagnose the source. Better to take it slow and install them one at a time, immediately removing any that cause problems.

Posted by anna at 7:16 AM

May 10, 2006

Cut PowerPoint Files Down to Size

If your PowerPoint files seem to grow, try cutting them down to size. One way to trim the kilobytes is by adding a blank slide (with the default design template) before the first presentation slide. Contrary to logic, this actually reduces file size. Why? Because the blank slide is used as the preview image that PowerPoint uses when you select a file in the Open dialog box. Because the preview image for a blank slide is well, blank, the file size is actually smaller.

When inserting graphics into a slide, consider optimizing the image. You can reduce the number of colors used with an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks, or Microsoft Photo Editor. For example, if you have an image that only has red, white, and blue, you don't need 32-bit CMYK palettes.

Posted by anna at 6:51 PM

May 3, 2006

Troubleshooting a Confused iPod

Clues that your iPod is confused are the absence of playlists, artists, and songs that used to be there; a capacity that appears to be 5GB on a 10GB iPod; the failure to boot beyond the Apple logo; or the appearance of a folder icon with an exclamation point.

Missing Items

1. Reset the iPod (press and hold Play and Menu for 10 seconds). Resetting the iPod is similar to pushing the Reset switch on your Mac. It forces the iPod to restart.
2. Restore the iPod(run the latest iPod Software Updater). If reset doesn't work, there's nothing else for it than to restore the iPod to its original factory state -- meaning that all the data on it is removed. To restore the iPod, launch the most recent copy of iPod Software Updater, and click the Restore button in the resulting window. Confirm that you want to restore by clicking Restore in the warning sheet (Mac OS X) that appears.
   After the updater does its job, you must unplug and replug the iPod for the restore process to complete. After you replug the iPod, it will appear to restart several times. When the process is complete, the FireWire symbol will appear in the iPod's display screen, and the Updater window will return to its initial state, offering you the option to restore your iPod.
   When you double-click your iPod's icon on the Desktop, you'll see that the device contains only the Contacts folder with the same sample contacts supplied by Apple.
   To put your songs back on the iPod, just launch iTunes and synch the iPod with iTunes.

Incorrect Capacity

This problem can occur when you've restored the 10 GB iPod with a software updater that's not intended for that device. The 10 GB iPod should be restored only with iPod Software 1.1 Updater or later. If you restore witht he version 1.0.4 update, for example, your 10GB iPod will be confused. Apple no longer offers this update online, so if the 10 GB iPod is your first iPod, you're highly unlikely to have this problem.

Failure to Boot

There are a few possible reasons why an iPod might not boot beyond the Apple logo -- some benign and others not so.

• The Hold switch is on.
• Drained battery. Plug your iPod into the power adapter or your computer and let it change.
  In some rare cases, the battery may not be drained enough for the iPod to reset. If you've tried other solutions and failed, unplug the iPod from a power supply for 24 hours; then plug it into a power source and attempt to reset it by holding down the Play and Menu buttons for 10 seconds.
• Incorrect formatting. At some point, you might have thought it would be a nifty idea to reformat your iPod's hard drive -- partitioned it to install Mac OS 9 on one partition and Mac OS X on the other, for example. Bad idea. If you've formatted the drive in any format other than Mac OS Extended (HFS Plus) the iPod won't play music files. To put things right, you must restore your iPod.

Your iPod may be so confused that it won't mount on your Mac desktop and can't be restored. Follow these steps to mount the iPod:

1. Connect the iPod to a built-in Firewire port on your computer (rather than an unpowered FireWire port on a PC Card, for example).
2. Reset the iPod by pressing the Play and Menu buttons - for 10 seconds.
3. When you see the Apple logo, press and hold the Previous and Next buttons for 10 seconds. The FireWire icon should appear in your iPod's display.

The frozen iPod

Just like a computer, the iPod can freeze horn time to time. To thaw it, attach your Pod to a power source-either the power adapter or a powered Firewire port-and press and hold the Play and Menu buttons for 10 seconds.

Failure to charge

There are several reasons why an iPod might not charge. They include:

• Your Mac's Asleep. The iPod won't charge when it's attached to a sleeping Mac Wake up you Mac if you want the iPod to charge.
  
• More than one Firewire device is on the chain. Although you can chain multiple Firewire devices together, doing so with an iPod isn't such a hot idea. To begin with, a FireWire device on the chain before the iPod (a hard drive, for example) may be hogging all the power.
  Second, there have been reports of iPods that have been corrupted when left on a chain with other Firewire devices. To be safe rather than sorry, don't put the iPod on a chain. If you must use multiple Firewire devices, purchase a powered Firewire hub (which costs around $80).
  
• A frozen iPod. An iPod that's frozen won't charge. While the iPod is attached to a power supply, press and hold the Play and Menu buttons.
  
• A faulty Firewire cable. Cables break. By a different FireWire cable, just in case.
  
• A faulty computer Firewire port. It's possible that the Firewire
  port on your computer has given up the ghost. Try charging the iPod from the Apple iPod Power Adapter.
  
• A funky power adapter. The Apple iPod Power Adapter could also be bad. Attempt to charge your iPod from your computer.
  
• A faulty Firewire port on the iPod. This is not good. As you plug and unplug the Firewire cable from the iPod's FireWire port, it's possible to put too much stress on the internal connectors that deliver power to your iPod's Firewire port, breaking the bond between those connectors and your Pod's motherboard.

