First of all, the conference is a steal at only $65.00/per person.  Most conferences in this field will cost you upwards of $600.00 + travel expenses. Both times we stayed at a local Holiday Inn Express and it was quite nice and very reasonably priced.  There are also some really great places to eat in Athens…but this isn’t a travel blog, so I’ll spare you the details.

Anyway – the conference was as good as the Web Design World conferences I attended years ago in Seattle and Denver.

The conference is also only one day.  This is actually kind of nice because it means less time out of the office, but just enough time at the conference to get a lot of great information.  I did feel at the end of the day that there was enough momentum to do a second day, however.

They get excellent speakers.  Last year Eric Meyer, renowned author, speaker, and expert on all things CSS, was the keynote.  This year we had the pleasure of hearing from Greg Rewis and Stephanie Sullivan.  Rewis is currently an “Adobe Evangilist” and way back when was part of the team that developed GoLive (before Adobe bought it) and later Dreamweaver. Stephanie Sullivan owns W3Conversions and is part of the Adobe Task Force with the Web Standards Project.  They recently co-authored Mastering CSS with Dreamweaver CS4.

In addition to giving the keynote, both gave additional presentations during the conference.  We attended both of Stephanie Sullivan’s: Content: Everywhere, Everyone, Everything and CSS Tips & Tricks for Design Challenges. I thought both sessions were really informative.  She went over things that I kind of knew already, but it was great to have the affirmation and to see how she deals with web design challenges.

Other great sessions I attended were Eric Meyer’s session on Javascript, Richard Worth’s session on JQuery (a really nice intro for someone who has not yet used it), Chad Udell’s session titled “Developers are from Mars, Designers are from Venus” (loved this one).

If you or anyone on your team works with the web, I cannot stress enough, the importance of attending at least conference a year related to web development.  Spring <br /> is a good option if you are in the OH, WV, KY, PA region an only swing attending one conference a year.  This industry (web design and development) moves quickly and if you don’t keep up, your web work will soon look and feel dated – believe me I know.

If you haven’t attended or planned to attend anything yet this year, consider attending one (or more) of these conferences:

Higher Ed-related:

• Sept. 21-22 – EdUi – Charlottesville, VA
• Sept 28-29 – WV Higher Education Technology Conference – Morgantown, WV
• Oct. 4-7 – HighEdWeb – Milwaukee, WI

Web Design & Development:

• An Event Apart (various  dates and locations)
• Web Design World (incidentally Greg Rewis and Stephanie Sullivan are both speaking at WDW this year).

Other Conference Suggestions?

These are just a few of my favorites, if you have suggestions for other great conferences to attend, post to the comments!

The OIT Web Communications team (e.g. Alisha and I) have been working on coverting the entire OIT website from its current static html form to one powered by a content management system – WordPress Multiuser (WPMU).  We’ve taken our time with this project carefully evaluating every requirement for each OIT Unit and have come to appreciate the overall flexibility, ease of use, and stability of this platform.

To implement this transition, we will need to have some website downtime so we can shift the domain name (oit.wvu.edu) to the WordPress driven version of the site and make sure the switch has not broken any links to files, etc.  To minimize the impact of the site being down, we’re planning on implementing the change on Sunday, June 28.

One thing that will need to be taken into account (as with any switch in platform such as this) is that it will invariably break links that people may have had bookmarked, referenced in emails, documentation, on websites, etc.  We will redirect broken links to an updated sitemap, however.

Overall the website will have the same design and content, but there have been some changes/improvements to the look & feel in places to “freshen” the appearance a little.  We are planning to start working on a redesign for next year, though.

During this last week while we’re tying up loose ends and tweaking, I would love to get some feedback and…  well… help.  Alisha and I have been looking at this for months and as you know when you are working on something for a long time, you can easily overlook things.  We’d really appreciate it if you could look the site over while it’s still “in the wings” and let us know about anything that we’ve overlooked or that you simply don’t like. Kudos are ok, too, but I want to know anything and everything you spot that is off, so we can tackle it.  (Suggestions on new content are welcome too.)

So if you have a few minutes, please visit http://wpmu.oit.wvu.edu and look around.

Also, I’ll be glad to answer any questions you might have about the website, WordPress, WPMU or whatever.  Just post to the comments.  Thanks!

Though busy, WVU Tech Support Center gets the job done

Thursday February 19, 2009
Marli Riggs, Staff Writer

Numerous laptops line a long table in Room G49 in Brooke Tower on the Evansdale Campus of West Virginia University. Student workers briskly move from one computer to the next, conducting diagnostic tests.

The white board by the door reads “29 machines in line, 17 machines in progress.”

WVU’s Technology Support Center helps students with their computer problems.

“The WVU TSC is here to provide students with many ongoing services for the equipment they have brought to WVU,” said Michael Cooper, TSC coordinator, through an e-mail. “These include repair and upgrade services as well as software and consulting services to ensure the computer will function properly with the WVU network.”

Read the rest of the story

Some of the items in the article were a little misleading regarding our support of the beta release of Google’s Chrome browser. It is important to remember that Chrome is a beta release- meaning Google is still developing it and it’s up to early adopters to provide real-world testing.

Betas, as a general rule, are not supported by OIT. There are too many unknowns- like the possibility of security issues and bugs. If it was a final production version (a gold release), and was compatible with the security measures and web-based applications used by the University, OIT would support its use.

The first paragraph in the article states:

West Virginia University’s Office of Information Technology is blocking the download of Google’s new Web browser, Chrome.

