ITaP: ITaP Newsroom

ITaP’s student software trainers bring expertise to classrooms

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP undergraduate trainers are experts in such popular software programs as Adobe Connect, Adobe Dreamweaver, Windows Movie Maker, and Adobe Photoshop.

Consortium offers Purdue researchers access to massive computational power

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue researchers will have a chance on Sept. 23 to learn about opportunities for research computing and computing education projects related to the Blue Waters petascale computer being built at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).

Event will highlight research computing services available to Purdue researchers

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Research computing services and cyberinfrastructure available to Purdue researchers in all fields will be the focus of Cyberinfrastructure Day, a series of informational sessions scheduled on the West Lafayette campus for Sept. 30.

Purdue warns affiliate organizations of .com email scam

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP is warning the Purdue community about reports of a targeted email scam alleging to be from the "webmaster" of Purdue University. Recipients of this email are encouraged to immediately delete these emails and not reply or take the action requested in the email.

Signals tells students how they're doing even before the test

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

This fall Purdue University will launch a first-of-its-kind computerized system that will track student academic progress and warn students in real-time if they need work in certain areas.

Managing email – use self-discipline with self-storage of data

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP is migrating email accounts for Exchange users to Exchange 2007, which will offer a new look and new features. Individual users will experience a brief outage window during their migration, but ITaP is offering data-management tips to lessen outage windows and help establish regular upkeep habits for all email users.

ITaP trainers ready new faculty for technology use

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP's educational technologists are offering special training sessions for faculty members who are new to the West Lafayette campus and those who are interested in an overview of ITaP services.

ITaP training focuses on technology tools for instruction

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Training sessions are offered on each of several different technologies critical to everyday instructional practices—Blackboard Vista, Signals, eInstruction (better known as clickers) and Adobe Connect.

Remedy system upgrades deliver faster performance, other conveniences

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP upgraded the Remedy system in June with twice the hardware and the latest version 7 software. IT support staff in several departments on campus use the software ticketing tool to record, track, and monitor questions and requests.

ITaP helps bring the space program, Indiana’s role in it, to the State Fair

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Commemorations related to the 40th Anniversary of the initial Apollo moon landing July 20, 1969—featuring Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon—and a high-profile Space Shuttle mission with two Purdue alumni presenting a “Go Boilers!” greeting from orbit have made space the place much of the summer.

Blackboard provides instructors with easy plagiarism detection tool

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A service built into Blackboard, Purdue’s course management system, SafeAssign checks papers against several databases using a text-matching algorithm.

ITaP units’ virtualization partnership avoids duplication, better serves researchers

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Recent growth in demand for computational resources from Purdue researchers prompted ITaP to expand its high-performance computing hardware drastically, including the Steele community cluster built in 2008, one of the world’s Top 500 supercomputers, and the Coates cluster built July 21.

Purdue partnership for putting idle computers to work on research wins international award

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue is being recognized as a worldwide campus technology innovator for its DiaGrid system, harnessing what would be otherwise wasted computing power for major research projects. Campus Technology Magazine has selected DiaGrid for one of its 2009 Campus Technology Innovators Awards.

Managing email – delete items a second time

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Archiving items and managing attachments helps Outlook run more smoothly, frees space on Purdue’s Exchange servers, assists you in organizing older material, and can reduce your outage time during the upcoming Exchange 2007 migration.

ITaP interns get real experience with research and technology, graduate student life

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP summer research intern Lutalo Webb already knew he would be back when he arrived at Purdue. The May engineering graduate from Vanderbilt University had applied and been accepted for graduate school in West Lafayette.

Encore to ITaP’s first supercomputer barn-raising is even better than the original

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Last year, ITaP staff and a small army of volunteers had the Steele supercomputer built by noon. The anticipation was that the new Coates cluster would take longer.

Manage your email — don't get too attached to large files

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP will begin migrating email accounts for Exchange users to Exchange 2007 in early August. Individual users will experience a brief outage window during their migration, and ITaP is offering data-management tips to lessen outage windows.

GoldAnswers knowledge base shines new light on self-support tech service

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Whether you’re seven hours into a term paper or halfway through creating a course syllabus, there’s never an opportune time to need tech support. But troubleshooting on your own is a speedy way to resolve computer issues, and ITaP offers helpful do-it-yourself resources.

