In mid-April, Amazon EC2 services had a small problem. Apparently, a large swath of its cloud computing environment had such substantial trouble that a number of customers had server issues. A number of high-profile sites, including Reddit, Evite, and Foursquare, went down when Amazon experienced issues in their US East 1a region (Justinb 2011).…

Typical web lectures consist of two different kinds of media linked together: an audio- or video-recording and the corresponding slides or desktop recording. Both media are synchronized so that the slide or image shown corresponds to the position currently played in the time-based media stream. Web lectures are thus composite media consisting of a…

The growth of E-business has made experience in server-side technology an increasingly important area for educators. Server-side skills are in increasing demand and recognised to be of relatively greater value than comparable client-side aspects (Ehie, 2002). In response to this, many educational organisations have developed E-business courses,…

Colleges and universities worldwide are turning to the hosted Software as a Service (SaaS) model and saying goodbye to issues like patch management and server optimization. Generally, SaaS involves applications (such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and e-mail) offered by a hosting provider. In this…

This article takes a "point/counterpoint" approach to considering the educational use of mobile devices. It views the possibilities and problems surrounding the use of small laptops, cellphones, iPhones, etc. Although clear answers to questions regarding the classroom use of digital devices are hard to come by, the authors believe that educators…

The leap in wireless LAN standards to 802.11n is a WiFi upgrade so new it has not yet garnered final approval from the standards committee. Although that approval will not come until next year (vendors are currently building to a "pre-n" standard), there are plenty of notebook computers out there capable of running 802.11n. That means students…

Just how much bandwidth does the average student in the United States have access to today, and how much will he or she need in the future? That depends, according to district CTOs, state technology directors, industry experts, and classroom teachers. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 97 percent of U.S. public schools with…

By integrating RSS feeds of new books into their campus' course management system, the authors, a systems librarian (Corrado) and a cataloging/modern languages librarian (Moulaison) at the The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), simplified initial research and spotlighted the library's collections. Faculty members are flocking to this award-winning…

Presents 19 papers from the Second Southern African Online Information Meeting. The articles are based on practical experience with or applications of information technology, including hypermedia and multimedia, CD-ROM, electronic publishing, network services and gateways, user interfaces, and online searching and software. Contains 83 references…

The Portable Courseware Project (PORTCO) of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is typical of projects worldwide that require standard software interfaces. This paper articulates the strategy whereby the federal multimedia courseware initiative leverages the open systems movement and the new realities of information technology. The federal…

The impact of emerging information technologies on the information industry is discussed in four papers. Topics covered include electronic delivery of full text primary literature; a brief evaluation of new information processing technologies and software; networking technologies; and the use of gateway technologies to create new products and…

The growth of the Internet has greatly increased the demand for server-side programming courses at colleges and universities. Students enrolled in such courses must be provided with server-based accounts that support the technologies that they are learning. The process of creating, managing and removing large numbers of student server accounts is…

Profiles X.400, the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Application layer standard that supports interpersonal electronic mail services, facsimile transfer, electronic data interchange, electronic funds transfer, electronic publishing, and electronic invoicing. Also discussed are an electronic directory to support message handling, compatibility…

Tom Corddry, Microsoft Corporation's Creative Director for the Consumer Division, is interviewed about the Microsoft Home line of products and the development of related CD-ROM and multimedia products. Reasons for Microsoft's entry into the content market and its challenges, the market's future, and the company's interest in developing online…

Describes factors behind a 1993 proposal at Harvard College (Massachusetts) to renovate its undergraduate library to a gateway library to change from print to digital information. Summarizes findings from a national conference sponsored by Harvard College Library and based on a position paper entitled "Gateways to Knowledge: A New Direction…