Office 2007

While the university isn't planning to update to Office 2007 until next academic year, some of you might have students who are already using it. If the students are not careful when saving their documents, they will save it to the new 2007 format, which can not be read by the Office 2003 suite that most of you are using. The first solution is to remind students to save it in a format that is most widely used (office 2003). The second solution is to download a program from Microsoft that will convert the files to make them readable to Office 2003. That can be downloaded here.

Another Reminder: Redundancy

Its time for me to offer you yet another reminder: YOU and only YOU are responsible for securing and backing up your own data. The college can not afford to be responsible, and frankly we wouldn't want it to be, for if it were we would need to mandate very different computer usage from the staff and faculty.

If you want some suggestions on how to backup your data, you can find my previous post here. Let me elaborate on a few other points that I didn't discuss in that post.

Any backup system should involve these checks:

1. Verification. Regularly verify the validity of your backup. This is particularly important in the case of "automatic" backup. We've recently had a case were everyone thought the software was backing up the data as it was supposed to, yet it was not.

2. Redundancy. Backups need backups. Obviously one could get carried away, but I think the point is to implement redundancy into your behavior. For example: I maintain a GMAIL account in addition to my university account. Important documents can be saved on my hard drive, backed up on my portable hard drive, and when I email the document to a colleague or when I just want to back it up I carbon copy my gmail account. Then the work is in at least 3 places. Since Google (yes I'm a fanboy can you tell?) maintains gmail it is responsible for backing up my account providing, yet another level of redundancy. Of course one could put it in their online storage space as well, for which the university runs a backup.

3. Diversify. Having only a portable backup device located next to your desktop computer does not protect you against some event that destroys your office, say a fire, or water damage from a leaky ceiling. This is why its important to maintain an off site backup as well. I understand MAYO clinic maintains backups of their data in 2 different countries in very separate parts of the world, with very different geopolitical risks.

Some suggestions for facilitating these principles.

For grades I do the following: I maintain a grade book on D2L, which is automatically backed up by the UW in Madison. It is easy to set up and eliminates the need to (illegally?) post grades on your door. Plus I then regularly download a copy to my hard drive which is also backed up with the rest of my hard drive. Giving me two copies, each with its own back up.

I've mentioned gmail before, it is still in beta, but I can send anyone an invite that would like one. It is far superior to any other web email, it is easily accessible on any computer, and it offers much more space than our own online email (2.8GB). And unlike our own Microsoft Exchange email gmail actually filters 99% of the spam out of your inbox.

Another online data storage alternative is: http://www.mediamax.com/ which offers 25GB of free space.

For an industry that is based on knowledge accumulation and transfer, much of which is done electronically these days, we are VERY bad at preserving our personal contributions. Maybe this is because our incomes are little effected by the loss? Either way, it is your responsibility to maintain the integrity of your data, please work harder at it, I know I need to.

Backup

Backup Now. Backing up your data is YOUR responsibility. There is no single best method, there are just several principles to follow.

In this day and age of cheap storage we should not being losing as much data as we are. Below are some ideas for backing up your data.

Back up regularly. Set a schedule and stick to it. Weekly is good for heavily used files, monthly is minimum for all files. Important files should be backed up daily, or after major changes.

Store your data compactly (in one spot; for example within My Documents). Don’t leave it scattered on the hard drive. It makes it tougher to back up and retrieve, and requires more backup space to capture your files. Also remember any data you save in a program, such as a test bank file, graphics, or anything else should be saved in my documents. The program may not always default to this location so you'll need to change it yourself..

Store your files in a fashion that separates often updated info from static old info. For example after a semester is over I copy all of my class files to an archive folder, so I preserve the notes, slides and grade spreadsheets as they were at the end of class. I put them in a place that is seldom used on my hard drive and back them up (for example: I have a folder entitled archive, within My Documents). Future back ups will be shorter because I do not need to back up this information (I can copy all the folders within My Documents except the archive folder).

