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April 13, 2006 -- Tech University
Sort By: Features Sneak Previews Geek Chic Departments Columns BuzzCuts

Features

Tech U: Tomorrow's IT Challenges Today
By Dave Molta
Universities are proving grounds for advanced network technologies that serve a global tech-savvy community. We examine infrastructure, wireless and security projects at several campuses to see what business can learn from higher education.

Tech U: Research on the Rails
By Robert J. Kohlhepp
To feed their need for bandwidth, universities and non-profits have formed a consortium to build a high-performance fiber backbone. The result is the National LambdaRail project, which can link two dozen U.S. cities at 10 Gbps.

Tech U: Compressed Air
By Frank Bulk
Mandatory college laptop programs have increased demand for untethered access. Many schools have resolved the problem with dense wireless setups.

Tech U: Taming the Masses
By Jordan Wiens
Implementing security policies in an unregulated user population poses unique challenges. We look at innovative -- and inexpensive -- technologies some schools have employed.

Tech U: The World Is Our Campus
By Derrick L. Cogburn and Divya Kurup
Web conferencing software lets colleagues, students and researchers from all over the globe collaborate. We tested nine products and awarded our Editor's Choice to two: One for its hosted offerings; the other for its in-house applications.

Tech U: Sims on Steroids
By Jennifer Zaino
The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School uses real-world simulations as a teaching tool -- moving beyond the venerable case-based reading tradition and expanding Internet use well beyond distance-learning applications.

Tech U: The Real Big Apple
By Beth Bacheldor
Virginia Tech University is home to System X, the 20th most powerful computer system in the world. Discover what makes an educational institution put so many resources into a supercomputer.

Review: Low-Cost NAS
By Steven Hill
Most NAS systems with enterprise-class storage and security still hover around the $5k mark, but we found -- and tested -- five solutions with at least 1 terabyte of storage priced as low as $1,299. Our Editor's Choice won for its wide range of integrated features and impressive performance.

Sneak Previews

Cisco Unified Call Manager Express
By Joel Conover
Express 4.0 runs on your branch office router and supports SIP trunking.

Cast Iron Systems' iA3000
By Lori MacVittie
Cast Irons' EAI appliance offers a full palette of activities, including Web services and SAP connectivity -- all at a lower cost.

Credant Mobile Guardian 5.1 Enterprise Edition
By John H. Sawyer
This mobile security platform takes a different -- and more secure -- tack than full hard-disk encryption products.

Geek Chic

Kingston Technology DataTraveler Elite--Privacy Edition
By Barbara Krasnoff
Kingston's latest USB flash drive offers security-conscious travelers a way to keep sensitive data away from prying eyes.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 8 Preferred
By J. W. Olsen
Speech-recognition software can be useful in many applications, but the dream of conversing with a computer remains unfulfilled.

Gcast Podcasting Service
By Ron Miller
Want to be a radio star? This free service isn't flawless, by any means, but it's easy to use and allows anyone with a telephone to try out basic podcasting.

Departments

Last Mile: Slamming Spammers
By Andrew Conry-Murray and Tom LaSusa
This edition laughs at the Top 11 punishments we'd like to see for spammers. We also face the dark side of the force with a casemod that's sure to please any Sith.

Quick Takes: Outbound/Inbound E-mail Monitoring
By Jennifer Zaino
In this edition, InBoxer's Anti-Risk Appliance quickly analyzes e-mail content and finds risky messages with minimal IT involvement. Also, products from NEC, BEA and BlueCat.

Columns

The Art of IT: Get Out of the House
By Art Wittmann
Insular environments can lead to insular thinking. The only cure is to get out of the glass houses we've built for ourselves. This is critically important to guiding our organizations.

Reality IT: An Open Letter to Your Users
By Hunter Metatek
Whether through ignorance, blatant disregard for corporate policy or sheer unwarranted self-confidence, users have a boundless ingenuity for screwing things up.

BuzzCuts

Avaya's Small-Biz Misstep
By David Greenfield
Although Quick Edition IP telephony technology fills out a product line for Avaya, it may not make as much sense for its target audience.

Big Blue Thinks Small
By Art Wittmann
IBM has demonstrated the first working, integrated circuit formed on a carbon nanotube. But don't put away your Xanax just yet.

Get Your Standards Straight
By Lori MacVittie
More often than not, vendors seem to struggle to understand the meaning of standards. Take, for example, the controversy surrounding BEA Systems and business process management vendor Fuego.

Come Join the Judges
By Ron Anderson
The annual Interop conference in Las Vegas gives us a chance to get an up-close look at new IT products and services. But we do more than just look.

Anti-Phish Posse; Turning Patches Into Pitches
By Andrew Conry-Murray
Saddle up with the Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination Squad -- corralling criminal Web sites and protecting the innocent. Plus, hackers weren't the only ones taking advantage of a recent Internet Explorer vulnerability.

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