This month the International Development Council for Academic Studies (IDCAS) has generously released a significant amount of additional funding to a number of non-profit organisations. These organisations include the International Health Research Institute (IHRI) and the 3D Grid Association. Today the 3D Grid Association has issued a press release stating that a portion of these funds will be allocated to the maintenance of technical infrastructural required to operate the following grids over the next two months; AtMeeting (grid.atmeeting.com, operated under contract by Littlehall Corporation), Education 3D Grid/Edu3DGrid (www.edu3dgrid.com), IDCAS 3D Services (now operated under contract by the European Technology Development Association) and Virtual 3D IHRI (virtual.ihri.org). All services supplied by these grids are vital to the continued sucessful development of advanced teaching tools and on behalf of IHRI I would like to thank IDCAS for the provision of this funding.
24
2011
22
2011
Education 3D Grid (Edu3DGrid) Beta Servers
It has been announced today that both the AtMeeting and Education 3D Grid administration intend to release a beta land development scheme. The principle behind this move is to drive forward an initiative to increase the number of developers and testers on both grids.
As part of this initiative there will be an allowance made for colleges, schools, universities, research bodies and corporate enterprises to register their own region management servers on both grids.
Applications must be made through an online form (http://www.edu3dgrid.com/applications/online/beta/server/regions.asp). No closing date for beta land testing and registration has been announced yet but is expected soon.
21
2011
IDCAS Quarterly Executive Conference
IDCAS Quarterly Executive Conference (Jan 2011, Dublin)
 |
 |
 |
 |
19
2011
ICANN Post-Cartagena
Interview with ICANN’s CEO & President, Rod Beckstrom, and Chairman of the Board, Peter Dengate Thrush, following the close of ICANN 39 in Cartagena, Colombia.
ICANN Press Conference, 6th December 2010. ICANN CEO & President, Rod Beckstrom, and Chairman of the Board, Peter Dengate Thrush.
8
2010
Upgrade of ICMS Backbone Servers
The last of the ICMS backbone servers were upgraded today to use the ext4 filesystem. Prelimilary testing shows that the time required to perform fsck’s has been reduced by almost 90% across the service. All servers will need to run a full filesystem check to reduce the time of subsequent checks. Many servers performed this during the last maintenance period and are already optimized. This process will be completed during the next 48 hours. Moving to ext4 will offer some other minor performance improvements as well.
Overall service status may be viewed by visiting http://atmeeting.net:4486/icms/
30
2010
Windows Phone 7
Below is a still from the new advert for windows phone 7. The main idea which Microsoft want to get out there is that the phone is so addictive that you wont be able to put it down no matter what your doing.
Windows Phone 7 - Is it truely addictive?
Have seen the phone in action and it seems to have a great deal of potential both hardware and coding wise. Think we should start looking into the possibility of creating an application for internal institute member use. There are many questions which would need to be addressed regarding security and distribution of the application although can certainly see how we could use it in the future.
Photo copyright of Microsoft Corporation.
29
2010
Microsoft PDC10 – HTML 5
Dean Hachamovitch (Microsoft PDC10)
PDC10 proved to be informative yesterday. Several issues were addressed during this event including a presentation of HTML 5.
In geek terms this looks promising and from the outset appears to be a step in the right direction. Some very cool features although noted a few things I have doubts about.
How can we put this to good use within both IDCAS and IHRI? That is the question.
I plan to ask technical support to provide a report regarding this in the coming weeks. My recommendation is that they work in partnership with the European Technology Development Association (ETDA) in order to produce this.
Will post more information through IDCA Central Account System (CAS) soon for internal viewing.
For CAS access please visit http://account.idcas.org
28
2010
GNSO Council Meeting (ICANN)
Sitting in on this months council meeting of the Generic Names Supporting Organization tonight. The main issues for this meeting are as follows:
- GNSO Prioritisation
- Election Procedures for Council Chair & Vice Chairs
- Whois Studies
- Voting Procedures when Councilors are either absent or must abstain
- Disclosure of Interest Procedures
27
2010
Microsoft Professional Developers Conference
IHRI has an internal policy with allows for the collection and disclosure of certain details relating to senior officers of the organisation. We sometimes disclose such information to members of the public with the overall goal of promoting an open and transparent management process.
The European Technology Development Association (ETDA) has announced that Mark Bannon, as a representative, will be attending an event run by the National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs (NACUE) early tomorrow evening. During this event some of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) will be live streamed from the US. PDC sessions are described by Microsoft as highly technical and targeted towards advanced developers. This years conference keynotes will focus on Client & Devices, Cloud Services and Frameworks & Tools.
Agenda (Times listed in GMT):
- 4:00pm – 4:50pm Registration and networking
- 4:50pm – 4:55pm Microsoft Introduction
- 5:00pm – 7:00pm Live streaming of PDC10 keynotes from Microsoft in Redmond (US) with local Q&A.
- 7:15pm – 7:30pm Final comments and close of event
26
2010
NCSG Policy Meeting (ICANN)
It has been announced by the European Technology Development Association that Mark Bannon will be attending the NCSG policy meeting today.