UC Berkeley iNews

UC Berkeley will host the annual UC Computing Services Conference (UCCSC) at the Conference Center on the Clark Kerr Campus, August 5-7, 2012. This year's theme is Campus Collaboration. Participants will explore what it takes to have successful collaborations, and look at how collaboration helps our campuses find solutions in times of tight budget constraints. Be an active participant at UCCSC 2012 and share your knowledge and experience — presentation proposals will be accepted through June 1, 2012.

The AT&T conference call service will no longer be offered on the Berkeley campus as of September 1, 2012. To provide services at lower cost, IST will help its customers transition from the more expensive AT&T conference call service, to the less costly ReadyTalk service. ReadyTalk has been providing teleconferencing and web conferencing services to UC campuses for three years through a UC systemwide agreement.

A chatroom app (CalChat), a section enrollment monitoring app (Telebears Oracle), and an information app (CalUtil), took home top honors in this year's student web app competition, with CalChat also winning the People's Choice Award.

Want to see the kinds of web apps Berkeley students are developing for Berkeley students? Log in to the Student Technology Council's People's Choice Awards page to take a look at the eight entries for the second annual STC Web App Competition and vote for your favorite. Voting ends 10:00 pm April 17. For more information, visit the STC website.

As announced at the March 22, 2012 Operational Excellence Expo, the names of the campus's new email and calendar solutions are bMail and bCal, respectively. More than 1,150 entries were submitted in the contest to name the email and calendar systems.

On March 15, 2012, UC Berkeley Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology & Chief Information Officer Shel Waggener announced he will be leaving Berkeley to join Internet2 as Senior Vice President, where he will provide executive leadership for Internet2 NET+ Services. Shel will continue to serve as campus AVC-IT & CIO through April 30, 2012.

Applications for the 2012 Larry L. Sautter Award Program are now being accepted. The application deadline is May 15, 2012. Submission guidelines and other information are available at http://www.ucop.edu/irc/itlc/sautter/prog_announce.html.

As previously announced, Google has been selected as the new campus calendar and email solution. The campus is now looking for names unique to UC Berkeley for the new email and calendar services. Entries due by March 19, 2012.

As a result of a campuswide site-license arrangement negotiated by the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the College of Engineering, Berkeley faculty, staff, and students can install and use the MATLAB statistical package on institution-owned devices at no charge to individuals or departments in calendar year 2012.

Citing a recent security breach lawsuit against Sutter Health, the campus privacy and information risk officer advises taking steps to secure desktop computers and the data within them. Locks and encryption software are cheap when compared to the legal costs to defend against data breach lawsuits.

April 6, 2012, is the deadline to make changes to department listings in the AT&T White Pages.

Students, faculty, and staff will enjoy additional connectivity options as IST adds "attwifi", the AT&T SSID, to the campus wireless infrastructure. The AT&T SSID will be visible alongside AirBears, the existing campus SSID, and both will be carried by the campus high-speed data network. The attwifi network is limited to WiFi devices with an AT&T data plan, and is currently available at Haas and Boalt.

According to UCPD, in 2011, 88 laptops were reported stolen at UC Berkeley. This article offers tips to help you keep your laptop safe and the contents within it secure.

IST has reduced its Windows and Linux Extended System Administration rates from $460.00 to $300.00 per month, a 35 percent cost reduction, effective January 1, 2012.

Information Services and Technology has implemented IST Drupal Cloud Hosting, a new service that offers powerful and easy-to-use tools for building and maintaining websites and applications using the Drupal content management platform. The service provides free state-of-the-art development tools and affordable hosting plans with 24x7 support through a partnership with San Francisco-based Pantheon.

Since Research Hub's launch in fall 2011, the content management and collaboration service has supported the work of a steadily growing segment of the UC Berkeley community. In an effort to maintain quality and prioritize further development, Research Hub has created an online survey to gather feedback from campus. Also, to help the campus take full advantage of the service, Research Hub is providing two series of drop-in trainings.

The Letters & Science web server issues are largely resolved at this time. All L&S-hosted websites should have had their current content restored, and all should be up and running normally. If you notice any problems with your L&S-hosted sites, contact the L&S support team, generate_ucb_email("web-hosting", "LSCR", "."); avweb-hostingante at LSCR dot berkeley dot edu.

The Student Technology Council is hosting Code 4 Cal, a hackathon for students to create innovative, sustainable, and useful applications or widgets for Berkeley students, February 3-4, 2012.  Grand Prize is $1,500. Pre-registration is required. More information available at Code 4 Cal information session, 5:00 pm Tuesday, January 24, 202 South Hall.

Based on campus feedback, IST Procurement will continue to provide procurement support to departments for Dell and Apple products through the end of the 2011–12 fiscal year. Effective July 1, 2012, all departments will make their Apple and Dell purchases through the BearBuy system.

There are two components to business continuity: disaster recovery, which deals with getting systems and infrastructure back online after a disaster; and business resumption, which deals with getting business functionality back online after the infrastructure is readied. This article focuses on how IST handles disaster recovery for applications under its management.