This week I tried the free ServerMojo service which provides reports of uptime for your web servers (or databases) or pings you when they are down. The cool thing is you can get alerts the old fashioned grandma way (email) or as direct messages via twitter (which can then be pushed your phone).

So ServerMojo periodically pings your servers and reports and whether the ping comes back. I had 2 twitter DMs today noting a 3 hours when CogDogBlog went belly up, one message when it went down and another when it returned:

Maybe I am better off not knowing? Oh well.

I have two servers set- one is CogDogBlog and the other is the NMC web site - I plan to do another for the NMC MySQL service because it did get overloaded twice in the last few months.

You also get some basic uptime charts:

So far its a nifty service at a niftier price. $0.

This hour and ten minute podcast features the panel discussion, "The State of the Internet According to the Congressional Internet Caucus", recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Policy Conference in Arlington, Virgina. The participants include:

• Tim Lordan, Executive Director for the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee
• Ari Schwartz, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for the Center for Democracy and Technology
• Joe Tasker, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and General Counsel for the Information Technology Association of America

The Congressional Internet Caucus is a bipartisan group of over 170 members of the House and Senate working to educate their colleagues about the promise and potential of the Internet. EDUCAUSE is a member of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee, which includes a diverse group of public interest, nonprofit, and industry groups working to educate Congress and the public about important Internet-related policy issues. This session highlights the priority IT policy issues before the 110th Congress according to the cochairs of the Internet Caucus and provides an overview of the Advisory Committee’s programs and activities.

Today is the last day for advance registration for an upcoming pre-conference that I am doing with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Texas Advanced Computer Center. See registration link and details below.

Datagrid Technologies and Libraries
Friday, June 27, 2008,  9:00 am- 5:00 pm
Anaheim, CA

This pre-conference will be a panel presentation featuring librarians and storage administrators from the UC San Diego Libraries, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Texas Advanced Computer Center, that will cover various aspects of datagrid technologies for use in libraries. The group will cover the overall benefits of utilizing datagrid technologies with institutional repositories, digital libraries, and digital preservation systems within libraries and will look specifically at case studies of the UCSD Libraries and the SDSC based Chronopolis digital preservation data-grid. Most of the tools for these systems are open source and with very minimal instruction can become an important collaborative network for use with academic bandwidth such as the Internet2 Abilene network for sharing large collections of born-digital material and escaping proprietary hardware lock-in on large-scale or mass digitization initiatives.

Registration - http://www.ala.org/ala/eventsandconferencesb/annual/2008a/registration.cfm

Speakers:
Ardys Kozbial, UC San Diego Libraries
Declan Fleming, UC San Diego Libraries
David Minor, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Robert McDonald, San Diego Supercomputer Center
Chris Jordan, Grid Infrastructure Group, Texas Advanced Computing Center

http://www.ausculti.org/

Today is International Day for Sharing Life Stories.

The day will be an opportunity for people around the world to gather in community halls, classrooms, public parks, theaters, auditoriums, as well as websites, email exchanges, and virtual environments to hear each other’s stories.

This blog offers many posts on events around the world.

This 40 minute podcast features a keynote address by Rebecca Whitener, Former Vice President of Enterprise Risk Management and Chief Risk Officer at EDS. Her speech, "Addressing Complex Security Threats Through Risk Management," was recorded at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Security Conference in Arlington, Virginia.

In this session, we address the current cybersecurity issues that are challenging higher education leaders today as they try to stay on top of the risks associated with attacks on information systems from internal and external sources. Emerging enterprise risk management (ERM) methodologies are examined as a source of guidance for creating an effective risk-based approach for managing current and future threats.

The Center for Studies in Higher Education, with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is conducting research to understand the needs and desires of faculty for in-progress scholarly communication (i.e., forms of communication employed as research is being executed) as well as archival publication. In the interest of developing a deeper understanding of how and why scholars do what they do to advance their fields, as well as their careers, our approach focuses on fine-grained analyses of faculty values and behaviors throughout the scholarly communication lifecycle, including sharing, collaborating, publishing, and engaging with the public. Well into our second year, we have posted a draft interim report describing some of our early results and impressions based on the responses of more than 150 interviewees in the fields of astrophysics, archaeology, biology, economics, history, music, and political science.