Consider redundancy. If the data are important, then you might consider having 2 back ups. Remember that location matters as well. Keeping both backups in a home office doesn’t help if the house burns down. Keep one at work and one at home, or better yet one online (more on this option below).

Once you have your data stored compactly here are a few steps to follow when backing up your data:

1. Copy My Documents (right click the folder and copy, then paste in the backup location).

2. If you use outlook and store any email on your hardrive (in other words it can’t all be accessed through the web interface) then you need to backup the PST file. More on this here and a program to facilitate the backup is here.

3. Copy Program data. This is data for programs you have loaded yourself, and you have created yourself (it didn’t come with the program) Examples would be tests you may have created in a testbank program, but which were not saved in My Documents (why aren't you saving them there?). Or batch files you may have for statistical programs, etc. If you followed the advice above there should be little to do here.

Depending on the size of My Documents you have options. To find this out right click the My Documents folder and click on Properties (you may need to click on the general tab).

less than 100 MB U: Drive Store up to 100 meg online on the campus servers. Instruction here. Or a small flash/jump/thumb drive.

less than 750 MB then a CD-R works well or a jump drive

less than 1 GB fits on an inexpesive jump drive (USB drive or sometimes called flash drive or thumb drive). The college gave everyone one of these before Karin left (256 MB I believe). Request one if - you don’t have one, and you would use it to back up your work files. An online alternative http://www.box.net/ up to one GB. Email it to your gmail account or use this to make the proces simple http://emailer.zapto.org/

1 GB to 4.7 GB this is the domain of the DVD burner. Most of you don't currently have a burner (unless you got a new computer in the last year or so), but most computers will likely come with one in the near future. An online alternative: http://www.xdrive.com/ free up to 5 GB.

4.7 GB to 25 GB. An external hard drive or this online alternative http://www.streamload.com/ with up to 25 GB free.

Up to 200 GB and more, an external hard drive. The college is in the process of buying these for people who have the need for this much space and will use them. Most of you can get away with simply burning a CD or something much less expensive.

There are many advantages to the free online alternatives. First they maintain a backup of your backup. Second the files then are easily accesible from any computer with web access. And did I mention it is free? Well in the non-economic sense anyway.

So go back up your data now.

Smart White Boards

Coming to a classroom near you.

Strong Passwords

We have been asked to adopt a strong password by November 15th. While I firmly believe this will make us less secure, rather than more secure (read here), we must live with the policy. Microsoft has some suggestions for developing a strong password (more suggestions here and here). The problem with all of the suggestions is that anything which generally makes the password easier to remember also generally makes it easier to crack. So while you might find one that satisfies UWL's requirements to be strong, that does not make it so.

You can randomly generate one here, but you'll never remember it.

To write them down or not? I say no, as it provides another means by which your password can be compromised, yet there is evidence that not writing down means you use weaker passwords. I guess it is a trade-off, whoever would have thought that?

An easy method might follow this rule: Two words together, one capitalized the other not, then pre-pending, appending, or dividing the two words by the number of the current month. Changing the password monthly gives you 12 easy to remember passwords. Of course following a rule, makes the system weaker, but at least you will have nominally satified the requirements for a strong password, without requiring too much mental effort. Merging the two words together and alternating between them one letter at a time would make this stronger, but more of a pain.

The reality is fewer than half of all security breaches occur through simple frontal assaults on the system. Hackers are more clever than that, they need not employ brute force methods. In fact half of all security breaches occur through much easier means, such as stealing a laptop, which has the password or sensitive data stored on the hard drive. Since many of us have laptops, this is probably our greatest vulnerability.

The bottom line:
1. Don't give your password to anyone.
2. Don't login to computers you don't control. (Yes I know instructors have to violate this, which is a major weakness, since it is very easy to run keylogging software on those computers).
3. Don't write your password down, but if you do, don't keep it near your computer.
4. Don't let windows save your passwords.
5. Don't lose your laptop.

Your UWL eagle password can be changed here. Answers to frequently asked questions here.

Do not forget to change your computer's password. Here are directions for doing that.