Posted by anna at 6:26 AM

April 26, 2006

Tiger Tip: Deleting Locked Files

You may occasionally find that you are unable to delete files because they are marked as being locked. You may be unable to drag a file to the trash, or unable to empty the trash. Under earlier versions of the Mac OS, you could hold Option when selecting the Empty Trash command, and Mac OS would delete locked files. Under Mac OS X, do the equivalent by holding Option and then clicking and holding the mouse button over the dock’s Trash Can icon. In most cases, this deletes any locked files that are already in the trash. However, this doesn’t help if you can’t move the locked file into the trash in the first place.

To unlock a file in Mac OS X, select the file’s icon and select the Finder’s Show Info command (or press the CMD+I hot key combination). This displays the Finder’s General Information dialog box.

If the checkbox beside the Locked entry is selected, deselect it. Now you should be able to delete the file or empty the trash.

If the Finder displays a dialog box indicating that you do not have permission to unlock or modify the file, use the OS X Terminal application and the sudo command to unlock and delete the file. Start the Terminal and change to the directory where the file is located, then issue the command:

sudo chflags noschg,nouchg filename

Replace filename with the name of the file that you want to unlock. Now you should be able to delete it.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

April 24, 2006

Why do E-mails Bounce?

A bounced e-mail is one that never arrives in the recipient’s inbox and is sent back, or bounced back, to the sender with an error message that indicates to the sender that the e-mail was never successfully transmitted. But what happens when someone sends an e-mail out into cyberspace, and why do e-mails sometimes bounce back?

When one attempts to send an e-mail, he is telling his e-mail system to look for the domain of the recipient and the domain’s mail server. Once the e-mail system makes contact with the recipient’s mail server, the mail server has predetermined that it is not accepting e-mails from the sender’s address (for example, if it has blocked the address for anti-spamming purposes), the server will reject the message and it will subsequently bounce back to the sender. The message will also bounce back to the server if the mail server on the recipient’s end is busy and cannot handle the request at that time. When an e-mail is returned to the sender without being accepted by the recipient’s mail server, this is called a hard bounce.

Once the e-mail has been accepted by the recipient’s mail server there are still ways for the message to be rejected. The mail server has to determine if the recipient actually exists within its system and if that recipient is allowed to accept e-mails. If the recipient’s address does not exist on the mail server, then the message will be rejected because there is no one to deliver the message to. If the sender misspells the recipient’s address then the system will recognize this as a nonexistent address and bounce the message back. If the recipient exists but dies not have enough disk space to accept the message (i.e.,if his e-mail application is filled to storage capacity) then the message will bounce back to the sender. Some mail systems predetermine a maximum message size that it will accept and will automatically bounce the message if it exists that size and some mail systems predetermine a maximum amount of disk space the user is allowed to occupy on the server. When an e-mail is returned to the sender after it has already been accepted by the recipient’s mail server, this is called a soft bounce. Some mail servers are programmed to accept incoming e-mails and store them for further analysis without initially checking to determine if the recipient exists or is even capable of receiving the message. Occasionally, a network failure at the sender or recipient end will cause an e-mail to bounce back to the sender. Typically, a bounced e-mail returns to the sender with an explanation of why the message bounced.

Posted by anna at 9:49 AM

April 18, 2006

Application Crashes in Mac OS X

Most application crashes in Mac OS X will not bring down your entire system, nor will they require you to restart your Mac. Thus, in many cases the cure for an application crash is to simply ignore it, relaunch the crashed application, and hope the crash does not occur again (or at least happens only rarely). If this is not sufficient, consider the solutions described in the following sections.

Freeze/hang

Applications occasionally stop functioning often while attempting to perform some action, such as opening a document or receiving an e-mail. In such cases, the spinning wait cursor appears and just remains; the intended action is never completed. At the same time, attempts to otherwise interact with the program (such as choosing menu commands) also fail to work. This is your standard application freeze.

Occasionally, issuing a Cancel command (Command-. [period]) will end the hung action and return control of the application to you; however, there is only rare success with this technique in Mac OS X. Also occasionally, waiting and doing nothing will succeed which means the application was just taking an unusually long time to complete its task. More likely, though, something has gone awry, and simply walking away from your Mac won't fix it.

The silver lining is that the effects of these freezes are almost always limited to the affected application. That is, if you simply click the window of another application, the spinning cursor vanishes and your Mac is working normally again. Return to the problem application, and the symptom returns. Still, on the assumption that you would like to use the frozen application again, you'll want to fix the problem. To do so, try the following:

Force-quit the application.

If force-quitting doesn't work, but you can still access the Apple menu, choose Log Out from there. When you log back in, things should work normally.

If the Log Out command doesn't work, try choosing Restart. The logic is the same.

Occasionally, an application will fail to launch, leaving its Dock icon to bounce endlessly. At this point, it's possible that no menu commands will work. Even so, you should still be able to force-quit the application.

Systemwide freeze

Occasionally, a frozen application will cause the entire system to hang that is, you get no response from any application, the Finder, or the Dock. In addition, the pointer may no longer respond to the mouse and the Force Quit command fails to bring up the Force Quit window. When this happens, there's typically been a freeze or crash of some critical process, such as login window.

Two well-known cases where you may get a systemwide freeze:

File sharing. If an attempt to connect to a server is unsuccessful, or if you are unexpectedly disconnected from a server from which you had already connected, a systemwide freeze can occur.

