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February 19, 2020

OK ... maybe they won’t change your life. But these 9 tricks and tips are fun, easy, and useful—you’ll wonder how you never thought of these yourself!

February 12, 2020

Sometimes, walking as fast as you can to escape the wind or rain takes priority over monitoring your surroundings. But it’s crucial to stay alert. Fortunately, there are some great security tools that can help.

February 05, 2020

When Rey kissed Kylo Ren upon her revival in Rise of Skywalker, terrified, happy, and confused gasps filled the theater.

January 28, 2020

Surveys are everywhere. From commercials (4 out of 5 dentists…), to politics (the Democratic primary debates require meeting a polling threshold). From the census and research studies, to meeting scheduling and customer feedback, nearly everyone wants to ask you something.

January 22, 2020

The Super Bowl is approaching, but if you’re not careful, it’s you who’s gonna get played. Social media is a field with no refs—hackers and identity thieves are waiting on the sidelines to sack you.

January 15, 2020

In November, I submitted a departmental request. I had to complete a form, sign it, and send it to my supervisor—who works on another floor. My supervisor had to complete a couple fields, sign it, and send it to the director—who works in a different building. The director had to sign it and send it to the administrator to process.

January 08, 2020

Research Reality: Research projects can include multiple collaborators, generate large amounts of data, include hundreds or thousands of participants/samples, and require significant computing resources for data storage, transfer, and analysis.

January 02, 2020

Welcome back, everybody! Pittsburgh may be cold and gray, but you’re still living on the holiday high! You’re all stocked up, your belly is filled with cookies, you spent lots of time with friends and family, and you can’t help but look at the world through joy-filled eyes. Hopefully, that’ll carry you through the semester, or at least until spring break.

December 18, 2019

Will you be travelling internationally on university business during the spring term? Going overseas raises a lot of technology questions. What adapters will I need? What devices should I bring? What should I do if they get lost or stolen? How do I protect my data?

December 10, 2019

As a kid, winter break was chock-full of fun and freedom. Whether you were playing for hours in the snow, reading the new Junie B. Jones book you got from the Scholastic book fair, or watching movie marathons, the world was your oyster in those sacred two weeks. A lot has changed since then—mostly the fact that now, normal life still looms large.

November 26, 2019

When it comes to diversity and inclusion, the use of technology may not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, with the help of their Director of Information Technology and Networking Kim Getz, Pitt's School of Law found an innovative way to leverage Pitt Information Technology's Lecture Capture (Panopto) service to meet the needs of their students and faculty.

November 05, 2019
 

Any time, from anywhere, on any device, with anyone—that’s the name of the game nowadays. Whether you’re flying high on three cans of Red Bull trying to finish a group project in Hillman, uploading hours of B-roll for a film project, or working with a colleague who sits across campus, cloud computing is essential to the everyday work environment.

October 29, 2019

August 6:
Dear diary … If a ghost haunts an empty residence hall, is it really haunted? All the students are gone; only the guys putting in the new Wi-Fi stuff are here, but they’d don’t even sleep over. At night, I roam the bowels of the Schenley Quad alone. I float above the Towers and gaze out at the campus, thinking of decades gone by.

October 24, 2019

Movies romanticize disguise. Your favorite heroes slip into crowds undetected, use fake IDs and fingerprints to sneak into secret lairs, and get custom passports under unique aliases. I grew up with iconic 2000s children’s spy cinema like Spy Kids and Agent Cody Banks.

October 17, 2019

Three years ago, my grandma asked me to check her inbox and tell me if her emails were legit. A quick glance revealed an inbox chock-full of crazy phishing schemes. From ransom threats to sketchy requests to wire millions of dollars, the scams seemed pretty obvious.