Held Friday afternoons in Turing Auditorium, Tech Briefings are informal, interactive seminars on computer-related topics of interest to the Stanford community. These sessions are intended for power users, Expert Partners, and those with IT responsibilities, but are open to everyone - faculty, staff, and students. The Tech Briefings, led by knowledgeable IT Services staff or other IT professionals, run from 2:00 to 3:30 P.M. No registration is required - just come on by and learn something new. No fees. No fuss. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/ To help web designers and online content creators produce material that is accessible to the greatest audience possible, The Stanford Online Accessibility Program (http://soap.stanford.edu) provides guidance to those at Stanford community who share information via the Web. The recommended standards and best practices enhance the user-experience for everyone, including those with disabilities. Come meet John Foliot (Academic Technology Consultant) and discover how he can assist you -- from enhancing the search-ability of your site to future-proofing your content for emerging technologies. REMEMBER: Universal Accessibility benefits all. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb1 Join us as Kent Reuber present some basic info on setting up home networks on Stanford DSL, Stanford West, and non-Stanford DSL/cable modems. He will talk about the basics of print servers, wireless access points, and routers. He will also present some example home network diagrams that you may want to follow. He won't be covering specific products -- there are simply too many products out there. He will, however, give you some recommendations on home network configurations that can be used with many different products. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb2 July 6: No Tech Briefing (Fourth of July week) http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb3 Come hear Stanford's Apple rep Wyn Davies talk about the exciting new Apple products. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb4 Shane Devenshire (Mentor Training) will be on hand to demonstrate the newly updated office suite from Microsoft -- MS Office 2007. Shane Devenshire holds the prestigious title of being one of only 40 Microsoft-designated MVPs in Excel in the world. He has authored and co-authored dozens of books and articles on Excel and Access. Shane has been consulting and teaching in Excel and Access for over 20 years, and consistently delights customers and classes with his extensive knowledge. If it can be done, Shane will know how to do it. If you are a frequent user, don't miss this presentation! http://www.stanford.edu/services/techtraining/techbriefings/#tb5 FileMaker Pro 9, which was announced and shipped on July 10, 2007, has a host of new features to make developing, managing and deploying your databases easier than ever. It also provides new functionality to vastly enhance the opportunities and ease of connecting to SQL data sources like Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server. FileMaker Server is brand new as well with new features to make it easier to install and deploy. There is also a brand new administration tool with features to help you more effectively manage your FileMaker Server environment. Alexei Folger, Senior System Engineer with FileMaker will be on hand to demo these exciting new products and answer your questions about FileMaker. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb6 The Internet has - without a doubt - been a mind-blowing success. It is often said that the constancy of the architecture ( it is essentially unchanged in 40 years) is a sign of strength. I disagree: The basic Internet is only unchanged because we can't change it - the legacy of billions of users makes it too daunting. If we could change it, we would. Instead, we have added every conceivable carbunkle onto it, making it almost unrecognizable. We've undermined its strengths, and not been able to overcome its weaknesses. Looking forward, the Internet's shortcomings won't be resolved by the conventional incremental and 'backward-compatible' style of academic and industrial networking research. Instead, we need to step back and rethink -- just as we do in pretty much any long-term academic endeavor. And this is where new programs step in: NSF has started a sea-change in networking research, towards much more radical architectures (the FIND program), and is working towards an experimental infrastructure on which to test new architectures (GENI). Here at Stanford, we have started the Clean Slate Program - a new interdisciplinary program across EE, CS, MS and E, and GSB. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb7 Join Tim Torgenrud as he shows us how to use the various web tools in the Stanford Web Services environment, including such tools as Movable Type, WordPress, wikis, and guestbooks. Tim will provide a brief overview of issues to look for in bringing PHP and other scripting tools, blogs, wikis, PIMs, and such into the Stanford Web Services environment, while providing a forum for participants to ask about the Stanford Web Services environment and its offerings. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb8 Using Open Source Software and Other Freebies (a.k.a. Alternatives to MS Office and Sound, Video, and Graphic Manipulation software) Do you wish you had office applications at home? Is your department running out of funds because you're spending too much on licensing fees for tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Illustrator, and Photoshop? Come to this Tech Briefing as our instructor, Mark Branom, demonstrates Open Source and other free alternatives. Topics will include OpenOffice.org, Audacity, Picasa, GIMP, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Google Page Creator. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb9 Stanford Desktop Tools This week's session will focus on the new versions of Stanford Desktop Tools. Some improvements have been made to the offering and we'll be covering that and the process of moving off of PC-Leland and MacLeland. Everyone on campus needs to move off of PC-Leland and MacLeland prior to April 2008. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb10 During this rich presentation, spanning SEO (Search Engine Optimization) fundamentals as well as advanced tricks and tactics that only the elite SEO experts know, you'll learn how to ... * Check your "Google Pulse" * Estimate missed opportunity costs * Ensure Google crawls 100% of your site, including dynamic pages * Design your pages to dominate rankings * Avoid getting banned by Google * Wield invaluable SEO tools you've not yet heard of * Build high-quality links from trusted sites, and boost your PageRank along with your rankings * Prepare for changes to come... and so much more! http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb11 Apple Inc. released its highly-anticipated iPhone on June 29, 2007 to almost unprecedented demand. Part cell phone, part personal computer, part iPod™, the iPhone includes an email client, a full-featured web browser, and a wireless card that will enable people to easily connect to many popular Stanford services. Come to this Tech Briefing with your questions and concerns as we discuss how the iPhone works in the Stanford environment. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb13 If you've ever been curious as to how computers talk to each other, this class will give a brief overview of some of the concepts of computer networking. This class will be a very basic introduction to common modern networking technology and terminology and how they apply to Stanford. Topics covered include networking models and protocols, ethernet, wireless ethernet, the Internet Protocol (IP) and networking equipment. http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb14 Shane Devenshire (Mentor Training) will be on hand to demonstrate the newly updated office suite from Microsoft -- MS Office 2007. Shane Devenshire holds the prestigious title of being one of only 40 Microsoft-designated MVPs in Excel in the world. He has authored and co-authored dozens of books and articles on Excel and Access. Shane has been consulting and teaching in Excel and Access for over 20 years, and consistently delights customers and classes with his extensive knowledge. If it can be done, Shane will know how to do it. If you are a frequent user, don't miss this presentation! http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb15 TechPort http://techbriefing.stanford.edu/index_sum07.html#tb16