|
Newsletter inside|out - IT news at ETH Zurich (26.11.2015)
 | |
 |  |
 |  |
|
 |  |
Dear reader
Our newsletter inside|out appears in a new design. This edition is the first ETH newsletter we send out with the new tool. A service, about which we will be reporting in our next ITS newsletter.
Not a new design but a new format has been implemented in the lecture halls: all ETH projectors now show the 16:9 format and replace the previous 4:3 aspect ratio. Not new but probably not so well known: The contact database at ETH – a practical tool to manage and update your contacts. And the article about or most recent unit – IT Services for Departments, ITS S4D – reveals why the IT Services (ITS) speak of "building bridges".
Furthermore, ETH has launched a new, "monstrous" IT security initiative in October. The campaign will enlarge upon two or three topics in the coming years. This should help to protect our most important asset – our "brainwork". The web site www.itsecurity.ethz.ch supports each topic with check lists, explanations and contact persons. The unique thing about this campaign: It has evolved from the joint effort of various ETH units and departments with the participation of IT Services.
Wishing you an enjoyable read,
Reto Gutmann Director of IT Services |
|
|
| |
|
 |  |
| Building and maintaining: The "Bridge Builders" Andres Müller Krummenacher in D-MTEC, Martina Boesch in D-BIOL and Luca Previtali (from left). |
IT Services for the departments |
"We build bridges between IT Services and professors, lecturers, researchers and staff ...". So begins the mission statement of our division, ITS S4D. Yes, our goal is to build and maintain "bridges" between the departments and the IT Services. We strive for meeting the IT needs of the departments with solutions and services offered by IT Services as a whole.
The division Services for Departments (ITS S4D) was established in summer 2014 with the specific goal of offering IT services and support to all ETH departments. Currently, the ITS S4D supports three departments: D-BIOL, D-MTEC and D-GESS. Constructive and auspicious talks are being conducted with other departments with the objective of establishing new partnerships. Our focus is on rendering all typical IT services for research, teaching and administration. Examples include: The complete management of work places (purchase and installation of hardware, maintenance of operating systems and applications, configuration of printers and peripheral devices); the administration of user accounts; the deployment of file services for the various application and data typologies; and the maintenance of laboratory device control units and research applications. More about our work and further examples on the ITS blog. Please contact us if would like to learn more about our services.
Luca Previtali, Division Head, Services for Departments (ITS S4D)
|
|
| |
|
 |  |
| New projectors require new slides: Olaf A. Schulte, Group Manager MMS PD, and Thomas Rechsteiner, Group Manager MMS IS (from left), have everything under control. |
Projections and slides new in 16:9 |
After movie and television screens, computer monitors will now be putting on some width and thus the contents shown on them. The infrastructure in the lecture halls of ETH takes account of this development and has completely switched to the 16:9 aspect ratio at the beginning of the 2015 fall semester. The seminar rooms have already been stocked with the appropriate equipment (projectors or monitors). Whats important now is that all ETH co-workers craft their presentations in 16:9 in the future so as to utilize the qualitative progress and avoid problems with transmission and recording.
With the completion of the reconstruction work in the summer of 2015, projectors in 16:9 are now available in all lecture halls of ETH. The end of a six-year restructuring phase, which was meticulously planned and implemented on time by Tom Rechsteiner and his team. Olaf A. Schulte is delighted with it. In the Multimedia Services division, he is responsible for transmissions from lecture hall to lecture hall and the recording of lectures and events: With the new equipment, the aspect ratio of the presentations finally corresponds again to the video aspect ratio, which has been used at ETH for several years now. Black bars, elaborate conversions and quality losses should hence be things of the past. What is still missing, though, is that the lecturers make the adaptations as well: Old slides in the 4:3 aspect ratio must be converted to the new aspect ratio sooner or later. In the ITS blog, you can read how this can be done and why you should do it.
Olaf A. Schulte, Group Manager Production & Distribution (ITS MMS)
|
|
| |
|
 |  |
| Telephone books are a thing of the past. Gabriela Frey and Andreas Jost (from left), SW Project Services, ITS SWS, explain how the administration and management of your units contacts can look like in the future. |
A contact database for all of ETH |
What many people dont know: Yes, it does truly exist. The contact database has been developed to the needs of ETH. It is available to all ETH organisational units for free. With it, you can manage your units ETH-internal contacts and addresses as well as contact information of people external to ETH. In addition, you can create mailing lists and lists for invitations directly from the contact database.
Along with the maintenance of the addresses and contact data of external persons, the contact database allows access to the ETH office addresses of all employees of ETH Zurich, numbering around 10,000. The key idea here: Changes of addresses and data can be updated and reported only at one place. After the change, everything is available to all users in its automatically updated version. The solution also supports the logical grouping of contacts in order to generate lists from them for mailings or event invitations. Since the contact database is also used by the dispatch center of ETH, the lists this service provides are available to all contact database users. Additional information about the contact database with over 70,000 datasets and how it is already used by several organisational units at ETH can be found in the ITS blog.
Andreas Jost, Group Manager of SW Project Services (ITS SWS)
|
|
| |
|
|