Manage your email — advanced archiving increases access and success

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP will begin migrating email accounts for Exchange users to Exchange 2007 in early August. Follow this data-management tip to lessen outage windows and help establish regular upkeep habits.

Before calling tech support ... try this!

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Computer manufacturers and software developers operate customer-support call centers to respond to users’ inquiries and troubleshoot problems. But a few bars of hold music go a long way, and the end result could wallop your wallet. Here are some tips offered by ITaP, from which perhaps even the simplest adjustments can get your computer back to business as usual.

Learning any time, anywhere with ITaP services

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Shoot HD video. Share work online for a team project. Build and maintain a Web site … from your couch.

'Green' scales well for Purdue's early users

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Early “tire kicking” by Purdue researchers is winning the University’s new “green” supercomputer some fans, although the results have been mixed for others and they all caution that more refining and testing need to be done.

Digital conversion forces wireless audio switch in classrooms

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP audiovisual staff will replace wireless audio receivers in centrally scheduled classrooms across campus during July and August. Departments and individual instructors who use wireless microphone receivers in these classrooms need to purchase a different kind of audio body-pack system before classes start in the fall.

ITaP debuts new voice mail system

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue University's voice mail system has changed to the CallPilot Unified Messaging system. CallPilot allows voice mail users access to traditional telephone functions as well as new ones allowing for voice mail notification, access and playback via computer.

Manage your email — archive to retain, delete without refrain

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP will begin migrating email accounts for Exchange users to Exchange 2007 in early August. Follow this data-management tip to lessen outage windows and help establish regular upkeep habits.

Virtual Omaha Beach: Purdue team recreates D-Day battlefield, launches learning environment where information searches for user

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue and Indiana University researchers are commemorating the 65th anniversary of D-Day by releasing the first version of a 3-D, interactive model of the Omaha Beach battlefield. Public presentations will be given Tuesday, June 2, at the Advanced Visualization Lab on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus.

Purdue email storage limit increases with upgrades coming this summer

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Users of ITaP’s Exchange and Mailhub services can expect to see some changes when it comes to email this summer. Both services are being upgraded, and the mailbox storage limit will increase from 500 MB to 1 GB.

ITaP taking orders for new research supercomputing cluster and individual systems

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Orders for nodes in the new Coates community cluster are now being taken by ITaP. This also is an opportunity for departments or individuals purchasing computing equipment for use outside the cluster.

Upgrades to Remedy system promise faster performance, other conveniences

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 04 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP will upgrade the Remedy system in June with twice the hardware and the latest version 7 software. The software ticketing tool is used to record, track, and monitor requests for IT service.

Five Purdue instructors awarded for quality distance ed courses

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) awarded cash prizes to five Purdue faculty members for developing a high-quality distance education course in 2008.

New TeraGrid Campus Champion making Purdue researchers an offer they can’t refuse

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A “people person” with a background in helping users take advantage of high-performance computing resources whose job already focuses on assisting researchers in using the TeraGrid—you couldn’t ask for a better description of a good TeraGrid Campus Champion.

Supercomputing cluster-building game attracts crowds

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Safe to say Rack-A-Node, the Purdue-developed supercomputing cluster-building game, is a hit at the SuperComputing '08 conference, drawing an international collection of players at the premier gathering for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis.

ITaP offers Purdue researchers fast, reliable, secure data storage

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP is now offering no-hassle data storage in the same way its community cluster program helps faculty members do research using high-performance computing — that is, without having to worry about running a computer system.

April ITaP conference draws attention to Web 2.0 in teacher education

itap@purdue.edu — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A number of Web 2.0 applications that educators have found useful for learning will be demonstrated and discussed at a Purdue University conference aimed at preschool to college teachers and other education professionals, including educational technologists.

Patient safety focus of immersive virtual environment for training pharmacists

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 EDT

A Purdue project makes it easier for students to train in proper clean-room procedures using a flight simulator-like virtual version. The 3-D immersive environment—think the holodeck from the Starship Enterprise—was created from hundreds of digital photos of actual hospital clean rooms and even includes ambient sound recorded in those facilities.

Time on giant computer will allow Purdue researchers to look at very small things, lots of them

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue researchers will study the next generation of computer chips before they are even built using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.

Purdue project aims to move visual mountains, and quickly

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EDT

In an age of scientific visualization employing huge datasets, and of networked instruments that produce data in torrents, bandwidth is an issue. More of it may be available than ever before and it may be faster than in the past, but the pipeline remains relatively limited and expensive.

