We will be doing a 2005 year in review, looking at the past NE meetings from 2005 and updating with new current information. This will be an ad-hoc and should cover lots of items such as Linksys hacking, Asterisk, and more.
—————————————————————–
2005.01.10 update:
Video DVD of the full meeting is now available at
ftp.ale.org/meetings/central/2005-12
(anonymous log in)
—————————————————————-
The main presentation for December’s ALE Central meeting was
on Scalix and was provided by Ben Chapman, Assistant Dean for Information
Technology at the Emory law school.
Scalix allows Unix / Linux based systems to support the common Outlook
client bundled with windows desktops while avoiding some of the problems
and security issues of Microsoft Exchange. The product has a strong technical
pedigree (HP OpenMail is the underlying foundation) and is an outstanding
webmail client. The Emory law school is investigating the deployment of
Scalix to handle approximately 150 faculty and staff email accounts.
Ben Chapman is in charge of the I.T. department at the Emory University
School of Law. Before formally entering the IT field in 1997, he practiced
law for five years with a 40 lawyer firm in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was
previously IT director for the University of Tulsa College of Law and
has been at Emory since 2003. He has owned some flavor of Unix-based
computer since 1991, and has also owned a Sinclair QL, an Atari 520ST,
an Epson HX-20, an NEC Starlet, and other bits of micro-computing history.
Ben has made his PDF presentation slides available and they are posted here:
Scalix Presentation Slides, 2005.12.08 Central
Right Click on link above to download. Size is 351 KB
We will be demonstrating Asterisk@Home along with other cool VoIP technologies.
“The Asterisk@Home project enables the home user to quickly set up a VOIP Asterisk PBX. A web GUI makes configuration and operation easy. We also provide an xPL (home automation) interface for easy interaction with other devices in the home.”
See: Asterisk@Home
Late breaking:
We will also have a new beta version of a Sangoma FXO/FXS card on hand to show. This card will be added to the product portfolio here: Sangoma TDM Products
The feature topic for the November ALE central meeting
will be an overview of Classcaster, a blog system supporting
telephony messaging and podcasting:
“Classcaster is a course blogging system that provides faculty,
librarians, and staff of CALI member schools with a new way to
interact with students and communities. A Classcaster blog
provides authors with tools for posting not only traditional blog
articles but also tools for podcasting and sharing any documents
and/or files with students and communities.”
( More at http://www.classcaster.org )
Our presenter will be Elmer Masters, Director of Internet
Development for the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal
Instruction ( CALI, http://www.cali.org ).
He is also an admin of the Teknoids mailing list and website
( http://www.teknoids.net ) and blogs at
http://www.content4.symphora.com/ .
Thanks to all who attended and made our GNU Freedom Fest
Info & Install day such a great event!
I know we can count at least half dozen newbies that we aided
with distro installs, problem solving or detailed Linux info. We
even helped a fellow from Texas lasso his laptop challenges:
===
“I want to thank ALE for all the help I received on Saturday
at the Freedom Fest. Everyone was very helpful and stuck
with me for HOURS working through partitioning problems,
dual boot problems, permissions problems and display drivers
problems. It would have been hard for me to figure all that
out by myself. I even got some great swag!”
– Bradley
(The guy from Dallas with the HP laptop
with Ubuntu Breezy and XP dual boot.)
====
As with all our ALE Install Fests of the past few years, special
thanks go to Harold Bieber for arranging the great space,
supplying the power strips & network connections and
collecting all the Linux books for door prizes. (With the help
of his Ximian web monkey, of course.)
Special thanks also go out to Bob Stevens and Trey Sizemore
for their help with SUSE installations, the Novell Linux Desktop
distro packages and the great Novell and SUSE hat swag!
So hey… lets do this again sometime in the Spring! :-)