OIT is blocking Google Desktop, not Chrome.  OIT has blocked Google Desktop since 2006 because it is a security risk.  Unfortunately, Google hosts the Chrome download in the the same location as Google Desktop.  Since you can’t download Chome without using the same installer as Google Desktop, it is, by default, blocked.

The most notable security feature found has to do with the automatic download feature that comes default on the browser, which downloads any files a Web page attempts to give a user’s computer without prompting.

Actually, a “security feature” would hopefully stop “automatic” downloads of files without prompting…so I am not sure what that sentence means. If, however, Chrome downloads all files without prompting, this would be a huge security “flaw” not a “feature.”

OIT could not confirm which security flaw was disallowing it from the WVU network, which allows Mozilla’s Firefox, a similar browser, on its network.

Actually we can confirm that there is no known security flaw inherent to Chrome preventing it from being used on campus.  We are not “disallowing” Chrome from our network.  We’re blocking the download application for the browser. This is due entirely to the fact that it is part of the Google Desktop install package.

Users who install Chrome at home (or on any other network for that matter), can certainly use it while on our network.  Comparing it to Mozilla’s Firefox is an inaccurate comparison. Yes they are similar due to the fact that they are both browsers – but so are Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.  So of course we allow Firefox – just as we allow the other browsers (including Chrome provided the installation of it is not downloaded while on our network).

I do want to emphasize that due to the deadline constraints for this article in the DA we were not able to provide a detailed answer in time for the deadline.

I am pleased, however, that we do have this blog now in which to discuss this kind of thing.  We welcome your comments and look forward to discussing this and other issues with you.

P.S. – The assistant director of Network Operations is Steve Belcher not Steve Belch.

Related Links

• Daily Athenaeum, Sept. 5, 2008 -  WVU blocks Chrome

Note: Thanks to Steven Marra for contributing to this post.

I am personally unlikely to waiver from my support of open source platforms and tools, but I have to admit that this makes I more likely that I’ll give CF a look.  Here’s the post from Campus Technology:

Adobe Makes ColdFusion 8 Free for Students, Educators
9/3/2008
By David Nagel

Adobe has made its ColdFusion 8 Web development platform free for educators and students. The offer is available for all public and private accredited K-12 schools and colleges and universities.

ColdFusion 8 for Education is a full version of Adobe’s development and server platform. This free edition is meant to be used only for instructional purposes and not in production environments.

According to Adobe, “Academic institutions are experiencing increasing demands for students to develop ColdFusion skills earlier in their education to meet the high workforce demand for rich Internet application developers. Through this free offering, faculty can now easily integrate ColdFusion into their curriculum and enable students to advance their Web application learning more quickly and easily.”

ColdFusion 8 for Education is available now. Registration and proof of eligibility for students, faculty, and staff are required. Eligibility includes accredited schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and its territories, academic administration centers and boards of education, research institutions recognized by the United States Department of Education, and some home schools. Further information about eligibility can be found here.

Multiple licenses (up to 30) can be requested through a single registration, and multiple registrations can be used to request more than 30 licenses. Installation support is provided free, but additional support (technical support or developer support) requires registration in a fee-based program. ColdFusion 8 for Education can be accessed here.

To use this, create a text message that just says “WVUOIT” and send it to 41411.  This basically goes to our website and reports back whatever the top news headline is. You can set up multiple textmarks, but this seemed like a good starting point.

Now I am sure there are other uses for this service and I am just scratching the surface, so I’d love to hear from you. What you think might be a useful service from OIT that employs SMS or text massaging?

This semester marks the launch of this blog.  We’re hoping that this is a helpful resource for you during your time at WVU.  I invite you to subscribe to our blog or even the OIT News so you can keep up with the latest developments from OIT.

So you might be wondering, why would I be interested in getting messages about technology at WVU?  Well, that’s a good question!  What would you like to see here?  We want to hear from you.

This blog is intended to provide us (OIT) with an alternate way of connecting to you, BUT offer a way for you to participate as well.  You are invited to make comments on anything we post here, ask questions, etc.

[We do ask though, that if you have a support question, to please simply contact the Help Desk (304-293-4444 or email oithelp@mail.wvu.edu) so they can help you directly.]

Here are some related links you should be aware of:

• OIT News and Announcements – This is our main conduit of information from OIT.  You can subscribe to the RSS feed and be notified immediately when we post something new.  Keep in mind though that the email version of our RSS is a daily digest, so the posts are only delivered once per day.
• Student Technology Resouces – This includes a breakdown of all the different logins and numbers, etc. that you need to be aware of as a WVU student.  If you think there should be something listed here that is not, let us know so we can add it.  [Feel free to post suggestions in the comments below.]
  

It imports news from our OIT news feed directly. So while it is doubtful that you are spending a lot of time on the main OIT website, you can still keep up-to-date with what we are doing via a site you ARE probably visiting regularly. 

So come on and Become a Fan of OIT!

Do You Need MasterApps?

MasterApps provides you with one possible solution – sometimes the only solution – to accessing resources within WVU’s Intranet. The question that you need to ask yourself, however, is “Are there more practical or more convenient ways to get what I need?”
Are you looking for remote desktop access or storage data when it would be easier and more convenient to copy your work to a portable storage device?

On the other hand, MasterApps can be the best solution if you need off-campus access to Intranet resources, sensitive information or special software. For example, supervisors and managers will typically use MasterApps in order to access the employee leave request system when they are out of the office.

How Do You Get MasterApps?

You need a dean or director’s approval to use MasterApps.

If you have questions or concerns, or if you want to request MasterApps access, contact the OIT Help Desk by emailing oithelp@mail.wvu.edu or by calling 293-4444.