Our own Information Technology and Management Organization challenges IIT students to learn, build and create cloud infrastructure and applications in an event they have named IIT on da Cloud. In this four-day event open to all students at IIT, students can learn about cloud computing, build the infrastructure of a private cloud, and create applications that can run on it. Recently, cloud computing has been used as a popular marketing term to attract a target market, which has led to many misconceptions and misunderstandings about what cloud computing actually is. ITMO’s goal is to help educate students about cloud computing and give them hands-on experience using this technology. Rumor has it that there may be a team competitive aspect to the event! For more information and to register, visit the IIT on da Cloud website at http://itm.iit.edu/iitCloud/.

The National Emergency Number Association (NENA) recently worked with IIT Professor Carol Davids and ITM students to test 911 emergency services at IIT’s Real-Time Communications Lab.

In the left picture, IIT students Michal Siuty and Kbrom Tewoldu work with IIT Mentor Joe Cusimano, NENA ICE-5 Participants and representatives as they test the 911 emergency service. The NENA event was held at IIT’s Real-Time Communications Lab at the Rice Campus in Wheaton Illinois. More than 50 vendors and NENA representatives gathered to test the interoperability of the vendors’ products which support an all-IP backbone for the delivery of Emergency 911 services, and in particular support their use by the hearing impaired community.

In the right picture, Professor Carol Davids looks on as NENA representatives and NENA ICE-5 participants demonstrate how the Emergency Services IP Network (ESInet) supports voice and video calls and text messages to Pubic Service Access Point (PSAP) call takers. In this photo, hearing-impaired callers and their American Sign Language interpreters use the video capabilities of the system as well as the text function to complete an emergency call.
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Congratulations to the Information Technology and Management Organization (aka ITMO) for placing third–really second; ask an ITMO member to explain why–in the IIT Pumpkin Launch! You can now see the photos on Facebook…

The Spring 2013 Course Schedule for IIT will be published on the web on Monday, October 22, 2012. Registration for students with disabilities, athletes, and ROTC Cadets and Midshipmen begins on Friday, November 2, 2012, with tiered registration for all students based on class beginning on Monday, November 5, 2012. Once again, to help with advance course planning, we’ve posted two documents to help folks with course planning: the Spring 2013 DRAFT Course Matrix, which is a quick visual reference of courses offered for Fall 2012, organized by campus (pictured at right) , and a revised full listing of all ITM courses which will tell you what term each course is normally offered in, and if it is offered online.

Some things to note:

• IF you were planning to take ITM 302 at the Rice Campus, please take ITMD 456 Introduction to Open Source Operating Systems (CompTIA Linux+) in its place. We expect a future curriculum change with ITMD 456 replacing the current ITM 302 requirement, and ITMD 456 will be an allowable substitute for ITM 302 for those taking it this term.
• The topic of the ITMT 495 / ITMT 595 Topics in IT course at the Main Campus on Thursday evenings will be Introduction to Health Care IT, taught by Professor Noland Joiner, former VP and CIO of GE Healthcare IT.
• ITMD 412 Advanced Structured and Systems Programming (advanced C++) will run early on Friday evenings (5-7:40pm) at the Rice Campus and will also be online. The prerequisite is ITM 312 and the course will be taught by Associate Professor Sam Shamsuddin.
• IPRO 497-338 will run 2:30 to 5pm on Wednesdays at the Rice Campus, taught by Professor Dan Tomal of the Industrial Technology and Management Program and Associate Professor Jeremy Hajek of ITM. Encourage your friends in other majors to sign up; they can follow it up that evening with ITMD 456 Introduction to Open Source Operating Systems (CompTIA Linux+) or ITMT 492 Embedded Systems and Reconfigurable Logic Design as a free or or technical elective in their major.

The news media was giving great play today to a “cyber attack” on the White House, which “penetrated a secure area.” The nature of this nefarious, newsworthy attack? ONE spearphishing email with a malware attachment. An attachment which, by the way, was never opened. Can we say “overreaction”, boys and girls?
• Original alarmist article: http://freebeacon.com/white-house-hack-attack/
• Article debunking the media reaction: http://www.geekosystem.com/white-house-cyberattack-email/

Microsoft has announced the release of Typescript, a superset of Javascript, which they say will better allow developers to build large applications and will provide better support for large teams, especially when building server- and cloud-side applications. It was released under an Apache 2.0 open-source license.

TypeScript Website: http://www.typescriptlang.org/
ZDNet article: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-takes-the-wraps-off-typescript-a-superset-of-javascript-7000004993/?s_cid=e550