Web browsing. What starts as a simple failure to load certain Web pages may spread to a systemwide freeze. The most likely cause is the freeze of a process called lookupd (used to match network domain names to their IP addresses).

If you can still get the Force Quit command to work, force-quitting the Finder (and/or your Web browser) may be sufficient to get things working. If the freeze has not progressed to the point that you can no longer use Terminal, you may be able to fix the problem by killing and restarting the lookupd process. Otherwise, disconnecting and reconnecting the network hardware (such as a router or cable modem) may work. As a last resort, you will need to hard-restart/reset your Mac.

Force Quit The Mac equivalent of CTRL-ALT-DEL to bring up a system tasks profiler for force quitting unresponsive tasks is CMD-OPTION-ESC (or Windows-ALT-ESC if you are using a PC keyboard). Just select the frozen application and hit Force Quit. If a program is completely frozen, it will appear in red text.

Posted by anna at 7:53 AM

April 4, 2006

HowTos Recently Posted: iTunes

iTunes is software that lets you organize and listen to your music and other audio files on your computer, using the audio hardware in your computer. The following are some of the things you can do with iTunes:

• Listen to CDs. Listening to music with iTunes is as easy as putting a CD into your computer and clicking Play. When you insert a CD, iTunes starts, and the CD appears in the Source list.
• Add music from CDs or from the Internet to your iTunes library. After you import music to your library, you can play it, transfer it to your MP3 player, edit the song information, and more. To listen to a song, you double-click it in your library.
• Buy songs from the iTunes Music Store. You can even have the music automatically downloaded to your hard disk and imported into your library.
• Create lists of your favorite songs. iTunes lets you organize your music into playlists. You can create playlists to suit a specific need, such as a party mix.

All iTunes documentation are indexed on http://www.umbc.edu/oit/software/pages/iTunes.htm. Contact the OIT Help Desk (410-455-3838 or helpdesk@umbc.edu) if you would like to request specific 'HowTo' documentation for OIT supported software.

Posted by anna at 9:24 AM

April 3, 2006

Understanding Shared Folders

You probably have access to drives that aren’t located inside your PC but are located instead in one of the other computers on the network. These network drives can be located on a dedicated server computer. At UMBC, network drives are on the Active Directory server or the AFS server.

Shared folders can be set up with restrictions on how you may use them. For example, you may be granted full access to some shared folders on your I:/ or W:/ drive so that you can copy files to or from them, delete files on them, create or remove folders on them, and so on. On other shared folders, your access may be limited in certain ways. For example, you may be able to copy files to or from the shared folder but not delete files, edit files, or create new folders. You may also be asked to enter a password before you can access a protected folder. The amount of disk space you are allowed to use on a shared folder may also be limited.

For specific instructions on how to map AFS directories to Microsoft Windows drives, please visit http://www.umbc.edu/oit/classroomtechnology/labs/map_Afs/index.html

Posted by anna at 1:52 PM

March 27, 2006

Google Search: Choosing the Right Keywords

Google is possibly the most forgiving search engine ever created. You can type just about anything into it and get good results. Sometimes you can even get away with sloppy spelling — Google often catches it and suggests the correct spelling.

The golden rule in Internet searching is that more keywords deliver fewer results. So pile them on to narrow your search. With that technique, however, you run the risk of having conflicting keywords, creating a mixed bag of search results. Ideally, you want to concisely convey to Google what you need. Two is the golden number of keywords to use in Google searches.

On the other end of the spectrum, many people get good results by typing entire sentences in the keyword box. Google always eliminates certain little words such as what and why, which might seem to devalue questions but doesn’t in practice.

Beware of words that have more than one meaning, especially if you search for one keyword at a time.

For power searching, in which the goal is not more results but fewer, better results, use the Advanced Search pages or the search operators

Posted by anna at 5:53 PM

March 23, 2006

How to Read Blog Elements

Most blogs follow a standard layout, as shown below, using a customizable template, allowing users to change the background color and design, typefaces, and text placement.

Many blog template designs are available for reuse. The majority of these designs contain the elements discussed in the table below.

Blog Element	Definition
Blog layout	Blogs are typically laid out in reverse chronological order; whereby the most recent entry is listed first, and older entries are pushed farther down the page.
Posts	The main text on a page is called a post. Depending on the blogging software system, the post has a fairly consistent format comprised of a headline, link to the main source or web page under discussion, a description of the material, commentary, image or photo, permalink, or quotations from the original source. All these elements can be used in various combinations.
Link	The main link is the mechanism that connects the primary source to the post. Most users create the link so that they can retrieve it later or provide their readers with a way to read the material under discussion.
Headline	The headline is the title of the post and is often displayed in a headline style. Many people like to write their own snappy headlines or just use the title of the source material.
Permalink	The permalink short for permanent linkis an unchanging link to the specific post as it is located in the larger database that powers the organization of blogs. The permalink is the linking information you send to another person who wants to read that specific entry. Permalinks make it easier to share links because otherwise a general URL for a blog will bring up the entire blog rather than a specific entry, and the reader must wade through all the blog posts to find the desired information.
Comments	Most posts contain an area where readers can respond to what has been written in the post. Depending on the software publishing system, blog posts contain a link to a supplemental area containing a response box where readers can leave their comments. Most of the time these comments are visible to future readers. In this way, a conversation can be recorded about a particular topic.
Trackback	Another common element on posts is an area that allows the blogger and his visitors to see what type of impact his post has had in the larger blogging community via a program that tracks where the post has been linked on another blogger's site.
Sidebars	Bloggers can supplement their posts with additional information placed in columns on the sides of the blog's main page. The typical blog layout includes Blog Rolls, Calendar, Archive, Search Box, and About page.
Blog rolls	A list of links to other like-minded blogs that the blogger can recommend. In addition, the blogger may post links to informational websites.
Calendar	A common feature in most blogger software systems, the calendar displays the dates of posts.
Archive	When a post is pushed down and off a blog's main page, it is archived in a database. Some blogging software makes it easy to read past posts by displaying links to older posts on a weekly or monthly basis.
Search box	Visitors can look for older commentary or specific information by typing in a search query in a search box attached to a blog's sidebar.
About page	Bloggers customarily include contact information and short biographical sketches in pages located via a link on the main blog page.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

