GPN Digest

April 19-20, 2001 GPN Meeting

There's no place like Kansas City in the Spring and I think you will find the Spring GPN member meeting fresh, lively and interesting. The program committee has been working diligently to provide you with an exciting program as well as a reception on the evening of the 19th. The meeting hotel is the Sheraton Suites Country Club Plaza. You will be close to the best that Kansas City has to offer. Hope to see you there. Register online at the GPN Meeting Registration Cafe

EMAIL RICK

I've been thinking about the concept of collaboration in preparation for my review of the ScienceWise Collaboratory (below). I have come to the conclusion that, in part, collaboration involves sharing ideas; and, since ideas are likely to be recorded electronically, collaborating across long distances means sharing ideas electronically.

Sharing ideas via email is great, but when it comes to transfering whole documents, it is clumsy. It takes anywhere from 14 to 22 steps to email a file as an attachment to someone else. Then you have to wait for a reply. I was looking for an easier way, so, over the weekend, I started fooling around with features of Windows 2000. To be precise, I turned my laptop into a web server. You may be thinking, "Big deal!" Well, this was a big deal because,

I don't know what I'm doing,
When things go wrong, I end up spending the next two days reformatting the hard drive and then reinstalling all the original software.

But this turned out to be a minor success. So, my next step was to create an ftp (file transfer protocol) site. As you know, an ftp site is a place you can access from a special program or from a web browser like Netscape or Explorer and, depending on permissions, read, write and update files. I created the ftp site, set up some passwords and it worked like a charm.

Compared to sharing files via e-mail, this is a cinch. I can give out the passwords for different levels of access to different folks. I can have more than one ftp site. I can bookmark the ftp site in a browser, so that it's two clicks and you're there, sharing any sort of document, spread sheet, database. Now I can access my own files from anywhere in the world, update them, and add to them with a few simple clicks. I'll let you know how it works out.

Redesigned GPN Research Pages Inspired by the grace and elegance of the new blue and grey Digest, I went on to soften the color scheme and otherwise enhance the beauty of the GPN Research Pages.

Louisiana Tech Joins Internet2 As of February 15, 2001, Louisiana Tech became an I2 participant. Connected via LANet, you can visit LA Tech at their web site.

Can GPN Schools Be Far Behind? Undergrads at Brandeis will be able to minor in Internet Studies, checking out everything from virtual reality to virtual opera. You may check out a course syllabus.

Read This -- You'll Feel Better! (From AoIR) In 1998 research reported that Internet use causes depression. The Journal of Online Behavior's second issue features an article entitled Reformulating the Internet Paradox: Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression by Robert LaRose, Matthew Eastin, and Jennifer Gregg. The research re-examines the impact of Internet use on social well-being and mental health and, guess what: It shows that previously-found relationships between online activity and depression appear to be limited to novice users. As users become more experienced with the Internet and their competence improves, the hassles that the Internet itself presents recede and users become more skilled at getting social support from others online. These factors lead to improved, not reduced, mental health.

Great Deal The 3com PC camera (which I prefer to the Polycom) is about half the

usual price at $150 each.

ScienceWise Collaboratory
Reviewed by Greg Monaco
In last week's GPN Digest I began my review of the ScienceWise web site and found the funding database well-designed, comprehensive and very easy to use. This week, I continue my review of ScienceWise (SW) collaboration tools.

Let's start with the basic concept of the Collaboratory. As defined by SW, a collaboratory is shared workspace on a SW computer. You access the workspace via the Internet from any web browser. When you sign up to create a team project, you receive personal workspace and project workspace(s). Only you have access to your personal workspace. You can allow others to access project workspace.

Here's what you can do with your personal space from a web browser:

Consolodate all your different email accounts and check them there at the SW site;
Transfer your current address book to the SW site for emailing from there;
Create email templates and send email;
Maintain a personal calendar;
Upload documents there and access them from anywhere via the Internet;
Keep a personal todo list.

In addition you can set up a project and then share the space that is created with others. Remember that all of this is shared:

email and email templates;
project calendar;
project discussion group;
documents which any team member can access;
a project task list and assigned responsibilities;
a project discussion group.

I followed the ScienceWise Collaboration links until I found a "Create a Team Project" button. After entering all the relevant information I was signed up for space. You automatically get premium service for free for a month. After a month, if you don't want to pay, you drop back to basic service.

After starting to delve into my collaboratory, I realized I couldn't fairly assess it without the help of others. So I set up a project for the GPN Spring Member Meeting Program Committee. I set it up about 11:00 AM and had it ready by the time of the conference phone call at 11:30 AM. Just to test the limits, I assigned one name and password for all the committee members. SW sent notification to everyone and by the time I got on the phone, Bruce Curtis had already changed everyone's password. But that was okay--ordinarily you would give a separate name and password to each team member.

Everyone caught on quickly and we began using the task list to create the tasks and responsibilities. As one person added a task it updated the list on everyone's browser. Tasks were added after the call was finished. Committee members felt so comfortable with it that they suggested we take care of other business via the discussion group feature.

In summary, the ScienceWise Collaboratory was easy to get going and intuitive in design. Although I find it too slow to use the personal space and tools, it had obvious benefit when used, as intended, for group collaboration. It helped us to identify and focus on the tasks at hand. It may have even helped to enhance the sense of group identity across long distance. The shared task list is an exceptional feature.

Overall, this is an extremely well-designed tool that will, hopefully, become more useful as time goes on. I would encourage you to try it out.

Cathy Smith

Catherine (Cathy) Smith's fifteen-year career in information technology includes positions at Stanford and Indiana Universities. Cathy was Director of Academic Computing and Networking Services at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, where she built the Academic Computing department from the ground up. Under her tenure, Carleton was recognized as one of the 100 most wired colleges and universities in the U.S. In 1999 Cathy joined the University of Kansas and is now the director of Academic Computing Services (ACS) and assistant vice chancellor for Information Services.

In addition to supporting the university's overall mission by providing the infrastructure and support for university-wide information resources, KU's Academic Computing Services department

supports KU's high performance computing and networking initiatives,
implements an auditorium Access Grid Node and is in the process of developing a "seminar room" venue as a second persistent site,
operates an SGI 2400 64-processor supercomputer for the KU Center for Advanced Supercomputing,
provides KU's email, Web, middleware and host security infrastructure and services.

Cathy's current responsibilities extend to KU's Internet 1 and 2 Services and to KU's middleware initiative. Cathy is the KU member representative to Internet2, KANREN and CREN. She is a member of the EDUCAUSE Network Awards Committee and a member of the KU Digital Library Executive Group.

NetWord of the Week:
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) FTP A method to transfer files over a TCP/IP network (Internet, UNIX, etc.). For example, after developing the HTML pages for a Web site on a local machine, they are typically uploaded to the Web server using FTP. FTP includes functions to log onto the network, list directories and copy files. FTP operations can be performed via an FTP program running under a graphical interface such as Windows OR FTP transfers can be initiated from within a Web browser by entering the URL preceded with ftp://. Unlike e-mail programs in which graphics and program files have to be "attached," FTP is designed to handle binary files directly and does not add the overhead of encoding and decoding the data. The term is also used as a verb; for example, "let's FTP them the file."