Drought information to be more predictive and versatile for a variety of users

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Odd as it may seem given that a considerable swath of Indiana flooded this spring, parts of the state were almost dry enough in September to start using the “D” word before Hurricane Ike sent a spate of rain north.

Purdue team learns from Bandwidth Challenge at supercomputing conference

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

A team of staff members from Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing learned some things likely to come in handy from competing in the Bandwidth Challenge at SuperComputing ’08, the world’s premier high performance computing conference.

Purdue Cluster Challenge team creates a stir at supercomputing conference

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue’s team may not have won the Cluster Challenge at the SuperComputing ’08 Conference in Austin, Texas. Then again, no other team got to run code on a supercomputer powered by bicycling colleagues of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong.

Steele supercomputer at Purdue makes list of world's most powerful systems

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue’s Steele supercomputing cluster—made possible by the collaborative efforts of faculty, staff and volunteers—is among the most powerful high performance computing systems in the world, according to rankings released at the SuperComputing ’08 conference in Austin, Texas, Tuesday (Nov. 18).

Visitors at supercomputing conference impressed with Purdue-developed technology

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

A Purdue-developed technology called HUBzero sounds chilly, but it looks to Chris McPhee like a hot way to allow researchers to do science on line easily in a graphical Web-based fashion, rather than typing in cryptic commands DOS style. McPhee, a system engineer from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, stopped by the Purdue booth at the SuperComputing ’08 conference in Austin, Texas, for a presentation on HUBzero.

Purdue Cluster Challenge team starts fast

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue’s Cluster Challenge team started off fast at the SuperComputing ’08 Conference in Austin, Texas, Monday evening (Nov. 17). As in 694 gigaflops fast.

Purdue project aims to make drought information more predictive and versatile

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue Bandwidth Challenge team: Go ahead, try this at home

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Instead of a specialized design you would never see on the street, nor in your average data center, which Bandwidth Challenge entries and Indy cars tend to be, a team from the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing at Purdue built its system on a standard framework, albeit with some judicious tweaking.

Purdue Cluster Challenge team all set for Texas

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Huddled over their laptops in a classroom lab on the West Lafayette campus recently, Andy Howard, Alex Younts and colleagues were making adjustments to their competition machine—running in the Boston area at Purdue partner SiCortex—pretty much as if it were right in the room with them.

Purdue Supercomputing '08 presence mixes projects to enable scientific productivity, education and fun

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

From an easy way to do cutting-edge science in a Web-based environment today to getting ready to take advantage of tomorrow’s next-generation high performance computers, presentations planned by Purdue researchers at the SuperComputing ’08 conference will cover a variety of topics in the field.

Making sense of the world an old idea, new technologies offer ways to do it better than ever

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Today, “spatial data infrastructures” national, regional and global in scale rely on a satellite’s sensor suite view of the world rather than a bird’s-eye view. The systems employ and integrate myriad data collections from satellite and other remote sensing techniques—as well scientific and demographic material, for example, collected on the ground—sifted by powerful supercomputers.

Pilot program lets users try Sun systems before making purchases

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:00:00 EDT

ITaP and Purchasing announce a pilot program designed to give researchers at Purdue rapid access to new computational hardware. Since the equipment prices have been pre-negotiated, the program can reduce researchers’ “time to science” on purchases from weeks to days.

Workshop to cover easy-to-use cyberinfrastructure system faculty can use to fulfill grant requirements

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Hub technology that makes it easy for researchers to connect with colleagues throughout the world and share ideas, tools, computational resources and data storage while satisfying funding agency grant requirements will be the focus of a workshop Nov. 7 covering the HUBzero platform.

Distributed Rendering Environment supports classes and TeraGrid partners

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Rendering the frames in a complex animation can tie up a work station, or a whole lab of them in a computer graphics class setting, for literally days or weeks. But if the load could be shared among thousands of machines, a job can be done faster. Enter the Distributed Rendering Environment, or DRE, developed at Purdue and now available to users of the TeraGrid through TeraDRE. It is being used in classes on a regular basis.

Purdue project aims to put isotope analysis on the map, and the Web

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Mapping and spatial analysis of isotopes in water, particularly hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, could be used to trace the ultimate source of a city’s water supply, the wintering sites of migrating birds, the trading patterns of prehistoric peoples, perhaps even the travels of an unidentified corpse to a crime scene.