March 21, 2006

Common Symptoms of Virus or Worm Infections

Most computers that are infected with a virus or worm exhibit common symptoms.

Crash! This could take many forms: “fatal error” messages (often referred to as the “Blue Screen of Death”); “illegal operation” messages; the computer shutting down unexpectedly; or being unable to start Windows.

Freeze! Your computer suddenly enters a state of suspended animation in which everything onscreen freezes (or perhaps you can move your mouse around the screen but you are unable to click on anything).

Soooo slow! Your computer is slower than normal. Windows takes longer to start up or shut down. Your programs take longer to load or use.Your mouse cursor has a delayed response when you move it. When surfing the Internet,Web sites take much longer to load.Your digital music or video files do not play normally. When using a word-processing program, the words you type do not appear immediately onscreen (there is noticeable lag). Or it takes an unusual amount of time to open a folder or a window.

If your computer isn’t experiencing these symptoms, don’t assume it is safe. It could be infected with a stealthy worm or Trojan horse that operates silently behind the scenes, gathering data from your system and transmitting it to criminals via the Internet.

Antivirus download and information can be found at http://www.umbc.edu/oit/sans/security/awareness/antivirus.html

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

March 14, 2006

Optimizing Images for your Web Site

On the Web, lighter image files that consume relatively smaller amounts of disk space download faster than heavier files. A light image load improves the performance of your site. At the same time, lighter image files contain less visual information than heavier image files, so they're more likely to look cheap and cheesy, which doesn't help anyone. Your images have to look good. But they also have to download quickly. This is the balancing act called web optimization. For every image that you plan to use, your goal is to achieve the lightest possible image file while maintaining the overall image quality.

Optimizing Resolution

The first, best thing that you can do to optimize your images for the Web is to reduce the image resolution to 72 ppi. Web designers have adopted this number as the universal standard for all web graphics, and that number has stuck. It's one of the few things that most of us agree on. The reason why it's 72 instead of 96 isn't because most of us are on Macs. An image at 72 ppi looks fine on Windows screens, despite the slightly better Microsoft pixel density. More importantly, 72 ppi means fewer pixels, so the 72-ppi image weighs less.

Optimizing Image Size

Reducing the physical dimensions of an image to the precise size that you need for your page is another sure remedy for excess weight on the Web. If an image is physically smaller than another image, and both have the same resolution, then the smaller image contains fewer pixels, and fewer pixels equals less weight.

When you place an image on a web page, you specify, among other things, the image's width and heightbut nothing prevents you from making up your own numbers. You can scale down a 1600-by-800-pixel image very easily in this way by reporting the width as 400 pixels and the height as 200 pixels instead of their true 1600 and 800 values. This gives you, in essence, a 75% reduction in size. The problem with this approach is that, while the images on your page appear to be smaller, they really aren't. The image files themselves still retain their full width and height; the browser simply makes them look smaller. And of course, they remain as heavy as before the browser scaled them.

Your best bet is to figure out the exact width and height that you need for each image and then physically change the images to this size. If you know this information ahead of time, that's great. Fire up your image editor and shrink those images. Don't forget to save the smaller versions under different filenames than the originals. It's always good to be able to go back to the large version and make a new smaller version if your size requirements change.

Reducing the Number of Colors

In GIF and PNG images, each color in the palette contributes a little extra weight to the image file. So, if your image is in the GIF or PNG format, you can modestly decrease the weight of the file by reducing the number of colors in the palette.

Posted by anna at 5:00 AM

March 11, 2006

Putting Your PowerBook/iBook to Sleep

If you shut down your Macintosh computer, it completely turns off, and when you want to use it again, you'll need to start it up from scratch (which takes a minute or two). However, if you're just stepping away from your computer for a few minutes (or even an hour or so), rather than turning the computer off, you can just put it to "sleep." An advantage of putting it to sleep (rather than shutting down) is that it "wakes up" almost instantly, so you can immediately get back to whatever it was you were doing before it went to sleep. This means that when it wakes, all of the documents and applications you had open are still in place from when you last left it (versus when you shut down, which closes all applications and open documents). The Sleep option also saves battery power, because if you stop using your computer for a few minutes, it automatically goes to sleep. You can put your PowerBook/iBook to sleep in one of four ways:

1. Just close the lid and it will immediately go to sleep.

2. Choose Sleep from the Apple menu.

3. You can configure your PowerBook/iBook so it goes to sleep on its own after a period of inactivity that you choose.

4. Press your PowerBook's/iBook's Power On button and a dialog will appear with a Sleep button. Click on that button to put your Mac to sleep.

