Indiana University: IT Training Tips Blog

How would you react if I told you that email, as we know it, is about to disappear?

"Not my oxyge... er... email!"
--Techno-addicts everywhere

Most of us are addicted to electronic communication in one form or another.

Email was invented about forty years ago and it's becoming a difficult, tired technology. The way we communicate has changed a lot since its creation. Forty years ago, technologies like Twitter, Facebook, wikis, blogs, etc. didn't exist, and whether or not you like to admit it, they have drastically changed the way we communicate.

So, if email is growing old and tired, what will it be replaced with? As I gaze into my crystal ball, the image of the future begins to be covered by a dense white fog.

Email's successor could come from many, many places, but one of my favorite candidates right now comes from Google in a service called Google Wave. Google Wave is currently in closed preview, but a couple of us at IT Training & Education have been able to get into the preview to see what it's all about. I'm by no means an expert in how to use Google Wave, but I've been digging through it long enough to know a little bit of what it's about.

NOTE: This article is not intended to be a "How-To Use Google Wave" article, rather an explanation of what Google Wave is and some resources to make your transition easier and more enjoyable.

Continue reading after the jump.
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As you know, Adobe Flash is a robust platform for creating web and desktop applications as well as simple animations. IT Training & Education currently offers three workshops focused on Flash:

• Flash CS4: The Basics -- Basic instruction on the interface, drawing, and Flash concepts.
• Flash CS4: Interactivity Basics -- Introduction of ActionScript 3.0 to create interactivity using buttons in a Flash movie.
• Flash CS4: ActionScript Programming Basics -- Basic concepts in ActionScript 3.0 such as the use of control structures, collision detection and animation.

While these workshops give you a great foundation in Adobe Flash, there are many, many topics that aren't covered in-depth. Lynda.com can be used to fill in and augment the topics in these workshops. From now until December 20th, IU community members get FREE access to lynda.com. As of this writing, lynda.com offers 10 courses in Flash CS4 and 7 courses in ActionScript 3.0. Remember that the Flash platform isn't limited to the Adobe Flash software. In addition to the Flash specific courses, lynda.com offers 4 courses on Adobe Air and 10 courses in Flex. That's 31 courses about or relating to the Flash platform. To simplify things, this article will focus only on the courses related to the Flash application as well as ActionScript 3.0.

Continue after the jump!
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Interested in seeing some of the new features in Microsoft Office 2010? Check out this article on the Lifehacker blog containing some introductory videos from the Microsoft Office team:

Microsoft Office 2010 in Videos

You can also check out this user's videos on YouTube for more:

Office Videos

The release of Office 2010 isn't for a while yet, but Microsoft is being quite social with the changes being made.

Stay tuned to this blog and our website for information about training opportunities when Office 2010 gets released to the general public.

Enjoy!

In this installment of The Green Bar of Go, I'll be discussing a feature of Cascade Server we don't cover in our workshops, the External Link.

An External Link is an indexed asset that points to a web page outside of Cascade Server. Any link that is not a page within your site should be turned into an external link. This not only allows you to place them into a dynamically generated navigation, but also makes it easier to manage the URLs if they should change.

Take a look after the jump to see how these are used.
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“One could change the world with one hundred and forty characters.”

-@Jack

This article is intended to give people new to Twitter or people who don't have a good understanding of the application's capabilities a brief overview of why Twitter is powerful and how they might start using it themselves. It's focused on companies/departments/groups for an Indiana University audience, but the information is applicable for everyone.

What is Twitter?

This might seem like a simple question to answer, but in reality, if you look at each of the following definitions, you will see that they're all different.

• Twitter's Definition: "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"
• Wikipedia's Definition: "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets."
• My Definition: Twitter is a technology that facilitates synaptic, asynchronous, and individualized communication between its users.

They're all similar in one respect, communication. The truth is that Twitter is whatever you make of it. The service's architecture is open-ended and loose allowing users to use Twitter for whatever purpose they desire. Whatever you put into the service by way of interaction will be returned.

Check out the rest of the post after the jump!
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Welcome to the second installment of The Green Bar of Go. In this post, I will discuss how to use a part of Cascade Server not covered in the Cascade Server: Site Managers workshop: Asset Factory Plugins. Asset Factory Plugins are a way for Site Managers to create Asset Factories that will perform specific tasks when a user submits the form. For example, when a Page Asset Factory (like our new page factory from the workshop) is submitted, if the user forgets to change the system name, Cascade Server will change the name automatically to an SEO compliant name.

This post will explain what the built-in Plugins do and how to use one of them. Check it out after the jump!
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This is the first of what will be a regularly appearing column on the IT Training Tips blog.  The focus of this column will be to convey tips and tricks concerning IU's newly purchased WCMS. This week, being the first edition, is going to be pretty brief.

For those of you who are wondering what Cascade Server does, this column probably isn't for you, but I will at least tell you that Cascade Server is a Web Content Management System produced and sold by the Hannon Hill company in Atlanta Georgia.

For more information about how Indiana University is using Cascade Server, check out the Web Content Management Initiative site: http://www.indiana.edu/~wcms.

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