News

This is not the head of the Post Office. When you send/receive your e-mail, lots of work has been done behind the scene. The e-mail is scanned for virus, returned with error message if the recipient address is invalid, and answered with auto-reply if the recipient is on leave etc. Do you know who is taking care of all these? Postmaster is the e-mail system administrator, a valid standard e-mail account that must exist for any standardised system in accordance with the Internet E-mail Standard. In any established organisation like the CityU, the account must be maintained by e-mail specialist(s) and it handles a lot more work than that described above.

As announced in early December 2000 by the President, Dr. Jerry Yu of the Registrar's Office has accepted the newly created position of Chief Information Officer (CIO). According to the President, Dr. Yu will be responsible for the development and integration of all our Information Technology Services to better serve the University community. This will include the use of IT to support all areas of our work, including both administrative and academic activities. The decision was based upon the recommendations declared in the Strategic Plan for the Development of Information Technology (IT) in the University as well as the expert advice made by the two consultants from the University of Southern California who had conducted a thorough assessment on CityU’s Information Technology Services.

During the last two months or so, the CSC Help Desk service has recorded a marked increase in the number of calls on virus problems and anti-virus related matters. Virus infection on computers has indeed become a big concern in the CityU community.Many users on campus only heard how vicious computer viruses can be while other unfortunate ones had actually experienced the power of viruses and the damage they had caused on their computers. If precautions are not taken, one can easily become the victim of computer viruses. In order to control the situation, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has installed protections on the central E-mail servers such that all incoming mail must first be scanned for possible viruses before reaching individual mailboxes.

Long before the emergence of e-mail, the telephone and campus mail have been the major form of internal communication on campus. When accessing e-mail has proved to be just as easy, it quickly became a popular method of communication between individual computer users and is now used frequently by most faculty and staff.Whenever there is an official announcement to be made within the CityU, it is general practice that the messages should be posted on the University Message Board where everyone is expected to read. In cases where the concerned topic is really important and a personal e-mail is required, broadcast tools have been developed to help disseminate the official news, thus minimising the amount of effort involved in maintaining e-mail lists (a laborious and error-prone process).

Have you ever experienced this? Either no e-mail can reach you within a rather long period of time, or the same one keeps bombarding your e-mail account several times a day? One of the causes for such phenomena is that the e-mail network was jammed with e-mail of large file size, and thus traffic congestion or server malfunction results.The staff e-mail servers failed quite often some time ago and investigation found that some users had repeatedly sent out some AVI video files and MP3 music files of over 5MB each. Large files are NEVER encouraged to be sent via e-mail because:

Announced on 1 December, the position of CIO, a concurrent appointment, goes to the Registrar Dr Jerry Yu. In his new capacity, Professor Chang told Linkage, Dr Yu will oversee the full integration of IT into a spectrum of processes and systems, from teaching and learning to student and staff records to inventory and payroll systems. He will also have a key role to play in the planning of the future IT infrastructure on campus, including mapping out the IT strategy, defining the necessary architecture and backbone, and specifying the supporting hardware and equipment.

The University Computer shop has been a self-financed unit under the Computing Services Centre ever since its establishment in 1990. This popular service arm of the CSC sold all kinds of computing accessories and peripherals and in particular the CTC computer (CityU’s home-made PC), which at one point covered over 80% of the University’s computing provision, generated a turnover up to HK$50 million and saved the University a very handsome amount of money.

The Campus Wireless LAN has been an important and effective supplement to the campus network since its inauguration in March 2000. It has since provided a useful alternative for the whole CityU community to overcome the spatial problem to access the computing facilities and services on campus. In order to help our students to take full advantage of the Wireless LAN, the University and the 3 renowned computer companies, IBM, Dell and Compaq have jointly organised the Student Computer Ownership Programme 2000 in late October.

Apart from staff courses, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) also organises computer short courses tailor-made for all CityU students. This series of courses, known as the “Student Computer Literacy Programme”, is held throughout each academic year and priority is given to the first year students. The programme aims at helping students to acquire basic computer skills. It is a voluntary scheme and is free of charge. Individual enrolments can be made by students, while block enrolment through a department is also possible.

If you would like to brush up your computing knowledge, why not sign up for the staff computer courses offered by the Computing Services Centre (CSC)? Simply flip through the staff course directory booklet for this Semester and choose from a list of extremely popular courses like Flash, Dreamweaver, Director, Freehand, Excel 2000, PowerPoint 2000, Adobe Photoshop, FrontPage 2000 and much more. Once you have decided which course(s) to attend, all you need to do is fill in the Application Form provided in the booklet and send it to the CSC before the deadline.