To wake from the Sleep mode, open the lid or (if it's already open) press any key or click using the scrolling touchpad (or if you have one, use your two-finger scrolling touchpad).

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

March 8, 2006

Shifting from Outlook Express to Outlook

Outlook Express is a free basic e-mail program that doesn’t allow you to manage your appointment and tasks. Outlook Express users often install the Office 2003 package without using the wizard to move all their Outlook Express content, thus arriving in Outlook 2003 automatically and painlessly. This article covers the basic steps for upgrading to Outlook 2003 while keeping your data intact.

Moving from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003
If you’ve been working with Outlook Express as your mail program for some time and finally decided to move to Outlook 2003 so that you can benefit from the Calendar, Tasks, and other features, you may be wondering how you can transfer your Outlook Express data to Outlook 2003 without losing any information. The Outlook 2003 Import and Export Wizard enables you to move all your Outlook Express data, including the mail account, all mailboxes, the address book, and rules into Outlook 2003, in a few easy steps.

Importing Internet Mail account settings
Outlook 2003 Importing wizard detects the Outlook Express data installed on the same PC. To migrate from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003, you first need to import your Internet Mail account settings:

1. In Outlook 2003, choose File->Import and Export.
   The Import and Export Wizard appears.
   
2. Select Import Internet Mail Account Settings from the list box.
   
3. Click Next and follow the wizard until the end.
   The Internet settings are installed in your Outlook 2003.

TIP: Before importing your older mail to Outlook 2003, clean out all undesired mail from all your mail folders so that you can start a new application without junk mail.

Importing mail folders and other data
If you’ve been running Outlook Express for some time, you probably created mail folders, an address book, and maybe even some mail rules. Don’t worry. You can import all your data with the Import And Export Wizard. Follow these steps to import your mailboxes, address book, and mail rules:

1. In Outlook 2003, choose File->Import And Export.
   
2. Click Outlook.
   The Import And Export Wizard appears.
   
3. Select Import Internet Mail And Addresses from the list box and
   click Next.
   The Outlook Import tool moves to the next page (see Figure E-1).
   
4. Select the Internet mail application you want to import from.
   In this case, choose Outlook Express.
   
5. Check the Import Mail check box to import all your e-mails.
   
6. Check the Import Address Book check box to import your address
   book.
   
7. Check the Import Rules check box if you want to import your older
   Outlook Express rules and click Next.
   The Import Addresses page appears. If you’re already using the Outlook
   contacts folder, you may have some duplicate addresses after you import from an external source.
   
8. Select one of three options: Replace your duplicates with items you import, allow the duplicates to be created, or don’t import any duplicate items.
   
9. Click Finish.

At the end of the import procedure, you’re running Outlook 2003 with all your previous Outlook Express data.

Changing your default mail system
Even though you’ve imported your Internet account settings and your date, your computer’s Internet Explorer settings still selects Outlook Express to create a new message. To change the default mail system from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003, follow these steps:

1. In Internet Explorer, choose Tools->Internet Options.
   The Internet Options dialog box appears.
   
2. Click the Programs tab.
   
3. Select Microsoft Outlook from the E-Mail list box.
   
4. Select Microsoft Outlook from the Newsgroups list box.
   
5. Click Apply and then OK.

Your Internet settings are now linked to Outlook 2003.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

Checking Your Web Site with Different Internet Browsers

The visual representation of your web page is useful as a guide, but it isn't exact. It's an approximation of how your page actually looks in a web browser. And because different browsers tend to display the same web page differently, the only way to be sure about your pages is to test them often in a variety of browsers.

It isn't hard to assemble an arsenal of browsers for testing purposes, and you'll definitely like the price: it's free. The table below shows you which browsers to get and where to find a free download.

	Windows 95/98/ME	Windows NT/2000/XP	Macintosh Classic	Macintosh OS X
Internet Browser
Internet Explorer	Download (file size: 45Mb) Approx. download time: 1 hr 45min - 56k modem 46 min 11 sec - Cable modem 4 min 5 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 45Mb) Approx. download time: 1 hr 45min - 56k modem 46 min 11 sec - Cable modem 4 min 5 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 4.74Mb) Approx. download time: 12 min - 56k modem 4 min 51sec - Cable modem 25 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 7.20Mb) Approx. download time: 18 min - 56k modem 7 min 23 sec - Cable modem 39 sec - T1/On Campus
Mozilla Firefox	Download (file size: 83.6Kb) Approx. download time: 2 min 6 sec - 56k modem 51 sec - Cable modem 4 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 83.6Kb) Approx. download time: 2 min 6 sec - 56k modem 51 sec - Cable modem 4 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 8.93Mb) Approx. download time: 26 min 12 sec - 56k modem 11 min - Cable modem 57 sec - T1/On Campus	Download (file size: 8.93Mb) Approx. download time: 26 min 12 sec - 56k modem 11 min - Cable modem 57 sec - T1/On Campus

Posted by anna at 6:00 AM

March 6, 2006

Getting an Error Message? Include a Screen Capture When Reporting the Problem

When you get a long error message in a Microsoft Windows computer, it may help us research the problem better. You may wish to take a snapshot of your Windows desktop or the files inside a folder or window. Here’s how:

1. Do one of the following:
   
   • To capture an image of your entire screen, press the Print Screen key.
     
