JANUARY, 2006

Click here to see an Adobe Acrobat PDF version of this newsletter, suitable for printing.
 

Downtown Wireless Network now Available

Pragmeta Networks, located in Oneonta, in cooperation with the Telecommunications Office, is now offering wireless Internet connection to a limited area of downtown Oneonta.

The photo below illustrates the general area covered by wireless access, approximately 1000 feet in radius around the transmitter on Main Street.  Additional transmitters are being installed and configured, and more are planned for the near future.  Students, faculty and staff can subscribe to the wireless service for $49.95 per semester.

To find out more about the offer, see our site at http://www.oneonta.edu/admin/telecomm/Downtown_Wireless_hotspots.asp. 

New Voice Mail System

Call Pilot, the new voicemail system for the campus, was successfully installed at the beginning of January.  All stored messages and greetings were copied from Meridian Mail to Call Pilot; if you believe that anything was left behind, please call the Telecommunications Office at 2577.

Changes in Computing and Telecommunications Services

I.T. Security Administrator Nathan Hall has accepted a position at Boston College to serve on their Information Security Team after four years in Administrative Computer Services, and Programmer / Analyst Kristy Davidson has elected to return to her position at the Career Development Center.  The staff of CATS wishes them both the very best.

Three staff members have recently been given additional duties.  Jim Matthews has been named Computer Center Director, responsible for Programming, Systems and Operations. Joe Graig-Tiso has been named Telecommunications Director, responsible for the Telecom Business Office, Technical Services and the Call Center.  Finally, Phil Bidwell has been named Network Director responsible for Web Development, Network Administration and Administrative Desktop Support.

All of CATS remains committed to providing the very best quality of service to the College, its students, faculty and staff.

Email Delays

Users may have recently noticed occasional delays in the delivery of messages from off-campus; you will have received the message, but it may not have been as instantaneous as you are accustomed to.

Our mail systems have been carefully configured by our administrators to deal with the avalanche (often over fifty thousand a day) of unwanted junk and spam messages. Sometimes, though, the volume of incoming mail is so high that the systems used to filter it out become bogged down. We have implemented new servers whose sole function is to filter unwanted messages - this will relieve the backlogs and delays that we have seen as of recent due to high-volume email traffic.
 

Passwords and account creation for new employees

An improved process is being developed for establishing computer accounts for new employees, and will be implemented in February. 

As soon as a new employee has signed their contract letter and has been entered into BANNER by Human Resources, a mailer with a PIN number will be generated and sent to the employee's department office.  The departmental office can either forward the mailer on to the employee's home address or choose to deliver it to an oncampus mailbox.  With their Social Security Number and PIN the employee can then log in to webservices.oneonta.edu to create an account and set a password for use with email and registering their computers on the campus network. 

Days getting longer

...and not just because there's so much work to do!

We're now past the shortest day of the year, which was back on December 21st.  To prove that we are heading toward summer, our weathercam (http://weathercam.oneonta.edu) shows that sunrises are moving back northward again:

As the days get longer the sunrises will continue to move further and further northward along the horizon.  The sunrises also arrive earlier, as you can see from the clock in the upper-left corner of the images.

If you have a question for Computer and Telecommunication Services about:

Computer Problems or Related Issues - Call the Information Technology Help Desk at 436-4567

Telephone Service or Problems - Call the Office of Telecommunications at 436-2577

Directory Assistance - call 436-3500

Learn more about our automated NameConnector Service