Information Technology News

Record Your Lectures and Presentations with UCI Replay

UCI Replay is a new service provided by the Office of Information Technology to facilitate the recording and sharing of classes, seminar presentations, short tutorial segments, and any other material which can be displayed on a computer screen with accompanying audio.

Increasingly, instructors are recognizing digital lecture capture as a way to offer new educational opportunities. Students can download recorded lectures to review class material or to help understand concepts they find difficult. They can stop and start presentations, clarifying their notes as the lesson unfolds (accommodating different learning styles and speeds.)

Seminars, special speaker presentations, and conference sessions can also be captured and shared.  Other ways of taking advantage of this service include screen and audio capture of virtually anything that can be displayed on a computer screen together with whatever voice-over matches the visual presentation.

There is no charge to host recordings.  The recording software is free to use and the choice is yours as to whether recordings should be public or UCI-only. All you need is an inexpensive USB microphone to capture the audio portion. Alternatively, a notebook computer (Mac or PC) with a built-in microphone may also be used for recording.  SmartClassrooms are already equipped for the use of UCI Replay.  A portable version can be run directly from a USB thumbdrive, requiring no software installation on the computer being used.

Use of UCI Replay automatically transfers your materials to a system which packages it in a format suitable for viewing and listening using a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.  You are notified by e-mail when your materials are available.

Detailed information about UCI Replay can be found online.

Phishing Attempts Continue

On October 9, 2009, more than 6000 UCI affiliates received an email message claiming that they were required to click on a link which would take them to a web site to update their email accounts. This message has been confirmed to be an example of “phishing,” a malicious attempt to have you divulge personal information in order to allow someone to gain access to your information or services.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to remind you that you will never be asked for, and you should never provide, your password or other personal information by email. If you ever question a request for information, please contact the OIT Help Desk at (949) 824-2222 or oit@uci.edu so we can help you check its validity.  If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, do not respond to it or click on the links. You may optionally report it to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup, but in any case delete it.

Spear phishing emails are a special type of phishing email targeted to a select group of users. These emails tend to be more specific than a regular phishing email, including information more detailed and familiar to the recipient. As with standard phishing emails, these messages often include a request for personal information and a notification of account suspension or closure for failing to reply.  At UCI, such a message will often simulate official notification from a real campus department such as OIT, and may make reference to your actual account or email address.

More information on phishing and how to protect yourself can be found online.  If you have not already done so, OIT strongly recommends you take the online “Information Security” tutorial available on TED.

Office of Research IT

The Office of Research Information Technology group (OR IT), now part of OIT,  goes well beyond managing servers and sustaining a robust IT infrastructure for administration of campus research.  The entire process of shepherding research proposals from initial review, through Contracts and Grants, and finally to the various funding agencies is handled electronically using tools developed and managed by OR IT.  OR systems process between 5,000 and 6,000 new grant proposals, and manage between 3,000 and 4,000 current awards totaling $320 million in a year.

OR IT programmers, along with Accounting, OIT, and Research Administration staff, are also working on the implementation of the Proposal and Budget building module of the Kuali Coeus system.  Kuali Coeus is based on the MIT Coeus system, which is an open-source solution for research grant submission and administration currently in use by 50 universities.

OR IT maintains the Faculty Profile system which allows UCI researchers to maintain an online curriculum vitae, and identifies campus experts who can meet various public and media needs.

OR IT also supports the activities of key OR subunits, including University Lab Animal Resources (which cares for university research animals), the Office of Technology Alliances (which connects primary UCI research results to corporations which can develop and market them), the Institutional Review Board (which is responsible for ensuring UCI researchers comply with regulations for human subjects research), and UCI’s new Stem Cell Research Center.

As part of OIT, OR IT will now have access to additional expertise and resources to support this vital area of activity.

New on EEE: MyEEE Class Announcements!

On Wednesday, July 15th, the EEE Web Team launched the new Class Announcements tab on MyEEE.

Class Announcements allows instructors and TAs to post short class announcements on their students’ MyEEE pages. Rather than adding more to students’ already cluttered email inboxes, instructors and TAs can grab their students’ attention with updates posted right on MyEEE.

EEE makes sure students see new announcements by loading the Class Announcements tab first, right after a student logs in, if there have been any new posts since the student last visited.

Visit Class Announcements (login required) / Learn more

UCI Cellular Services

Cell phones are a significant component of work life at UCI, whether for reaching people away from the office, connecting to the Web and email with a smartphone, or receiving critical notifications (zotAlert) in the event of a campus emergency.

OIT works with many cellular providers to continuously improve coverage at UCI, as well as to make discounted services available to employees. A summary of providers with a presence at UCI (AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless) as well as cell site locations can be found online.  Recently, for example, a new AT&T site was installed on Engineering Tower, significantly improving coverage for AT&T subscribers.

OIT is also researching new technologies in the field of cellular telephony.  One promising new technology is the “Distributed Antenna System” (DAS) whereby numerous small, easily-installed antennas communicate through fiber optic cable to a coordination site which connects to the cellular carriers.  This makes cellular coverage more like Wireless Internet (WiFi) in its flexibility and capacity.

We are always happy to hear from cell users on campus about their experiences so that we can prioritize proposals from cellular carriers for improving coverage at UCI.

Broadcom Donations Support Research Computing

The Broadcom Corporation is a generous donor of computing equipment to UCI.  Following its contribution of hundreds of rack-mounted compute servers in 2007, two subsequent donations of compute servers and disk storage have benefited UCI and other UC campuses.

Among the service improvements the recent Broadcom contributions have made possible are research computing equipment for the Bren School of ICS, expansion of the space available for faculty and staff email storage (increased disk quotas), augmentation of the MPC and BDUC compute clusters available to all campus researchers, and an upcoming application server.  This will allow the use of a remote-access tool (e.g. Windows Terminal) to run research software (e.g. Matlab or SAS) remotely.  The server will be highlighted in a subsequent issue of IT News.

In these times of reduced state funding, Broadcom’s ongoing support of UCI is deeply appreciated.