September
The AgSci IT eNews is a newsletter from the staff of Information Technologies. The newsletter covers a range of topics from many sources with a focus on college technology news, maintenance suggestions, trainings, How Do I tips and new technologies.
Join the College's Communications and Marketing group for our next ITChatter scheduled for September 20. Our topic is Extension Branding—A Look at the Latest Resources. We meet at noon via Adobe Connect. Click the link for more information and to register.
Tim Simkins from the College's web group gave us an update on Plone Extension sites. Click the link to see this session and our other ITChatter session recordings.
AgIT has many training topics coming up in September. Here’s a sample: Excel Essentials (Basics), Intro to Facebook, Intro to Twitter, Publisher and more! Some will be offered via Adobe Connect while others will be held in 117 Wagner Building at University Park.
Are you ready to listen to a new set of sounds on your Windows 7 computer? Then you need to explore the sound theme options in the Sounds control panel.
The synchronization issues folders contain logs and items that Microsoft Outlook has been unable to synchronize with our Microsoft Exchange Server. These items may be deleted to regain space for your Outlook mailbox.
The Office Blogs site has a video that describes how to use the new PowerPoint 2010 artistic effects. With them, you can "make your photos look more like sketches, drawings, or paintings." You can click the link to see the video.
Microsoft Support has a Knowledge Base article that looks at issues causing speaker feedback loop in Windows 7.
Your Android-based phone likely has a great deal of sensitive information on it. Trendmicro has posted an eBook to help secure your device.
The Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 is powered by both indoor and outdoor light and can be used in total darkness, after a full charge, for three months. The K750 is also PVC-free and fully recyclable.
A coordinated cyber criminal network pulled off one of the largest and most complex banking heists ever, withdrawing $13 million in one day from ATMs in six countries. You can click the link to read the full article from MSNBC.
This TechCrunch article look at Rob Spence's Eyeborg bionic eye project. There is also a Sky News video interview linked as well. You can click the link to read the full article and see the video.
Software that lets drivers unlock car doors and even start their vehicles using a mobile phone could let car thieves do the very same things, according to computer security researchers at iSec Partners. You can click the link to read the full article.
Microsoft Mathematics provides a graphing calculator that plots in 2D and 3D, step-by-step equation solving, and useful tools to help students with math and science studies. You can click the link to watch a video about this tool.
Microsoft's Director of Business Intelligence Bruno Aziza looks for insights on social media and business from Robert Scoble. You can click the link to watch the video.
Lighter Side items are links to interesting, funny, even weird items from the web. These may not be tech-oriented. We hope you enjoy them.
The AgSci IT eNews is a newsletter from the staff of Information Technologies. The newsletter covers a range of topics from many sources with a focus on college technology news, maintenance suggestions, trainings, How Do I tips and new technologies.
We continue to add more and more recordings to our Self-Paced Learning page. We try to record each of our Adobe Connect sessions and then place the links on our page.
This article serves as a reminder that it helps to "know" your friends on Facebook. If one of your friends doesn't typically post videos, be cautious if one shows up in their news feed. The article starts with "A new report from Symantec suggests that nearly 15% of all the videos posted on Facebook are attempts at "likejacking," a derivation of clickjacking where malicious programs take over a user's Facebook profile." Please click the link to read the full article from ReadWriteWeb.
Outlook 2010 has changed how attachments can be edited. Believe us, the change is for the better. Read on to see what's new and improved.
Microsoft Office 2010 applications (Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and Word) have a great new Screenshot tool. This tool lets you take a screenshot of a window, dialog box, or portion of your screen to be included in an Email message or a document.
Facebook's recent updates to sharing make it easier to tag who you're with, say where you are, and manage who can see your updates. See this page for an explanation of some of the changes.
Symantec has released Norton™ Mobile Security Lite. It is a free Android app that "protects your mobile device against loss, theft and malware." The free version also offers a remote phone lock feature. You can click the link to watch a video and/or download the app.
Penn State Extension - Lehigh County has released the Farm Fresh mobile app that makes it easy for Pennsylvanians to find the abundant local food sources that surround them.
