IS/IT News

Common Craft Videos

Allison Weiss — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:45:08 +0000

A two-person company based out of Seattle, Common Craft specializes en explaining complex ideas simply, all with a white board, colored markers, paper cut-outs, and simple film editing techniques.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Web Search Strategies in Plain English
Podcasting in Plain English
Blogs in Plain English
Google Docs in Plain English

Mac OS X Window Buttons

Allison Weiss — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:24:54 +0000

In the upper left hand corner of every window on your Apple computer, you’ll see three buttons: red, yellow, and green.

The red button closes the window but not the application. To close the application, depress the Command key next to your space bar (⌘) with your left thumb and tap the letter Q with your ring finger.

The yellow button minimizes the window. If you click this button, you’ll see the window swoop into your dock. If you want to see the window again, simply click the small icon representing that window and it will swoop back to center stage.

The green button toggles your window between two optimal sizes. One setting usually fills your display height and/or width. You choose the other setting by dragging the bottom right corner of your window up, down, left, or right, until it’s just right. The next time you open that application, your windows will “remember” your settings.

Leopard Spotlight: Calculator

Joe Kallo — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:33:29 +0000

One of the key improvements in Leopard is the new features in Spotlight. I’ll be posting a few of the more useful new features in Spotlight in upcoming blog posts. If you weren’t a Spotlight user with Tiger, the new Leopard Spotlight may well win you over. If you’re unfamiliar with using Spotlight, you activate it by either click on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your screen or pressing (command + spacebar).

One very hand thing the new Spotlight can do is act as a calculator. Simply type in the equation to be solved, and the answer pops up without having to launch a calculator. See this blog for more information or check out a video demonstration.

Lot-o-SPAM

Phillip Thomas — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:26:09 +0000

One day last week, Wednesday, May 21, 2008, our SPAM-fighting server blocked over 100,000 SPAM messages. Go ahead, read that again. That is 100,000 in one day… 24 hours… that’s over 4,100 per hour, which is just more than 1 per second. In another light, that is also approximately 100 messages blocked per user! Could you imagine your inbox 100 messages heavier… each day?

Mail service interruption

jk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:32:21 +0000

The mail service at UCLS became unresponsive at some time after 4:00PM until the server was rebooted at 6:15 PM. Service appears to have returned to normal and we are investigating the cause.

Cool Mail/iCal trick in Leopard

Curt Lieneck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:07:35 +0000

So far, the biggest win I see in Leopard is being able to create an iCal event right out of a Mail message. The program is smart enough to know when a date appears; hovering over it produces a click box to enter it in iCal. It works really well and is a major timesaver.

Adobe Video Workshop

Joe Kallo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:04:59 +0000

Adobe has recently publish a treasure-trove of video tutorials for its CS3 suite. These videos cover everything from basic use of the programs to high-end tips and tricks. Check out the video workshop here.

Password troubles?

jk — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:15:08 +0000

If you are unable to login to the files.ucls.uchicago.edu or get mail due to password difficulties, your password is likely one of those corrupted by some work done Monday. Please contact jk at 834-4476 and we can fix it quickly.

Blu-Ray Wins Hi-Def DVD War

Curt Lieneck — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:53:51 +0000

Toshiba announced this morning that it will no longer produce players for the HD-DVD format. Blu-Ray’s recent adoption by Netflix and Wal-Mart, two of the key players in the DVD world, were the final nails in the HD-DVD coffin. So go ahead and buy that Blu-Ray player!

File Server Issues - [UPDATED]

Phillip Thomas — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 01:41:51 +0000

[UPDATE]Tuesday, February 12 2008: The server files.ucls.uchicago.edu has been stable for over 10 days now. We are still keeping a close eye on the situation.

Sunday, Feb 3 2008: Unfortunately, although the file server had a longer stable period, we experienced another interruption. We are still working on the issue now and want to resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Friday, Feb 1 2008: ~~The UCLS File Server files.ucls.uchicago.edu is back up and running. We anticipate that our actions have resolved the issue.~~ Our case with Apple Support is still open and we are working with Apple to ensure the continued availability of the file service.