Our work to date has confirmed the important impact of disciplinary culture and tradition on many scholarly communication habits. These traditions may override the perceived “opportunities” afforded by new technologies, including those falling into the Web 2.0 category. As we have listened to our diverse informants, as well as followed closely the prognostications about the likely future of scholarly communication, we note that it is absolutely imperative to be precise about terms. That includes being clear about what is meant by “open access” publishing (i.e., using preprint or postprint servers for work published in prestigious outlets, versus publishing in new, untested open access journals, or the more casual individual posting of working papers, blogs, and other non-peer-reviewed work). Our work suggests that enthusiasm for technology development and adoption should not be conflated with the hard reality of tenure and promotion requirements (including the needs and goals of final archival publication) in highly competitive professional environments. 

Multi-touch interfaces are input devices that recognize two or more simultaneous touches, allowing one or more users to interact with computer applications through various gestures created by fingers on a surface. Some devices also recognize differences in pressure and temperature. Multi-touch technology introduces users to swipes, pinches, rotations, and other actions that allow for richer, more immediate interaction with digital content. Multi-touch devices and supporting applications offer diverse ways of visualizing information to improve understanding, and they facilitate new ways to foster collaborative creation, permitting several users to work simultaneously on a single screen.

The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

In addition to the "7 Things You Should Know About…" briefs, you may find other ELI resources useful in addressing teaching, learning, and technology issues at your institution. To learn more, please visit the ELI Resources page.

Most people who have reached the high vistas of the Twitter Life Cycle curve have at least one, if not many small stories where they got information, a contact, a resource from twitter that they would not have gotten anywhere else. Or in such a timely fashion.

So here is one more, how I long shoot tweet in the air got me technical info I needed.

The NMC web site runs in drupal (no snark today). We use the TinyMCE module to give our users, and our office staff who create a lot of the content, a visual text editor. But I have had this nibbling problem which will likely seem nothing to a drupal-ista. I have our CSS styles include classes for hyperlinks, so that adding something like class="pdf" to an href tag will insert a small file type icon:

It is as simple as

I have a few classes for quicktime links, word docs, rss feeds, they all look something like:

But the problem was I would edit these in the drupal plain text editor, since I love seeing the HTML code, but if someone else in our office went to edit the content (like to fix one of my typos), when they went into the TinyMCE text editor and then saved their work, the damn class would be stripped from the source.

So I spend a lot of time re-editing our pages to get the damn icons back. I knew there was some place in the pile of the drupal module files to fix it, but never quite found it. So yesterday, in a total shot in the dark, I heaved a Twitter Hail Mary pass:

which is pretty damned obscure.

And then, in my email box this morning was an email from Michael Harris- who pointed out the part of the drupal.module code to add this, changing:

to read:

and it works! For the NMC staff accounts, I add a list of extra CSS classes to their TinyMCE profile:

and when they edit a hyperlink in the visual editor, they have a nice drop down of CSS classes they can apply:

So now they can link and edit away and not eat my classes!

So thanks twitter, thanks Michael Harris (I’d send you a foamee if I knew your twitter account).

This is by no means a unique story anymore, but it still thrills me to death when It Just Works.

But as a closing lesson, it is not just twitter that makes this possible. If I created a twitter account, and started tossing my questions, needs out into the wind, I’d be the tree falling in the woods with no one around. Twitter is the vehicle- it is that I have been here more than a year growing, following, and cultivating my network, that people hear the messages. So the network is crucial here, and we need to be talking more about the ways newbies can go about building their useful network. And a lot of it is just being in that network, participating, giving back.

Yes, I fall back on the Churchill quote:

One of the challenges of IT leadership is working with vendors and the associated contracts, agreements and licenses common to the operation of an IT department.  I'm trying to figure out how and when I learned to handle this part of my operation.  I'd like to give my staff the benefit of attending classes and professional development that would improve their skills in this area (maybe an Executive MBA in IS Leadership that our university offers emba.oakland.edu).  I'm seeking options that offer opportunities to develop skills in handling vendor relationships.  I thought an occasional blog posting on this topic would help explore the nature of the environment and the skills required of IT leaders.

Making Connections

A challenge for vendors is making the connection with the decision-maker who can confirm a potential sale.  A challenge for IT leaders is selecting the right products for purchase in their departments, which requires a lot of attention to the technology market.  These purchases must align with university directions, purchasing procedures and a general expectation for ethical conduct.

When I moved into a leadership role, it was amazing to me how fast the word spread through the vendor community.  Within a short period of time, I was flooded with telephone calls, more calls than I could ever hope to return.  Vendors would leave voice messages and my voice mail was always full.  Vendor messages would display more and more frustration at my lack of response.  At one point a vendor did get through to me, and expressed his anger and frustration.  I was frustrated in return:  "Did I ever ASK you to contact ME?"

