News about the extension of the Leopard Shorts deadline and an announcement about Podcamp Philly at Drexel University lead off the March 23 edition of the ITS Coffee Break. In Tech News, hosts Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley discuss the ed-cast directory of education podcasts, uncover wireless networks with the Mac OS X wifi detector iStumbler and review the latest iteration of Yahoo Widgets. Finally in Help News Courtney announces two upcoming brown bag lunches focusing on GIS and Moodle.
Getting the Podcast
There are several ways to get the podcast:
- Download the MP3 directly
- Subscribe to the Soapbox podcast rss feed using an aggregator (you only need to do this once; subsequent shows should download automatically)
- Subscribe to the Soapbox feed via iTunes
Show Notes
ITS News
- Lepoard Shorts Site Update
- Based on feedback from students, we've extended the deadline for the Leopard Shorts digital media competition to Friday, April 27 at noon. Voting on submissions will now take place April 30-May 4 and the winners of the competition will be announced May 7.
- Winners of the individual and group categories will receive iPods (the individual winner gets a 30 GB White iPod, the group winners receive 2 GB Silver iPod nanos, which are limited to up to four people per group with each member of the group receiving an iPod nano). First runners up get $10 gift cards to the Cosmic Cup Coffee Co. in College Hill, Easton.
- The competition is sponsored by ITS, Apple Inc. and the Cosmic Cup.
- Read the competition rules and submit your own entry!
- Podcamp Philly
Tech News
- Ed-cast
- An online directory of education-related podcasts.
- iStumbler
- Wifi network detector/analyizer for Mac OS X. Tells you signal strength and noise percentages for the networks that your Mac can see, as well as what channel those networks are operating on. This is all stuff that should be in airport, but isn't.
- Yahoo Widgets 4
- Mini apps for your Windows or Mac OS X desktop.
Help News
- Geographic Information Systems: From Megabytes to Map Making to Myths
- Noon, Wednesday, March 28
- Speaker: John R. Wilson
- Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences
- Skillman 003, Lafayette College
- Lunch provided
- Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enable us to analyze and display geospatially referenced information. Originally designed for mainframe computers, today’s GIS programs run on PCs. Now, with the advent of Google Earth and Microsoft TerraServer, anyone with Internet access can do simple GIS mapping.
- Full GIS software, with its host of versatile and powerful tools, has been used for years in the sciences and humanities to map features (geology, transportation, urbanization) and data (census, socio-economic data, health statistics). GIS technology is available and in use at Lafayette College. John Wilson will provide a background on GIS and show many of its current and potential uses across the disciplines here at Lafayette.
- Moodle Brown Bag
- Noon, Wednesday, April 18
- Speakers: Courtney Bentley and Ken Newquist
- Skillman 003, Lafayette College
- Lunch provided
- Learn about this semester's Moodle pilot. Courtney and Ken will provide an overview of the open source alternative to Blackboard while some of the faculty involved in the pilot will be on hand to talk about their experiences with the system.
Contacting the Podcast
- Questions, comments and suggestions can be sent to itsblog@lafayette.edu.