Virtual clean room to enhance training for pharmacy students

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Hard-to-come-by training time in a pharmacy clean room is about to become a lot easier for Purdue pharmacy students to get, eventually as easy as turning on their laptop computers. View a fly-through animation of a standard hospital clean room from this story.

Flying particles in Europe will wing plenty of data Purdue’s way

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Just try solving the mysteries of the universe without high performance computing in your tool box. Certainly, the physicists, many of them at Purdue, involved in the CMS experiment connected to the Large Hadron Collider wouldn’t do it. A CMS Tier-2 Center at Purdue is built around high performance computing systems administered and supported by the Rosen Center. The resources will support the computational needs of physicists involved in the project in the U.S and abroad.

Boilermaker Cluster Challenge team to use powerful, but lower-power supercomputer

itap@purdue.edu — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue’s 2008 Cluster Challenge team is looking to make its competition green with envy. That goes not only for trying to win the undergraduate student competition at the SC08 conference in Austin, Texas, in November, the largest supercomputing conference in the world. It goes for the team’s choice of hardware as well.

Students take top honors at TeraGrid conference

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Students received honors, and Purdue's contributions to the world's largest open science computing network were highlighted at the TeraGrid conference in June.

Purdue project for FEMA producing a flood of flood maps

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Classify Kaiem Frink as a first-shift worker in a flood factory running on Purdue University’s campus this summer. Frink and the rest of the student work force, two shifts of them a day and one on weekends, aren’t actually filling the labs they occupy in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering building with water, of course. The floods they’re producing are on maps of 100-year flood plains in more than 700 U.S. counties.

Summer research interns get early look at graduate student life

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Five interns were sponsored by ITaP, the Purdue Terrestrial Observatory and the NASA-funded Indiana Space Grant Consortium based at Purdue under the Purdue Research Opportunities Program (PROP).

iPhone software connects with Exchange servers

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT

The new iPhone 2.0 software that Apple released July 11 will enable Purdue faculty and staff iPhone devices to have connectivity to the Exchange servers.

Discount on AT&T service plans extends to new iPhone 3G

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Voice and data service for the soon-to-be released iPhone 3G is now included in an agreement between Purdue University and AT&T that provides discounted wireless services to University students and employees.

Campus alert: Purdue never sends email asking for passwords

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue students and employees receiving emails that ask users to confirm an email address and provide password information are advised to immediately delete the emails and to not reply to them. Purdue will never send an email message asking users to reply with a password or other confidential personal information such as Social Security numbers or bank account numbers.

Graduating senior gives Purdue high marks for its disability resources

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 08 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Brian Petraits is a student with initiative, confidence, and drive—and one of 29 students on campus who are blind or visually impaired. At age three, Brian began to lose his vision because of retinitis pigmentosa, which robbed him of peripheral and night vision. In fifth grade, he learned Braille.

Purdue installs the Big Ten's largest campus supercomputer

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 06 May 2008 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue University staff members hoped to build the Big Ten’s largest campus supercomputer over the course of a Monday in May 2008. But their estimate was off. They were done by lunch.

Purdue creates scientifically based animation of 9/11 attack

itap@purdue.edu — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Although most Americans believe they know what brought down the World Trade Center twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, civil engineers are still seeking answers to questions that could save lives in the future. For the CBS news report and animated visualization, read more.

New view for the outage notification system

itap@purdue.edu — Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Purdue campus faculty and staff now have a better view of unscheduled outages and scheduled changes affecting central IT services with the release of the new outage notification system.

Purdue team's 3-D animation displayed at Future of Flight center

itap@purdue.edu — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

When students at Purdue University looked at plans for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, they saw the future of commercial aircraft assembly, and they shared this vision by creating a 3-D visual holographic display of how the Dreamliner could be assembled. It's currently showing at the Future of Flight Aviation Center in Everett, Wash. View the animation

ITaP releases a position statement on the use of Instant Messaging

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP) released a position statement reminding users of Purdue policy and state and federal laws that may be relevant to the use of Instant Messaging.

Purdue's system-wide technology lets students click in to academics

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Some Purdue students bring more than paper and pencils to class. They also bring radio frequency (RF) response pads—handheld, remote control-like student feedback devices commonly called "clickers."

Password reset self-service now available

itap@purdue.edu — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EDT

Career account users can now set up challenge questions that allow them to reset their forgotten passwords themselves.