More Colleges are blocking access to Online Communities like MySpace & Facebook

More and more institutions of higher learning are beginning to block access from the campus to sites like “MySpace”, “Facebook”, and other online communities. According to Alexa.com, MySpace is the 5 th most popular site on the web with over 72 million users. As most of its members are college students, campuses are seeing a significant decline in network performance and accessibility for their campus community. Oftentimes students are unable to get to lab computers for class work because others are logged into “MySpace”. Even worse, during peak times, students, faculty and staff are often unable to access any Internet sites from campus connections due to the massive amounts of traffic being generated by these sites. As technology use and Internet applications become more prevalent on University campuses, the school's limited technology resources are being taxed. Many campuses are finding that a great deal of network traffic occurring is to access either these online community sites or to access peer-to-peer (P2P) download sites like Gnutella and BitTorrent. On some campuses, as much as 40%-70% percent of all network traffic is to these types of sites. As this is impeding the mission of the schools, many are taking action to completely block access to such sites from any campus connected computer. See the latest issues of WiredCampus for details on the recent actions by some institutions. Wired Campus News

Delete bad addresses from Outlook's AutoComplete File to avoid email bounce backs

When you start to type a name in the 'To:' field of a new Outlook e-mail message, the program completes the name and corresponding e-mail address. As your contacts' e-mail addresses change, you usually update them in Outlook's Contacts area. However, as these addresses change or are no longer valid you may encounter instances where Outlook's auto complete feature supplies an out-of-date e-mail address that may have been removed from your contacts long ago.

If you do need to remove a name from the auto complete feature due to an address change or a bounced back message, you can delete entries from the file one at a time. To accomplish this , click the New button to open a new message, type the characters of the cached name into the 'To:' field to trigger the auto complete feature, press the Down Arrow key to highlight the offending cached name, and then press the Delete key to remove it

FIGURE 1: Weed out old addresses that pop up due to a bad autocomplete feature.

Tips & Tid Bits: from Microsoft

Microsoft Outlook Tip: Check these items before pressing “Send”

Checkout Microsoft's recommendations on what to check before you press the “send” button

• Does this e-mail message make sense? Are the actions clear and do they have owners?
• Does the e-mail message meet the MPS P.A.S.S test?
  • What is the purpose of this communication?
  • What action is involved and does it have a due date?
  • What supporting information does the recipient need?
  • Has the communication been effectively summarized in the subject line ?
• Is the message well-written? Is it concise while providing enough data for action to be taken or decisions made?
• Do the links in the message work? Are the attachments included?
• Is the e-mail message being sent to the correct recipients (not too many and not too few)?
• Does everyone on the To line have an action to take?
• Has the message been re-checked for grammar, spelling, and use of jargon?

Jobs @ OIT:  Student Employment Opportunity

The Office of Information Technology Help Desk has a several openings for regular student employees for the summer and fall semesters.  Ideally, we would like to have students confirmed for both semesters before the end of spring semester so that we can provide training before the employment period begins.   Our student technical consultants have a great opportunity to develop their technical skills as well as learning about customer support in the real world. We have multiple student employment positions open providing for a variety of experiences, including switchboard operator, desktop support, telecommunications support and help desk support. For further information see the MonsterTRAK job listings or come by Bailey 114 at your convenience to submit your application.