What's New in SEASnet??

June 7, 2006 (Fall 2004 - Spring 2006)

  1. Automatic Account Renewals (non IEI funds)
    Automatic account renewal for HSSEAS enrolled students current with registration fees beginning Fall 2004.
  2. New Network Appliance Filer
    An additional filer was purchased which allowed for an increase in disk quotas for undergraduates. All undergraduates now receive 100MB of personal disk space (an increase of 60MB) and a default 25MB of additional disk space each quarter for engineering students per HSSEAS undergraduate course.
  3. New SunFire V240 Servers
    Two new Sun V240 servers were setup for SEASnet's sunapps cluster. The SEASnet sunapps cluster serves the over one hundred Solaris applications available to undergraduates. For a detailed list of these applications, please visit: SEASnet Solaris Software.
  4. Wireless Access Points
    Wireless access points were added to each of the SEASnet labs to ensure that students using personal and SEASnet's Laptops have excellent signal strength.
  5. Digital Sender
    An additional digital sender was purchased to minimize the wait time for using this service.
  6. Memory for SEASnet Laptops
    Memory for the SEASnet laptops was purchased. The SEASnet Dell Latitude D600 laptops have been upgraded from 256MB to 1.152GB of RAM. These laptops are only available for HSSEAS undergraduates.
  7. New Flooring for 3760 BH (non-IEI funds)
    HSSEAS purchased a new floor for the SEASnet instructional lab located in 3760 BH. SEASnet plans to eventually replace all older carpeted rooms with the rubberized floor since it is stain resistance and absorbs sound. Note:  no IEI monies were used for this upgrade.
  8. New HSSEAS Lab Servers
    SEASnet purchased new infrastructure servers for our labs PC-based licensing and for lab imaging. SEASnet had been using retired lab machines for this purpose.
  9. CourseChat added to CourseWeb
    Thanks to programming assistance from HSSEAS’ Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the CourseChat feature was added to CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu. CourseChat is a service based on Jabber to provide instant messaging to students taking classes in HSSEAS. When students and instructors/TAs logon to the CourseChat service, they will be presented with the class rosters and chat rooms of the classes they are taking so they can instant message any fellow student or the instructor/TA currently logged on. Or they may choose to join one or more of their class chat rooms. The CourseChat client (based on JBother) also provides a "whiteboard" feature that enables two users to share a writing board for the purpose of exchanging ideas that are easier done pictorially.
  10. HSSEAS Advisor
    SEASnet programmers worked together to pull HSSEAS advisor information from the School's undergraduate student database. When students login to CourseWeb they now see the name and email address of their faculty advisor. When faculty login to CourseWeb they see a list of their student advisees along with the student's official URSA email address.
  11. Samba Server Upgrade
    Samba service was upgraded to 3.0.20 on all SEASnet samba servers.
  12. Various Courseweb Improvements
    Various improvements were made to CourseWeb, including an upgrade of PHP and MySQL, the addition of textbook information from the UCLA Book Store, a new important notice feature, brand new CourseWeb tutorials, the implementation of CourseWeb data retention procedures, a link to library reserves for each class, links to HSSEAS student's College of Letters and Science classes, and the addition of an improved email tool which included the ability to blind carbon copy and allow for multiple attachments.
  13. ABET Additions to CourseWeb
    Numerous additions were implemented in CourseWeb in order to facilitate the School's accreditation review process. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) requires significant amounts of information in order for HSSEAS to remain accredited. Programmers worked with the Dean and faculty within HSSEAS in order to automate the information normally gathered manually and to create the customized reports required by the ABET board. Some of the important changes were: revamp of ABET user interface, major database schema change to incorporate instructor-in-charge names to UID's, data gathering modifications to derive highlighted outcome for current class, enhancement to the access control feature of the ABET tool, per-degree exit surveys and electronic submittal of samples.
  14. EEweb Infrastructure Enhancements (non IEI funds)
    SEASnet is responsible for EEweb's infrastructure. Major improvements were needed this past year in order to maintain the integrity of the system and to provide for EEweb's ISIS authentication. SEASnet programmers were responsible for upgrades to PHP and the recompilation and reinstallation of the entire webserver. Note: no IEI monies were used for these improvements.

Previous What's New in SEASnet Info

February 17, 2005

  1. Lab PCs
    The number of PCs in 4442 BH was increased to 36. PCs in 4405 and 4442 BH were upgraded and installed.
  2. Lab Printers
    Two new black and white printers were installed in 4404 BH. A new color printer was purchased and installed at the color printing station in 2684 BH and the old color printer was installed in 4404 BH.
  3. USB Extension Cables
    Computers that do not have USB connectors on the monitors/keyboards had USB extension cables installed and secured to the desktop so you are no longer required to plug into the front/back of the CPU.
  4. SEASLAB Domain Server Upgrade
    The SEASLAB domain server was upgraded to Windows 2003 in order to take advantage of the latest Microsoft technology.
  5. Network Switch Upgrade in 3760 BH
    The network switch was upgraded in the last SEASnet lab, 3760 BH to increase network speed from 10MB to 100MB.
  6. Scanner Installed
    A new scanner was purchased and installed at the help desk station in 2684 BH. Scanning software is also installed on this machine. Users should keep in mind that the scanning software is only available on this machine and that they should save their scanned documents in a format viewable on all other machines.
  7. New Sun V440 Servers
    Two new Sun servers were purchased. One server has been added to the undergraduate cluster [ugrad.seas.ucla.edu] and the other server is serving HSSEAS's class websites, CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu.
  8. CourseWeb Upgrade
    CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu (HSSEAS's in-house course management system) was introduced to HSSEAS in Spring 2004. Since then SEASnet has modified CourseWeb to include various enhancements requested by faculty and TA's. In addition, SEASnet implemented the ABET system in CourseWeb to facilitate the critical ABET process for undergraduate classes. ABET, Inc., is the recognized accreditation body for college and university programs in applied science, computing and engineering, which conducts periodic evaluations at campuses across the nation.
  9. Webmail Upgraded
    Webmail was upgraded to the latest version available at the time. Notable new features are: web interface for setting up forward and vacation message, 2) quick save feature to automatically save the email message you're composing from being accidentally wiped out by refreshing the right frame or otherwise leaving the Compose page.
  10. Windows Media Service
    Windows Media Service is now available to all instructors/TAs of ugrad classes as requested.
  11. Linux Lab
    The Linux lab machines now have two Linux partitions: SEASnet and CS111. The SEASnet's Linux partition (Redhat Enterprise WS 3.0) is new and is available to all SEASnet users.