#!SUITS Camp – Planning is under way!

Spent the afternoon with other SUITS execs planning for the 2009 edition of the annual #!SUITS camp. At this stage, things are looking quite exciting.

From last year, we’re had feedback that going and visiting IT companies around Sydney was quite a valuable experience. So we’re going to keep this going this year, with an added fun component to the camp. Hmm, I’ll still need to speak with companies and see who’ll be willing to take us for a tour of their workplace… *writes into diary*

Also learning from last year, the massive projects that we initially had in mind didn’t entirely work out given such time constraints, so we’ve decided to cut this out in favour of shorter challenges instead.

Here’s the official details we’re going to announce (I know I’m leaking confidential info, but hey it gets around the fixed schedule of newsletters!):

• It’s going to run for 4 days, in the last week of the holidays between semester. (20-23 Jul 09)
• The cost of the camp is yet to be finalised… but al meals will be included in the cost!

Oh, did I mention scavenger hunt?

Sydney Mail: where did my emails go?

I have to say, it is a real hassle. First, the usual Sydney Uni email address changed, and now when we log onto Outlook Live, all our existing emails aren’t there in the new email account.

One thing that we should be clear about is that the Sydney Mail service is actually a totally separate email account! So everyone’s @uni.sydney.edu.au account starts fresh and uncluttered. In one way this is good, but it’s also a pain if we want to get to our existing emails.

Transferring emails across to the new account

One way we can set up so that even if someone sends an email to our old email address, it’d still show up in the new email account is by getting Outlook Live to pull emails from there.

There’s a good set of instructions provided by ICT. This way, any emails that’s been sent to your old address @mail.usyd.edu.au can then be seen in your new account.

What if I already have it set up to forward emails to another email address?

Since it’s a brand new account, it’s necessary to set this forwarding up again. Again, ICT’s put up a dedicated section just for this.

Update - The technique doescribed by USYD ICT to forward emails is literally forward! Which means, the emails you receive on your other account will be seen as though it was coming from yourself. Many email services now (Gmail, Live Mail, Yahoo, etc.) support pulling emails from another account using something called “POP3″. Enoch has a guide on how to get this working with Gmail.

Update 27 Jul 10: Removed links to removed pages on USYD ICT site.

Sydney Mail is now Live!

For those USYD students anxiously waiting for their new Outlook Live based email service, it’s now live!

One of the first thing everyone should do is enable Junk Mail filtering – you can do this by going to settings, then Junk E-Mail, which then shows you the option to enable “Automatically filter junk e-mail”

Have fun!

Sydney Uni Students Gets New Outlook Live Email Service

Just received an email from the ICT guys at Sydney Uni – all students are getting a new email service! According to ICT Switch, the email service is going to be the new hosted services from Microsoft, called Outlook Live. It means that there’s finally a decent user interface to the university email, plus seamless Outlook integration!

This is great new, because unlike Hotmail (or Windows Live Mail), hosted Outlook services are Ad-Free! Or so I hope. Which means, we’ll be getting the best email services without the unnecessary advertising. Also, we’ll be able to keep the email address even after leaving uni, which is absolutely awesome. It’s a good thing that it means the uni doesn’t have to manage (and pay for) the mail services even for students whom have left.

The only issue is, I’d have to change my uni email address, and changing emails addresses is never fun. Thank goodness that I can keep this email address forever.

I tried to log onto my new email account today at https://www.outlook.com/, but it appears that it hasn’t been activated yet. Can’t wait until it kicks off on 6 May 09!

A copy of the email can be found after the break.

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Public Lecture on the Australian Internet Filtering Scheme

This Friday, there’ll be a public lecture discussing the Australian Filtering Scheme. It’s been a hot topic for a while now, and it’s gathering momentum. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) TV program Q&A had recently featured this particular issue last Thursday 26 Mar 09 in Melbourne.

The lecture will be delivered by Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt (my thesis supervisor!) from School of IT, University of Sydney. His comments were also featured in the Herald.

Here’s more details, from the school’s news page:

Speaker: Associate Professor Bjorn Landfeldt, School of Information Technologies, The University of Sydney

Time: Friday 3 April 2009, 4:00-5:00pm

Location: The University of Sydney, PNR Building, Farrell Lecture Theatre

Abstract
The Australian government is currently planning to introduce mandatory Internet content filtering. The move would clearly set Australia aside from all other democratic nations in the world. The initial purpose of this scheme was to protect Australian children from accessing unsuitable material such as child pornography.

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