Google Drive File Stream: We’ve recently had a great addition to our Google for Education services: Google Drive File Stream.
Like many good things around here, this was brought to our attention by one of our students.
Google Drive File Stream, once installed on your Windows PC or Mac, will mount your Illinois Tech Google Drive as a local drive on your system. You can treat it just like any other drive; in Windows it even has a drive letter. And it’s fast. You get two directories on the drive: your own Google Drive and your Shared Drives (what used to he called Team Drives). Log onto your Illinois Tech Google account and go to https://support.google.com/drive/answer/7329379 to download the app and get started. First uninstall the Google Drive application or Google Drive Backup and Sync app if you have either installed. For some reason the text in the installation app on both PCs we installed it on appeared as gibberish, but you might want to use the command-line installer anyway. Open a command line in your download directory, and run “ GoogleDriveFSSetup --silent --desktop_shortcut --gsuite_shortcuts=false “. There is a daily limit of 750 GB of file transfer but this just means you can’t upload your terabyte hard drive all in one day. A HUGE workflow enhancer; enjoy!

Linked below are the Department of Information Technology and Management’s requirements for computers for students entering our degrees in Fall of 2016. Please let contact Professor Trygstad if you have any questions or problems.

• New ITM Graduate Student Computers – Fall 2016
• New Undergraduate ITM Student Computers – Fall 2016

Free is always good, and beyond our Microsoft DreamSpark Premium there are a variety of free tools available to students such as Autodesk 3D Software including AutoCad, RipTiger Software, and even professional prototyping software such as Axure. See the full list of freebies as well as student discounts at https://slickdeals.net/f/8500607-2016-students-freebies-offers-software-membership-free-more.

How much space do you have on your MyIIT Google Drive? If your answer was anything less than infinite, you were wrong. According to an announcement on the Google for Education Blog, Drive for Education is available to all Google Apps for Education accounts at no charge and includes Unlimited storage. No more worrying about how much space you have left or about which user needs more gigabytes. Drive for Education supports individual files up to 5TB in size.

How much space do you have on your MyIIT Google Drive? If your answer was anything less than infinite, you were wrong. According to an announcement yesterday on the Google for Education Blog, Drive for Education is available to all Google Apps for Education accounts at no charge and will include:

• Unlimited storage: No more worrying about how much space you have left or about which user needs more gigabytes. Drive for Education supports individual files up to 5TB in size and will be available in coming weeks.
• Vault: Google Apps Vault, Google’s solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, will be coming free to all Apps for Education users by the end of the year.
• Enhanced Auditing: Reporting and auditing tools and an Audit API easily let you see the activity of a file, are also on the way.

Dr. Carlson and Dr. Hasso receiving the Best Paper award

Dr. C. Robert Carlson, Dean of the School of Applied Technology, earned the best paper award at the 2nd Annual Conference on Research in Information Technology (RIIT) held in conjunction with the ACM 14th Annual Conference in Information Technology Education (SIGITE), October 10-12. Dr. Carlson, along with Dr. Sargon Hasso, a former PhD student of Dr. Carlson’s, presented the paper “Design Patterns as First-Class Connectors” in the Software Development track. Their approach is a compositional model based on design patterns by abstracting their behavioral model using role modeling constructs. They demonstrated their technique by presenting a simple case study complete with design and implementation code. Dr. Hasso is currently employed at Wolters Kluwer.

Dr. Carlson was accompanied to the conference by Industry Professor Ray Trygstad, Associate Chair of IIT’s Department of Information Technology and Management. Professor Trygstad also serves as the Chair of the National Board of Directors for Gamma Nu Eta, the National Information Technology Honor Society. He represented Gamma Nu Eta, who was a Silver Sponsor for the conference.

Dr. Carlson also served as Session Chair for the presentations of “Leveraging HCI in Teaching Mobile, ‘Anywhere and Everywhere’ IT” and “Flipping the Classroom – Is it for you?” as part of the Mobile IT Technology track of the conference.

IIT alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia at the Poster Session

As part of the Security 1 track, IIT alumnus Mikhail Zaturenskiy, who worked with Professor Bill Lidinsky, presented his paper “MP3 Files as a Steganography Medium.” This paper looks at ways to hide information inside MP3 files and proposes four largely unexplored techniques: unused header bit stuffing, unused side information bit stuffing, empty frame stuffing, and ancillary bit stuffing.

As part of the RIIT Poster Session, IIT 2013 ITM alumnus Fernando Seror Garcia, presented his project, “DNS (Do Not Suspect).” The purpose of this project is to see if it would be possible for an attacker to use the DNS protocol to communicate with a bot of his own in an infected host in order to avoid being detected.

HACK NIGHT! “Me, My App, and Twitter”, August 27, 2012 at the IIT IdeaShop, 7 – 9pm
Register: iithacknight.eventbrite.com

Yes! A Hack Night!
A place to learn the magic behind coding. On this night we will have a two hour introduction to APIs and using Twitter to build a simple app.

Who should be there?
Everyone is welcome! Come if you’re interested in building something awesome or want to learn how to make your ideas a reality.

Which means that?
You really need to attend. We have food! No Walk-ins. Please register before coming.

Upcoming Hack Nights:
Aug. 27: Me, My App, and Twitter
Sept. 11: Building a Facebook App
Sept. 27: Karaoke with Twilio!
Oct. 11: People’s choice
Overnight Hackathon Challenge:
3pm October 20 – 4pm October 21
Over $5,000 in prizes!!!

Windows 8 changes everything. That’s the paradigm Microsoft is pushing and that’s how it seems they want it. But is it what you want? Is it what businesses will want? Personally, I think NOT. Here’s one person’s take on why they will not run it anymore: “Why I’m uninstalling Windows 8” by Tim Edwards on PCGamesN http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-i-m-uninstalling-windows-8. By the way, read the comments too; many people seem to think the article is totally bogus. But I think it is pretty representative of the normal reactions of a typical end user—someone who is not an expert.

So anyone want to guess at how many different programming languages exist? And have been used at least a couple of times? I discovered the following interesting URL: http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Programming_Tasks. Basically it lists a large number (>100) of different programming tasks and algorithms . You pick your algorithm, then they show you contributions coded in different programming languages. Granted there are occasionally holes in the matrix, yet it is amazing how much programming languages are similar and yet different.

Alternately you can go to the language tab on the left and look at all the algorithms contributed in that language.

Hopefully you find it useful.  —John Emrich

Marc Andreesen, creator of Netscape, discusses in the Wall Street Journal why he believes that the business giants of the future will be whoever has the best software; it’s well worth a read… Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World – WSJ.com.