May

The Ed Tech's have a training session coming up in May to help you "Create a Mail Merge using Office 2007/2010." We will also be giving an overview of Prezi during our ITChatter. We hope to see you there!

Online banking has grown in huge numbers, and mobile banking is on an even faster rise. But accessing your sensitive financial data via computer can be dangerous. Please click the link to read recommendations on this very important topic. For example, Is it safe to bank on a public computer? Answer: No!

When you open an email in Outlook and then reply/forward, the original email will remain open by default until you close it yourself. If you find that you reply/forward quite a bit during the day, you might want to save this step. Here's how.

Force Quit forces an application to quit. Note, you should only force quit if absolutely necessary. When using force quit to close an application, any unsaved changes to open documents are not saved.

Google's "Google Drive" has finally been launched. The long-awaited file storage and syncing service has been reviewed by the staff of ReadWriteWeb. Please click the link to read their recommendations.

"Tracking” refers to the many different methods that websites, advertisers, ad networks, and others use to learn about your web browsing behavior. This includes information about what sites you visit and for how long; things you like, dislike, and comment on; what you search for; and what you buy.

If you're accessing your files via the Dropbox Web site, we'll show you some keyboard shortcuts to make navigating the file browser a bit easier.

Business social network LinkedIn has launched an app for the iPad. The new app takes full advantage of the iPads Multi-touch and the new Retina display and was "handcrafted to provide the most engaging experience for our iPad users by shining a spotlight on the essential information they need throughout the day." Please click the link to read the full article by TechRadar.

WinZip, a popular Windows app, has come to iOS, allowing users to easily open ZIP files and view its contents on the go. Read more by clicking the link to read the full article by c|net.

ReadWriteWeb looks at three iOS coloring apps for kids: MyPaint Free, Kid Paint, and Vehicle Colors. Of course if you're a kid at heart, you might try them out as well. Read more by clicking the link to read the full article by ReadWriteWeb.

It’s not often that you look at a Twitter stream and think, “This is really Pulitzer material.” But if you happen to be looking at the Twitter accounts of the Tuscaloosa News and its reporting staff, that would actually be the case. Please click the link to read the full article and watch the video.

From hiding comments to pinning a Web page without a photo, these tips will help even the most addicted Pinterest user. There is also a tip on how to install the Pin It button on your smartphone. Read more by clicking the link to read the full article by c|net.

Spam is now everywhere on Pinterest. Just search for images from a random European large city and they show up in droves. Stockholm, check. Copenhagen, check. London, check. Some of these images seem legit, but most of them are there just to trick you into visiting a shop on Amazon, a site that sells weight loss pills or offers fake gift cards. You can click this legit link to view the rest of the article.

You've probably used apps to check the weather forecast, read your Twitter timeline, post your Facebook status, and more. But did you know you can use an Android smartphone to measure noise levels, solve Sudoku puzzles, or tune a guitar? Here are 10 novel uses for your Android smartphone.

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.

Information Technology Services has postponed the ANGEL upgrade to allow for additional testing. The upgrade will be rescheduled for a later date. For more information, please contact ANGEL Support (angelsupport@psu.edu). Please click the link to view the ITS Alert.

Penn State's ITS (Information Technology Services) recently sent out emails to all Penn State users regarding a new Spam prevention measure they are enacting in the coming weeks. We wanted to clear up any confusion about this process.

Maybe you have heard about Prezi or maybe you have seen one and didn't even know it. Prezi is a cloud-based presentation and storytelling tool to share your thoughts and ideas on a virtual campus. It's almost like an animated black board discussion that you can zoom in and out and move from one idea to the next. It can be a new twist on your PowerPoint presentation and you can incorporate pictures, video and even PDFs. Click the link for a list of our ITChatter series recordings.

FBI says malware lurking in hotel room connections, particularly overseas.

Microsoft has released Apple Macintosh OS X updates for Microsoft Office 2011 14.2.2 and Microsoft Office 2008 12.3.3.

Apple auto-disables outdated versions of Flash Player and pushes several security fixes in Mac OS X 10.7.4 update.

Becky Worley from Upgrade Your Life shows us her top eight shortcuts for Word 2010.

Pete Flores from Texas A&M AgriLIFE demonstrates how to create a form in Word 2010.

SocialShield is a monitoring service that helps parents keep their kids safe on Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other major social networking sites.

The Floating Sensor Network project offers a network of mobile sensors that can be deployed rapidly to provide real-time, high-resolution data in hard-to-map waterways. Please click the link to read the full article.

Apple's latest update to iOS was released May 7, 2012. Version 5.1.1 contains improvements and bug fixes as well as patching three security flaws.

Drive-by downloads are coming to your smartphone, and they're harder to detect than traditional PC-based versions. Here's how you can protect yourself, your users and your enterprise from mobile drive-by downloads. Please click the link to read the full article.

