June, 2006

VIDEO

Iraq Connection

On June 2nd, COMET-METNET resources were used to connect a Captain in the Army National Guard with his parents, wife and two children. He was located at Al Asad Airforce Base in Iraq and his family came to one of the ITV rooms at South Central College in North Mankato. The connection on the Iraq end of the video conference was provided by the Freedom Calls Foundation. His wife was very grateful and talked about how much better it was for the children to visit with their father by video over IP as compared to the visits previously conducted by long distance telephone connections. The COMET-METNET organization, with the cooperation of of its member institutions, is available to connect other families with their loved ones serving overseas. from the Mankato Free Press online.

In the first week of June, Bill Erickson of the COMET office attended InfoComm 2006, the Information Communications Marketplace, Bill learned about new technology that vendors will to have to offer COMET- METNET in the future. Points of interest were High Definition Video units as well as Video Streaming and Capture units. Bill also looked into the Video Furnace and VBrick systems to see how they might be used in our systems. Video Furnace is a video over IP system that does not need client player software such as Windows Media or Real. VBrick is Windows Media based. Both will deliver live or on-demand and allow the user to pipe in analog signals such as cable TV to be broadcast live or recorded for later use. For more information see http://www.videofurnace.com or http://www.videofurnace.com.

May 2006 Network Traffic

There were 116 meetings conducted via ITV in the month of May.

E-MAIL

New METNET WebMail Option Coming

METNET A new version of WebMail is now being tested by METNET. The new version, named WebMail 3.0, will be faster and include new features. WebMail 3.0 is expected to be released prior to the start of Fall semester. Both WebMail 3.0 and the current version, WebMail Pro, will be available for use.

ONLINE LEARNING

Breeze Services

The Breeze 4.1 server will be decommisioned at the end of the summer. (Please note: Breeze 5.1 services will still be available.) Breeze users should discontinue publishing content and scheduling meetings on the Breeze 4.1 server as soon as possible but no later than August 14. For information on Migrating from Breeze 4.1 to Breeze 5.1 go to http://breeze.metnet.edu/support/migration/index.html.

METChat

Jabber is a stand alone text chat tool which will be implemented this Fall. Jabber will provide real-time messaging and can be integrated with a METNET account/identity so you know who is chatting. Applications include real-time synchronous communication, discussion groups for courses, online help, and more. Jabber is a secure, ad-free, open source protocol offered by the Jabber Software Foundation and made available to the COMET-METNET Partnership by The University of Minnesota. For more information e-mail jabber@metnet.edu or see http://www.metnet.edu/learning/jabber.html.

LINKS

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