Catching up on the week

Monday - Frankly, I don't remember.  I know I installed a new printer in the Mini Lab and worked on cleaning the tech closet.  I talked several times on the phone with Sharon at Blevins.

Tuesday - Helped get a workshop under way, then spent the afternoon in Prescott working on their distance learning equipment.  The issue (noise) seemed to be isolated to one of their microphones.  Once I unplugged it, things cleared up.  Will explained to me that it was most likely a problem with the phantom power that drives that mic (especially since the problem started after a power surge/outage).  At least it seems to be working now!

Wednesday - The day started off with a call from a woman whose daughter was having trouble with the ArkansasIDEAS site.  After a bit of conversation and troubleshooting, I had told her that I thought the daughter could find the info in her profile, but I could not remember how to get there. I told her to call AETN.  I also sent an email to colleagues and they offered up some suggestions.  I asked the woman to call me back later in the day, but if she did, I missed the call.

The rest of the morning was spent with the area techs as we participated in a videoconference for E-Rate.  There are some welcomed changes to the 470 Form, making it streamlined for entry.  There are also changes to the 471 Form. There are other changes as well, all presented in a handout provided during the conference.

The afternoon had us checking out various apps for iPads:

• DisplayOut app after jailbreaking for display help
• VPN - General, Network, Connection, put in info.
• Jump - Remote desktop $20
• Good Reader - open documents, file manager, Web Downloads, Connect to Servers (DropBox, Google Docs, Box.Net, etc), can turn on wifi and share ipad via web address
• Reeder - feed reader
• iNet - network scanner
• VTrace - visual tracert
• HeyTell - touch-to-talk - wifi or cell
• PhotoWall - collages, upload to FB, etc (print 11x17) text
• Flipboard - look at FB, twitter etc as a magazine
• iFlux - Flux Capicator
• Cydia - Jailbreaker - Wifi Analyzer
• Backgrounder - run in background
• Wi-fi Sync - sync iPad to Mac via wifi
• To jailbreak - 3.2.0 or 3.2.1 - www.jailbreakme.com
• i-prompt - teleprompter -
• Facetime - now out for mac
• phoster - create posters
• app shopper

We also talked about FireSheep - a proof-of-concept add-in for Firefox that is making waves in the wireless community.  It allows people to steal info via unsecured wireless locations.  

I also shared various topics with the area techs:

• DIS will launch a new bandwidth aggregation tool to help schools get more bandwidth. It is a combination of hardware devices allowing schools to band their T1s, DSL, Cable, etc into one box to share bandwidth.  Cost for schools sits between $4000-$8000.
• DIS will launch a program that allows Co-op techs to view status etc on school routers to help in the troubleshooting process.
• DIS is working on a statewide AD structure (secondary) to allow global addressing, etc
• I asked area techs to help with getting all of our certified teachers registered in the ArkansasIDEAS portal.