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Just a quick note that I won’t be posting here any longer. If you are a UUA employee and would still like to get our ramblings and tech tips I’d recommend checking out the Helpdesk Group in the UUA Mango instance.
Author Archives: James Curran
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Posted by: Create a Meeting Solution in Almost Any Room
We ITS techies recently made a meeting cart — a mobile unit with a computer, large screen, wireless keyboard and mouse, and webcam, to make it easy for a group to use AnyMeeting to include off-site folks. While putting some finishing touches on the meeting cart in Pickett and Eliot House’s Rice Room, one of the guests asked how to make such a thing. It’s not terribly difficult, but it will take about $2000 and an afternoon to put together. Here is a quick parts list and some thoughts on building a meeting cart. (more…)
Open Each Excel Spreadsheet in a New Window
Every since Excel 2007 when you open more than one spreadsheet, you won’t get a second window. Depending on you’re workflow this may be a feature or a bit of a bummer. If you’d like excel to go back to opening new spreadsheets in a new window and you don’t mind a bit of setup there is a way. (more…)
HipChat and Other IM Clients
If you are anything like me chances are you have several IM networks you need to juggle: AIM , GTalk, Facebook Messages, etc. if that is the case HipChat is yet another program you need to contend with. To keep the number of IM programs on my computer to a minimum I started using third party chat clients such as Pidgin or Trillian to connect to all these networks from a single program. Fortunately for me (and you) HipChat plays pretty well with these programs. (more…)
Alternate Jefferson Program for Mac
Sometimes the mac program Remote Desktop Connection used to connect to Jefferson decides to do something other than connect to Jefferson. Often when that happens I turn to CoRD a free Remote Desktop Connection replacement. There are several things I like about it besides seeming generally less buggy it feels much more like a “mac” program and generally connects to Jefferson without popups. (more…)
Board Stream
UUA Board Jan 18
UUA Board Jan 17 Afternoon Session
UUA Board Jan 17 Morning Session
UUA Board Jan 16th Afternoon Sessions
UUA Board Jan 16th Morning Sessions
View Public Folders in Outlook 2010
One thing that can be hard to find in Outlook – public folders (usually shared calendars like the OPS room calendar). That’s because they hide in the “Folder List” rather than the default Mail view. Fortunately they live just a couple clicks away. Here’s how to view them: Open Outlook, and click on “Folder List” (alternatively you can hold down Ctrl key and press 6). Once you do that Public folders should appear near the bottom of the pane on the left of Outlook.
That’s it you should have access to the various shared calendars and folders floating around the UUA.
Note: If you’re using Office for Mac you’ll need to Subscribe to Public Folders for this functionality
Helpdesk Spam
A spam message has been masquerading as a helpdesk message about an upgrade. That message does not originate from ITS. If you receive it, please ignore or delete it. Do not click the link as it suggests. (more…)
Automatically Sync Your Desktop and Jefferson
For folks who work in Boston:
Not too long ago I wrote an article explaining how to automatically backup your Desktop and Documents folders to your U:\ folder, which is pretty cool. Where it turns awesome is when you use the same trick on Jefferson. Here is how it works: tell your UUA computer to use U:\ as the place to store all your Documents, and then tell Jefferson to use the same place (U:\). The end result is anything you save on your computer shows up on Jefferson and anything you save on Jefferson shows up on your computer automagically. Read on for all the details. (more…)
Zoom in on Shared Screen in AnyMeeting
When someone is sharing their screen with you in AnyMeeting you can control the appearance of the shared image by hovering the cursor over the image. A toolbar appears, as shown below. The magnifying glass toggles between “Actual Size” and “Fit to Screen”; usually Actual Size is a good fit. The other tool toggles between “Maximized” and “Minimized.” Often, Maximized is your best bet as other 
combinations will truncate the bottom of the image or render it too small to be useful.