All Things Software: Comments

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:50:41 -0500

Hi Jackie,

Yes, we plan on doing an announcement probably before the Fall semester. Our efforts as of late, have been mainly focused on the PASS migration. In our group, that has pretty much involved all of us. Now that the migration is behind, we can tie up some loose ends with projects like chat.psu.edu.

Thanks,
Jimmy.

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:11:19 -0500

Other than word of mouth, is there any where to find out who at PSU is using this? Jackie

- JACQUELINE MARIE RITZKO

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Tue, 27 May 2008 11:12:53 -0500

Yes, there are a couple of them out there that support multiple protocols. On the windows/linux side, pidgen supports all of the ones that you mentioned. On the Mac side, adium supports them too.

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Tue, 27 May 2008 08:59:36 -0500

Has anyone found a client that supports GoogleTalk, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and jabber so you don't need multiple chat apps loaded on your machine? Those seem to be the big 5, so if there is one someone has already had success with, please let me know.

- MICHAEL CAREY

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Tue, 20 May 2008 13:09:42 -0500

Yes, as long as they provide a federating jabber service. Most schools do this, and we provide it ourselves. It will also enable you to chat with people using services like Google's Chat.

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Tue, 20 May 2008 10:41:09 -0500

Great news! Will we be able to chat with folks at other universities as well? Perhaps if they use Jabber?

- Michelle Panulla

Comment on "The Tower of Babel"

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:25:01 -0500

Great resources; thanks for sharing!

Here's some I have found useful as well

Robert Sutton, Ph.D. The No Asshole Rule: his blog's pretty good too.
Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Infleunce People: a classic!
Evan Rosen's The Culture of Collaboration: great stuff on changing top-down leadership, inbox cultures, and information hoarders.

- Nikki Massaro Kauffman

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:48:47 -0500

No, anyone who has a jabber identity may chat with Access Account holders. A number of people have used it at conferences at other schools. What we have right now is alpha/beta, that is why there has not been a widespread announcement about it. I just wanted to let people know that we have Jabber again. We used to have a closed version of Jabber that was only accessible from the Penn State Portal. The new service, chat.psu.edu will work with a variety of chat clients.

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:42:56 -0500

Sorry if I missed this point above, but Is this only for use in ITS?

- MAIREAD MARTIN

Comment on "Is this your project team?"

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:03:20 -0500

Jimmy - thanks for taking the time to share this post - it's an excellent post, and an excellent lesson/experience to share. Recently, I've had the opportunity to work on a couple of "hot teams" made up of a cross-section of ITS employees (and, in some cases, non-ITS employees). It's interesting, but just from my personal experience, I've found this type of team to be very successful - everyone is mindful of his/her role, and how those roles work as a collective to reach the goal.

- KAREN M HACKETT

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:01:59 -0500

Hi Jen, right now we really do not have any documentation on the conference server. Its use will depend on which chat client you are using. Adium does things differently than Pidgen for example. If you want to know more you can talk to Derek Taylor (det135@psu.edu).

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:59:00 -0500

Well, some of the advantages are:

1) The chats are secure (SSL/TLS).

2) Using Penn State identity of course is pretty big. You know who are talking to.

3) Jabber is a very well known protocol that is used by a large number of higher ed institutions.

- James A Vuccolo

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:03:27 -0500

I was very pleased to see this project be resurrected. We've been using it to chat internally in ANGEL Support and, aside from a few subscription oddities, have had no issues with it. Is there any documentation available for the conference server? I have a few ideas for using it.

- Jennifer Mullen

Comment on "Want to chat?"

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:33:13 -0500

Very cool! Talk to us about what the big advantages are to this. Are there ones outside of identity?

- COLE W. CAMPLESE

Comment on "Reality Check Time!"

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:43:47 -0500

Amen. Thank you for saying what a lot of us think.

- Cole

Comment on "What is software?"

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:21:47 -0500

Good site! I'll stay reading! Keep improving!

- Nika

Comment on "My Daughter's Homework"

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:20:45 -0500

Jim,

I've been doing a lot of professional development in project management over the last couple of years. I was surprised by the amount of attention in the project management literature paid to the planning phase--some suggest as much as one-third of the project effort! When I first got into it, I expected to find tips and techniques for improving scheduling, etc.

Now, I recognize the importance of making sure that the purpose and objectives are clear up front. It's human nature to want to "dive right in" and start "being productive." Problem is, activity without direction won't get you any closer to your goal. I think that's the reason that the definition of a project includes "...to achieve a particular aim..."

I agree with your suggestion about using a wiki. Another thing that the literature points out is adapting to changing requirements during a project. The dynamic nature of wikis can be helpful in keeping project documentation up-to-date (and version controlled.)

- Dan Nugent

Comment on "Revision Control"

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:57:10 -0500

I couldn't agree with you more, Jim--both of you.

I've been a "programmer" for about the last ten years now, but I never considered myself a software developer. So, even though I knew about version control (mostly from using a lot of Open Source software), I never applied it to my work. Then, in early 2005, I actually tried using CVS before finding Subversion.

(BTW, Bill. I work mostly with binary files--Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, and Word files. Part of the reason I use Subversion is that it handles binary files pretty well and there is a pretty user-friendly client available for Windows.)

Whatever system you use is a matter of personal preference and/or project requirements. I've really become a strong advocate for adopting version control for just about any collection of electronic files that may change over time--source code, Web pages, reports, even my personal files like my resume and photo collection.

- Dan Nugent

Comment on "Revision Control"

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:16:09 -0500

Jim -- This is a very interesting and important topic. I not only use source code control for source, but also Web pages (put the revision code in Web page comments) and TeX/LaTeX documents. I'll be teaching this today in Aerospace 590. While getting ready for this talk, I came across my Web page for RCS. See:

Controlling Source Code with RCS

@Bill -- Thanks for the info on QVCS.

- Jim Leous

Comment on "Revision Control"

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:43:21 -0500

I'm not a software developer, more of a hacker. For things like Perl scripts and config files, RCS is key. In our group we were also looking for revision control of binary files on Windows, like Visio drawings. We ended up selecting QVCS (http://www.qumasoft.com) and have been very pleased with it.

- Bill Simon