     
   • To capture an image of a particular window or folder, open it, and then simultaneously press the Alt key and the Prt Scr key.
   
   
2. After the image is captured, you can edit or print it by pasting it into Microsoft’s Paint program as follows:
   
   1. Click the Start button in the lower-left corner of Windows.
      
   2. Click on All Programs.
      
   3. Select Accessories.
      
   4. Select Paint.
      
   5. After Paint opens, click the Edit drop-down menu.
      
   6. Select Paste.
      
   7. To print the screen capture, click the File drop-down menu.
      
   8. Select Print.
   
   
3. Another option is to paste the screen capture into a photo-editing program like Adobe’s Photoshop or Microsoft’s Digital Image.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

March 2, 2006

Laptop Battery Care for Windows and Macintosh

With a little bit of care you can maximize the battery life and lifespan of your new laptop.

To view the current battery level, use the icon as indicated below:

Windows Battery Meter


Macintosh Battery Meter

Battery saving operating tips:
For Windows:

• Optimize power settings by selecting Power Options from the Control Panel.
• Reduce the screen brightness by holding the Fn key and using the < and > arrow keys to decrease and increase the screen’s brightness.
• Place the laptop on a well ventilated surface.
• Use basic, low-activity screen savers.
• Turn off wireless features such as Bluetooth and WiFi when not in use (the silver buttons on front of laptop, flashing blue or orange lights indicate feature is turned on).
  

For Macintosh:

• Optimize power setting by selecting System Preferences > Energy Saver.
• Reduce the screen brightness through: System Preferences > Displays.
• Use basic, low-activity screen savers.
• Turn off wireless features such as Bluetooth, WiFi, and AirPort when not in use.
  

Optimal battery temperature The optimal operating temperature range is between 10° and 35°C. The optimal storage temperature range is between -25° and 45° Keeping your laptop as near room temperature (22°C) as possible is ideal.

Prolonging long-term battery life

• Frequent full discharge of Li-Ion batteries is not recommended.
• For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it is important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. An ideal usage pattern would be to use it plugged in at your desk, but run it from battery power when commuting, in meetings or at home.
• Li-Ion batteries don't like heat. Storing your laptop in a hot car for example will greatly reduce the effectiveness and life span of your battery.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

February 28, 2006

Adobe Photoshop: Auto Correction

Adobe Photoshop 7 is installed in the Macintosh computer labs located in the Engineering building rooms 021 and 336.

You can change the Auto Correction options in the Levels or Curves dialog box by clicking on the Options button. There are three options to choose from: Enhance Monochromatic Contrast makes the highlights lighter and the shadows darker; Enhance per Channel Contrast produces a more dramatic correction and changes color castes; Find Light and Dark Colours finds the average lightest and darkest pixels and uses them to maximise contrast. You can select any of these as a default algorithm for all colour adjustments.

Palettes and moveable dialog boxes are always saved in the same place in Photoshop whenever the application is quit. But if you prefer to save your own workspace, open and position the palettes you require and choose Window>Workspace>Save Workspace and type in a name. You can create several workspaces for different uses.

To duplicate an open Photoshop document without having to OK it in the
Duplicate image window first, hold down Option/Alt when choosing Duplicate from the Image menu. The copy of the file will then open as a separate document.

To create a text knockout effect, place a text layer over a layer with a shape or painted area to knockout from over an image background layer. Choose Blending Options from the Palette menu and set the Knockout option to Deep to reveal the background layer. This technique can be used on several overlaying layers with Layer Styles to add special effects.

Photo from Adobe

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

February 26, 2006

Email Best Practices: Common Courtesies

	Read your email regularly - daily if possible - ignoring a message is discourteous and confusing to the sender.
	Always reply, even if a brief acknowledgment is all you can manage. This will avoid doubt in the mind of the sender that you have received the message.
	Reply promptly - email systems often do not have the conventional ‘pending’ trays of the desktop, so it may be easy to forget an email message.
	Put your reply at the top of the message.
	Be tolerant of others’ mistakes. Some people are new to email, and may not be good typists, or they may accidentally delete your message and ask you to resend it.
	If you quote in email information received from any source, you should properly acknowledge it, just as you would in an academic essay or published work. The same applies if you reproduce in another medium, information you received in email.
	Never assume that because you have sent a message, it has been read.
	Do not label every message as high priority.
	Do not send “chain letters”, and do not forward such letters.

Signatures

	Your signature should be brief (4 - 5 lines maximum) and informative (include a phone number).
	Do not include drawings, quotations or anything non-business related in your signature.

Keeping Out of Trouble

	Never say anything in email about a third party that you would not say directly to that person. If this was to come to that person’s attention you could be unpleasantly surprised to discover that defamation by email can carry the same consequences as by any other medium.
	Remember that your message can be redirected to a third party without your knowledge or consent.
	Do not Flame. Flaming is intemperately aggressive and abusive language used to criticize others. If a discussion is becoming emotionally charged, get out of email and use the phone, write a letter, or go and see the person.
	Use humor, sarcasm and irony sparingly: they may not be self-evident to all readers. Email lacks the cues such as facial expression and body language. You can easily convey the wrong impression.
	Do not pretend you are someone else when sending email. To pretend you are someone else is fraudulent, and could lead to legal consequences.
	Do not make changes to someone else’s message and pass it on without making it clear where you have made the changes. This is misrepresentation/ plagiarism.
	Sending email from your university account is similar to sending a letter on university letterhead, so be aware that your communication is identified as such.

