Posts from — November 2007

I read a news story the other day about a man in South Korea was killed by an exploding cell phone in his shirt pocket. The cell phone had signs of melting. Fears of battery problems that had earlier plagued laptops now seemed to be realized in cell phones. Now your cell phone could be a ticking time bomb!

or . . .maybe not . . .

A follow-up article by the Associate Press reports the real culprit. A co-worker accidentally ran over the man while backing up a drilling vehicle. He moved the vehicle to throw off the police. The exploding cell phone story was made up.

As an adjunct professor, I have seen firsthand the decline of student enrollment in IT programs. While I was at Tech Ed, I met a couple of fellow community college instructors who told me that their programs had declined also. We brainstormed about why we are seeing a declining enrollment. Ideas included lack of advertising of the programs or perception by potential students that the program is too hard. The IT jobs are there, but the students are not.

Computerworld interviewed Andrew Sears who is the IS department chair for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Dr. Sears’ department has seen a 40% increase in freshman enrollment. Part of their success is due to outreach programs that concentrated on not only on high school students and parents, but also on high school guidance counselors, high school teachers, and middle school teachers.

The message of the outreach focused on the opportunities that exist and also the nature of the IT profession. “Working in IT isn’t just about sitting behind a computer; it’s very people-oriented,” stated Dr. Sears.

While getting program information directly to potential students and their parents seems the most obvious method to recruit students for a college program, it did not occur to me how valuable the guidance counselors and teachers are in the student’s decision process. Andrew Sears realized it and now his department is reaping the benefits.

To read the original article, click on the following link:

Career Watch: One School Boosts CS Enrollment

Tom  <><

Ok, folks. This is a weird one I encountered.

I recently migrated a client of mine from a computer running Windows XP/Office 2003 to a new computer running Windows Vista/Office 2007. I used the Windows Vista utility, Windows Easy Transfer to migrate the settings from the old XP computer to the new Vista computer. You do NOT want to use the File and Settings Transfer Wizard that comes with XP, as it will only transfer files and not settings.

Windows Easy Transfer worked like a charm. It transferred all of my user’s settings and files. I then installed Outlook 2007. I opened Outlook 2007 for the first time and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Windows Easy Transfer has transferred the Outlook settings. All of the user folders and archives were there. Outlook then went out and successfully downloaded new email. I was amazed at how easy this migration went. Outlook 2007 seemed to be fully functional.

Then came the phone call the next day. Although she was receiving emails (which is what I had checked), my client could not SEND any emails! (which I did not think to check!) When trying to send emails, the following error would occur: “None of the authentication methods supported by this client are supported by your server” I searched the Internet only to find very spotty coverage of this problem. What I did find was odd.

It had to do with authenticating before sending an email. In Outlook 2003, the user account did not need to authenticate to the mail server before sending. So that was the setting transferred to Outlook 2007. You would assume that the same settings that worked in Outlook 2003 would work in Outlook 2007 with the same email account and the same email provider, right? Not in this case (and evidently a few others on the Internet). I have also found variations of this problem on the Internet where the authentication had to be turned OFF in Outlook 2007 when it was ON in Outlook 2003.

Here are the steps to follow:

1. In the Outlook menu, go to TOOLS-ACCOUNT SETTINGS
2. Select the mail Account. Click on Change

3. Choose the More Settings button.

4. On the Outgoing Server tab, check the box for My Outgoing Server (SMTP) requires authentication. Also, select the Log on to incoming main server before sending mail button. Click OK

Over on Trika’s blog, there was an exciting announcement about Tech Ed 2008. Tech Ed will again be held in my hometown of Orlando, Florida. This year, however, Tech Ed will be split into two tracks – one for IT Professionals and one for developers. This is the same way Microsoft has run Tech Ed in Europe. The Developer track will held June 3-6 and the IT Professionals track will be held June 10-13.

Based on Tech Ed 2007 numbers, Microsoft is expecting 5,000 attendees for the Developer track and 10,500 for the IT Professional track. The change is being made “to provide the same Tech·Ed experience but with expanded learning opportunities.”

I attended my first Tech Ed this year. It was an incredibly cool experience. Just seeing thousands of people who are all IT workers was incredible. I was also able to meet a couple of MCT’s who also teach in community colleges (I think that we are a rare breed). My favorite part of Tech Ed was the Hands On Labs. The labs themselves were fun, but interacting with the MCT’s manning the lab was even more fun.

Oh, yeah – I got to meet Trika and she introduced me to her blog. And I met Kathy of TechNet who would later help me with my TechNet subscription.

Good Times!

Tom <><