The Web is full of creative and practical resources that we can use to improve our projects. Photography, fonts, music and code are perfect examples. Finding stock objects and existing implementations is often quicker, cheaper and more practical than producing your own. Whether free or not, these resources normally come with a license to ensure fair use. Please click the link to read the full article by David Bushell.
In the upper right corner of Google Maps, you now have a "Weather" layer. This gives you a quick look at the current conditions for a city. When you double-click, you get the 5-day forecast. You can click the link to read more about the weather layer on Google Maps.
This article "Which table style should I use?" from the Microsoft Word Blog by Ron Owens explores using Word's Table Styles to jazz up your data. If you're a table maven, this is a must read! Please click the link to read the full article.
This article from Ask Dave Taylor® looks at one of the new "features" of Mac OS X Lion.
Eureka! Archimedes brought us this word about celebrating a discovery. In more recent times other inventors have 'accidentally' discovered other science breakthroughs. #3 was news to me! Please click the link to read the top 10 list from Discovery.com.
Lighter Side items are links to interesting, funny, even weird items from the web. These may not be tech-oriented. We hope you enjoy them.
Internet Explorer 9, which is the default web browser on the Windows 7 image, will not work properly for editing Plone web pages. If you have a Windows 7 computer and plan to edit Plone web sites, you should use Firefox.
The AgSci IT eNews is a newsletter from the staff of Information Technologies. The newsletter covers a range of topics from many sources with a focus on college technology news, maintenance suggestions, trainings, How Do I tips and new technologies.
No matter what your political persuasion may be, one thing all U.S. citizens can agree upon is that our brave men and women in the armed forces selflessly answer the call to serve, and that their sacrifices should not go unappreciated. Many have left friends and family behind to serve overseas, and all have made the decision to sacrifice everything to do what they think is right. We owe our brothers and sisters in uniform more than we can ever possibly hope to repay.
Pete Kauffman and Greg Angle from the Ag Communications and Marketing team provided an update to Penn State Extension branding efforts. They provided an overview of the current resources and brought us up to date with what is new in print and the Web. Click the link to see this session and our other ITChatter session recordings.
John Coupland, Professor of Food Science at Penn State, has a blog called Chemicals in My Food. Recently he posted four videos for his FDSC400 class on how to use Word and Excel.
I've been an Internet Explorer user for years but recently started using Firefox as a secondary browser. I was having problems saving bookmarks and finding them for later use. This page helped me out.
Facebook made BIG changes during the week of September 19 and if you listened in on the f8 conference, there are even more changes coming up soon. I receive this note from Ashley Lusk from the National 4-H Council. I wanted to share here since I think it's some really good info.
Adobe has released a CreatePDF application for iOS that lets you create PDF files from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch. Adobe CreatePDF for iOS is available for $9.99 from the iTunes App Store.
The first mobile app created by the FBI is designed to save you precious seconds if you child ever goes missing.
A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways - using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam). You can share a VoiceThread with friends, students, and colleagues for them to record comments too. Click the link to watch a video from Penn State's Teaching and Learning with Technology group introducing VoiceThread.
Earthquake velocities usually travel at 3.73 miles per second. Since phone signals travel at the speed of light, people in New York saw tweets from Washington, D.C., about the earthquake before they felt it. You can click the link to read more about the phenomenon.
For all my bicyclist friends, Spokelit is a small battery-powered LED light that works with common round, straight-gauge spokes laced in a three cross spoke pattern. It's two illumination modes, steady glow and flash, make you hard to miss during nighttime rides.
Tech Sanity Check presents a visual history of the people, products, and ideas that shows the development of the modern smartphone. I recommend clicking the interactive online graphic link. The Timeline view is nice but List is the easiest to read.
You may think of Calvin and Hobbes as a cartoon by Bill Watterson. But Chris Brady, dean of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, reminds us of the original Calvin and Hobbes ... John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes.
Lighter Side items are links to interesting, funny, even weird items from the web. These may not be tech-oriented. We hope you enjoy them.