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

February 24, 2006

Advantages of Using PDF Files for Online Viewing or Printing

A PDF file looks the same as a printed copy of your document, even when being displayed on the Internet. When a document is viewed, it is exactly as the creator intended it to appear, including features difficult to recreate on an Internet page such as headers & footers and multiple columns. The PDF file takes on the page layout attributes set by the selected printer driver when the file was created.

In the case of PowerPoint documents you are able to create presentations that can run on the Internet from a single file – try to do a similar action from within PowerPoint (Save as HTML) and you end up with many files and folders for the one presentation.

PDF files generally, but not always, take up less disk space than the original file. For example a Microsoft Word file of 2.3Mb was reduced to approximately 350k using the PDF Writer (only available in the full version of Adobe Acrobat - not Adobe Acrobat Reader). Smaller file sizes are important when transporting a file (trying to fit it on a floppy disk) or downloading from the Internet. Please note that the size of the resulting file compared to the original document varies greatly depending on the content of the file (text/graphics) and the options you select when making the PDF.

Additional Adobe Acrobat Reader documentation can be found on http://www.umbc.edu/oit/software/pages/Acrobat.htm

versus

Posted by anna at 7:00 AM

February 21, 2006

Podcasting: Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Podcasting?

Podcasting is a relatively new phenomena becoming popular in late 2004. It allows you to easily create and publish your own radio shows which can be easily accessed within the need for a broadcasting infrastructure. From a technical perspective, Podcasting is an application of the RSS 2.0 format [2]. RSS can be used to syndicate Web content, allowing Web resources to be automatically embedded in third party Web sites or processed by dedicated RSS viewers. The same approach is used by Podcasting, allowing audio files (typically in MP3 format) to be automatically processed by third party applications - however rather than embedding the content in Web pages, the audio files are transferred to a computer hard disk or to an MP3 player - such as an iPod.

The strength of Podcasting is the ease of use it provides rather than any radical new functionality. If, for example, you subscribe to a Podcast provided by UMBC, new episodes will appear automatically on your chosen device - you will not have to go to UMBC's Web site to see if new files are available and then download them.

Note that providing MP3 files to be downloaded from Web sites is sometimes described as Podcasting, but the term strictly refers to automated distribution using RSS.

What Can Podcasting Be Used For?
There are several potential applications for Podcasting in an educational context:

• Recording of lectures, allowing students to easily access the recording as a revision aid, to catch up on missed lectures, etc.
• Asking students to record their own Podcasts on, for example, project reports.
• Automated conversion of text files, email messages, RSS feeds, etc. to MP3 format, allowing the content to be accessed on mobile MP3 players.
• Maximising the impact of talks by allowing seminars, lectures, conference presentations, etc. to be listened to by a wider audience.
• Recordings of meetings to provide access for people who could not attend.
• Enhancing the accessibility of talks to people with disabilities.

Podcasting Software

Listening To Podcasts

It is advisable to gain experiences of Podcasting initially as a recipient, before seeking to create Podcasts. Details of Podcasting software is given at [3] and [4]. Note that support for Podcasts in iTunes v. 5 [5] has helped enhance the popularity of Podcasts. You should note that you do not need a portable MP3 player to listen to Podcasts - however the ability to listen to Podcasts while on the move is one of its strengths.

Creating Podcasts When creating a Podcast you first need to create your MP3 (or similar) audio file. Many recording tools are available, such as the open source Audacity software [6]. You may also wish to make use of audio editing software to edit files, include sound effects, etc.

You will then need to create the RSS file which accompanies your audio file, enabling users to subscribe to your recording and automate the download. An increasing number of Podcasting authoring tools and Web services are being developed [7]

References
Podcasting, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

RSS 2.0, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Simple_Syndication

iPodder Software,
http://www.ipodder.org/directory/4/ipodderSoftware

iTunes - Podcasting,
http://www.apple.com/podcasting/

Podcasting Software (Clients), Podcasting News,
http://www.podcastingnews.com

Audacity,
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Podcasting Software (Publishing), Podcasting News,
http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcasting_Software.html

Posted by anna at 11:58 AM

February 1, 2006

New Destructive Internet Worm Scheduled for February 3rd

Internet Worm Aliases: MyWife; Blackmal; Nyxem; Tearec; Kapser; Worm_Grew

Description of the Threat:
There is an Internet worm scheduled to activate on the 3rd day of each month. February 3rd is this Friday and OIT wanted to make you were aware of possible issues associated with it. While this worm is classified as “Low Risk” by McAfee it is of a particularly nasty nature. Specifically it is designed to overwrite many common Microsoft Windows file types on your workstation rendering them permanently unusable. Macs are unaffected by this worm.

OIT Actions:
OIT has rules in place on our Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), also known as the Tipping Point, that will block this worm within the UMBC campus. In addition all machines that are joined to our centrally managed Active Directory should have McAfee AntiVirus installed. If a machine is running McAfee and has DAT file 4642 or higher then McAfee should detect and clean the infection prior to any file loss. McAfee will detect this worm as “MyWife”.