Note-taking software Evernote has been updated. With the update comes a number of user interface changes, new features, and fixes.

There are thousands of science facts for you to learn and more than you can share with your children, family, and friends. Rediscover science through the best Android apps for science lovers like you. Please click the link to read the full article.

Dark Sky is a Kickstarter-launched app for iPhone and iPad that zeroes in on the basic use case for a weather app on a mobile device.

This is an awesome example of technology being adapted to new uses by people in need. Please click the link to read the full article from The New York Times.

iHear for Android will read updates from Facebook, Twitter and other social sites. The free app will also narrate entire articles. For an additional fee, you can choose from 35 premium voices as well.

PSU Food and Farm Biz's YouTube channel has a series of 19 videos on Social Media and Food Retailers. The videos explore research done by Jeffrey Hyde, Kathleen Kelly, and Dana Ollendyke.

A nationwide system of extreme weather and other emergency alerts is set to go live this month on all major US carriers. The wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system is a free location-based service that sends short texts to subscribers who are currently in areas experiencing tornadoes, flash floods, earthquakes, or other disasters. AT&T, Cellcom, Cricket, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless are all participating. Please click the link to read the full article.

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.

On 22 May, 2012, during the ITS maintenance window (5:00–7:00 a.m.), ITS will update the www.work.psu.edu splash page and dashboard.

ANGEL to be upgraded to version 8.0 June 2 during extended maintenance window.

Penn State's ITS (Information Technology Services) recently sent out emails to all Penn State users regarding a new Spam prevention measure they are enacting. The activation of the Spam Quarantine filter has been delayed.

Penn State’s Information Technology Services (ITS) is warning members of the University community to be alert for a new email phishing scam designed to coerce faculty, staff and students into revealing their Penn State WebAccess login IDs and passwords. The scam email directs readers to a website that looks nearly identical to the University’s “thumbprint” WebAccess login page.

Do you need help with creating a new, secure password? The Memorable Password Generator lets you generate a new password with just a click.

If an Email needs an attachment, do you usually attach it last? If yes, have you ever sent out an Email without the attachment! I'll wait while we all raise our hands. This How Do I gives you an easy way to add the attachment FIRST.

Conditional formatting is a popular feature and is a great way to easily identify cells with a range that meet some criteria. However, users often want to create conditional formatting rules that go beyond comparing a cell’s value to a single value or a single cell reference - row or column comparisons are commonly requested operations. In this blog post, we will learn how to use relative references in conditional formatting rules to make such tasks easier.

When a new version of Android is released, Google works with a single hardware partner to create a flagship device that shows off the operating system’s new capabilities. That phone bears the Nexus label, and the most recent device is Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus. But that scenario may change later this year with the release of the version of Android, code-named Jelly Bean. Please click the link to read the May 16, 2012 article by Dwight Silverman.

Podcasts may have fallen a bit out of fashion lately, but the new cloud-based podcast playback and discovery platform Player FM hopes that you’ll give the medium another chance.

PDFpen for iPad is not a free product ($14.99). If you have the need to work on PDFs from an iPad, the apps feature list is rather full.

You love your iPad but you don't have an AirPrint printer. Does this mean that you can't print? Let's see.

Twitter has recently made a number of updates to their Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Although voice assistants like Siri have certainly made it easier for the visually impaired to navigate the iPhone, it seems that new software out of Georgia Tech College of Computing looks to take accessibility to the next level. BrailleTouch is a prototype application that uses traditional Braille input on the iPhone’s touchscreen, allowing people to type up to 32 words per minute with up to 92 percent accuracy. Please click the link to read more about the prototype application.

This is one fear that I don't have! Did you know that about 66 percent of people surveyed suffer from nomophobia, or "no mobile phone phobia." Please click the link to read the full article.

The next time you have to get an MRI or CT scan you might not know it but if the equipment is made by GE it is phoning home. No, the actual scan data is still between you and your doctor, but the broad stats of when and where the scan was taken is reported back to GE. In the true spirit of the Internet of Things, everything has an IP address, even an MRI machine. The analysts at GE have created some interesting data visualizations. About 125,000 scans are taken each day around the world with their equipment, and you can see time series information and other interesting stats on their blog. Full story and video at ReadWriteEnterprise.

Ad Network Detector scans your phone or tablet for the presence of the most common ad networks used in mobile apps, giving you insight into what types of ads can be displayed, and what information is gathered by the ad networks. With easy access to this information, you'll be able to decide whether you want to keep the app that has certain ad networks on your phone.

Engage, explore and discover new music of all genres with the NPR Music app. Rock, Jazz & Blues, World, Classical and Hip Hop/R&B – you get music programmed by people and the quality storytelling you expect from NPR. You can read music news and reviews while listening to interviews, live concerts or exclusive streams of albums before they’re released. Multitask with the NPR Music app as your guide to new music.

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.