At one point I kept a ticker of how many vendor calls I received, and when it was over 125 in one week, I realized I couldn’t manage connecting this way.  I changed my voice-mail message to say that "Vendors should contact the purchasing department; I do not return unsolicited vendor calls."  I have about 300 e-mail filters which allow me to sort the advertisements into "review" and "trash"; I only look at e-mail ads for products that I am currently following.  Fortunately my university has a "no solicitation" policy which supports my actions, and vendors are always welcome to contact our purchasing department. 

Over time, vendors have tried a variety of sales tactics that are sometimes irritating and sometimes entertaining.  Some of my favorite connection opening lines follow, now often arriving by email but sometimes by phone message (when they ignore my voice-mail message):

• "I want to follow-up on the material you asked for at our booth at the last conference."  Interesting, when I didn't stop at the booth and have no interest in the product.  Sometimes the conference is one I didn't even attend.
• "I'm taking over the account for Sam, and Sam left notes about the project he was working on for you."  I wasn’t working with Sam on anything.
• "I'd like to get your opinion on this product."  I do understand that you don't really want my opinion; you want to see if I want to buy.
• "I've already shown this to your Registrar and he really wants this product." Oh, great, so you are trying to circumvent our publicly mandated bid purchase process!
• "I saw the post on the CIO list, and I know that we should contact you by list rules, but I have such a good solution for you that I thought you'd really like to know about it."  Geez!   This is the biggest source of complaints I receive from CIOs on the list.

So how does a vendor make a successful connection with me?

• I go to conferences with strong vendor floors with a list of vendors that I want to visit.  The national Educause conference is a favorite.  Having quality staff at a strong vendor display is important.  I need to interact with vendor representatives who can answer technical questions and sales questions.  I'm clear about our bid purchasing process.
• When I contact a vendor to request follow-up or product materials, or when I ask for follow-up materials at the conference, I'd like those materials within the next 6 weeks.  I especially like it when you can immediately point me to the relevant materials on the vendor web site.
• When I need to find the right person to talk to, the vendor should have a process that enables me to find the right sales contact.  A failure I experienced with a major hardware vendor:  I tried the web site, got a contact number, called and was referred around for over 8 weeks.  Never got to a person who could give me a sales demo or tell me how to buy the product.
• Please don't offer me tickets to any sporting event or attendance at any golf-outing!  As an employee of a public university, I avoid these vendors unless I absolutely have to talk to them, and then only with my purchasing director present.

My role as a CIO requires that I learn how to make good connections with vendors.  We've created an internal document that provides our staff guidelines on making connections.  As I mentor staff, I ask questions that pay attention to those four bullets:  Did you go to the vendor floor?  What products were exciting?  Is the vendor responsive to your requests for materials?  Can you easily contact people who can get us information?  Are you spending time with vendors where no sale is possible? (why?)  This seems to be helpful in their understanding of making vendor connections.

"To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization's offices during a private demonstration of how it catches alleged music pirates."

We need your help! EDUCAUSE has released surveys for two of its publications: the bimonthly general-interest magazine EDUCAUSE Review and the peer-reviewed quarterly journal EQ. To help us determine content for future issues of the two publications, we would (really) appreciate your filling out either or both of these (super) short surveys here: EDUCAUSE Review http://survey.educause.edu/ertoc081/ and EQ http://survey.educause.edu/eqtoc081/. We look forward to learning what is important to you so that we can provide the information you need and the articles you'll want to read. Thanks!

A graphic description, in pamphlet form, describing broadband technologies and uses and the bandwidth required for each, plus a depiction of the “All-Internet Household” and how a family might use 100 Mbps.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-spreadsheets-become-wikis.html

Creators of shareable documents on Google Spreadsheets can now let any users edit those objects, without signing in to the Google universe.

"Anyone can edit this document WITHOUT LOGGING IN", your spreadsheet becomes a wiki that can be edited by anyone.

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2008/05/14/at-the-churchill-club-the-top-10-tech-trends/

A group of future-oriented investors and analysts recently described what they considered to be the most significant innovations for the next several years. Mobile devices dominate the list, especially smartphones, according to the Churchill Club event.

In five years, half of what we think of as phones will do something far more profound than what we think of a phone as doing...
The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer. With built in projector. Authentication. Credit cards on SIM cards. ID cards, passports, drivers licenses. Any information you need...
Within 5 years, everything that matters to you will be available to you on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse. Massive shift in Internet traffic from PCs to smaller devices...