Home Users:
Customers should check the following:
• AntiVirus Software is installed and has been updated (UMBC’s version of McAfee automatically updates the DAT file) Click Here to Download McAfee
• Backup any important files to CD, DVD or a USB Key. It is important that this backup not be located on the computer as the worm can detect these files too.
• Turn on Windows Automatic Updates Click Here for Information about Automatic Updates

Method of Infection:
This is a mass mailing worm that infects machines via an e-mail message. The message will contain an attachment with a *.PIF, *.JPG or *.ZIP file. Execution of these files will infect an unprotected machine. Please visit http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_138027.htm for full details.

Impact:Below are the file types that it will render unusable. These files will not be able to be recovered once overwritten.
• DOC
• XLS
• MDB
• MDE
• PPT
• PPS
• ZIP
• RAR
• PDF
• PSD
• DMP

Posted by mikec at 4:17 PM

January 22, 2006

OIT Sends E-mail to Campus About Changing E-mail Client Settings

OIT is sending out e-mail messages similar to the one below. The recent legislative audit identified some account and password practices that OIT should strengthen. One practice we need to discontinue is allowing people to send their username and password unencrypted to a server.

Please do not be alarmed by this messages. Please do not mistake these messages for Spam or a Phishing scam of any type. We have posted this message to verify that the messages you are receiving are in fact legitimate.

----------Email Message Begins Here-------------------------------

Dear "Enter Name Here":
The Office of Information Technology is sending you this message to inform you that we have plans to strengthen our e-mail security. While much of this can be done centrally on our servers, the remainder must be completed on your local e-mail client (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird etc.). We plan on making these changes permanent on May 25th, 2006

Many UMBC account holders have some form of e-mail client installed on their PC or Mac computers. In order for you to utilize the increased security features we are requesting that you modify your e-mail client settings. In most cases this is very easy to do.

Instructions regarding these configuration changes can be found at:
http://www.umbc.edu/oit/sans/helpdesk/configuremail.html

***Which Machine Should I Change My E-mail Settings On?***
Part of the challenge we face is identifying the machine or machines that you have connected from. This is important because your office machine may in fact be setup with the most recent security features while your home PC or Mac may not be. To help you identify which machine needs to have the e-mail client settings updated we have included the IP Address or domain name where you last connected from.

Don't worry if this is a little confusing for you. We are including this information for those that may find it useful. If you are just not sure what this means then we simply recommend that you check the settings on all of the e-mail clients that you use. Below you will find the hosts where your connection was detected from.

Our logs over the past week have detected that you have
used an unencrypted "IMAP or POP" session to access your MyUMBC email
account named "USERNAME HERE". These logins occurred from the following hosts:

"HOST INFORMATION HERE"

*** How Soon Do I Need to Make These Changes?***
Don't be alarmed, you are not in imminent danger of being compromised. We are taking these steps as part of a campus wide security campaign. We plan on disabling unencrypted IMAP and POP e-mail on May 25th, 2006. You have until this date to update your e-mail clients.

For more information about making these changes please visit:
http://www.umbc.edu/oit/sans/helpdesk/configuremail.html

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the OIT helpdesk via email (helpdesk@umbc.edu), or at 410-455-3838 (x5-3838)

Posted by mikec at 10:05 PM

November 1, 2005

Quick Reference to Computer Cables and Connections

Connecting all the various pieces and parts of your computer may get confusing especially if you do not know which cables go with which connector. Manufacturers use color-codes to make the connection even easier. If you're not sure what color cable goes with what device, you can view this quick reference explaining the different types of connectors in the back of your computer. System Connector Reference

CAUTION: Make sure that every cable is firmly connected both to the system unit and the specific piece of hardware. Loose cables can cause all sorts of problems.

Posted by anna at 1:44 PM

October 26, 2005

Top 10 Spyware Applications Blocked

During the Fall of 2004 OIT deployed an appliance, known as an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), by the vendor Tipping Point. This appliance works from a list of established rules that are updated daily in a method similar to the virus detection files which are updated by McAfee. The purpose of this device is to prevent known worms, viruses, spyware and adware from entering or leaving the campus.

We have been running the IPS since then with great success primarily targeting worms and viruses. To date it has saved IT staff immense amounts of investigative time that was being spent tracking down and disinfecting hundreds of machines on campus annually.

At the beginning of this Fall OIT enabled the Spyware and Adware rules on the Tipping Point appliance. Our goal in all of this was to prevent the accidental exposure of non public information from campus machines. This too has been quite successful. Attached to this blog you will find a PDF report of the number of times each of the top ten Spyware rules has been triggered (i.e. blocked something).

You can see from the report that there are a significant number of times each of the top ten Spyware rules have been triggered. There are few basic things you can do to protect yourself. Click Here to see the PDF Report.

• Patch Your Machine
• Install McAfee AntiVirus (Make sure it is set to update daily)
• Make sure there are no blank passwords on your machine
• Install Spybot Search and Destroy

For more information on how to get these applications or how to use them please visit
http://www.umbc.edu/oit/sans/security/awareness/index.html

Posted by mikec at 3:47 PM

January 27, 2005

Spring 2005 Computer Lab and Help Desk Hours of Operation Starting Sunday, January 30th

Our Spring 2005 hours of operation for computer labs and Help Desk will start on Sunday, January 30th. They are as follows:

• Sunday - 12 noon to 12 midnight
• Monday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
• Tuesday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
• Wednesday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
• Thursday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
• Friday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
• Saturday - 8:00am to 12 midnight
  

If you have any questions please contact the Help Desk at 410-455-3838.

Posted by OIT at 1:20 PM