CENIC Today -- March 2008

CENIC Today cenic-today at lists.cenic.org
Mon Apr 7 14:54:15 PDT 2008


[CENIC Today -- March 2008, Volume 11 Issue 3] <http://www.cenic.org/>
CENIC News & CENIC 08 Special Report:

    * President's Message: Lightpath to Sustainability <#1>
    * CENIC Participates, Presents at Community College CISOA Conference
      <#2>
    * Five High-Performance Broadband Projects Receive CENIC 2008
      Innovations in Networking Awards: <#3>
          o 2008 Gigabit/Broadband Award <#3>
          o 2008 Educational Award <#4>
          o 2008 High-Performance Award <#5>
          o 2008 Experimental/Developmental Award (Tie) <#6>
          o Outstanding Individual Achievement Award <#7>
    * Three Stellar Keynote Speakers, Live Demos Wow CENIC 08 Attendees <#8>

	National Networking News:

    * Google Outlines Proposal for "Wi-Fi on Steroids"
    * The EUR100 Trillion FTTH Investment Opportunity
    * Hybrid Courses Show Promise
    * Schools Mull Needs of Adult Distance Learners
    * SNIA Forms Alliance with The Green Grid
    * Moblogging in Schools: With mobile blogging students can share
      video, pictures, ideas


  CENIC News & CENIC 08 Special Report:

President's Message: Lightpath to Sustainability
by Jim Dolgonas, CENIC President & CEO
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Picture of Jim Dolgonas]

Many of our subscribers know that CENIC acquired our own fiber over 
which the CalREN backbone network operates. And our network is connected 
to many other similar fiber-based research and education networks across 
the world. The main purpose for this interconnection of R&E networks, of 
course, has been support for various research and teaching initiatives. 
But the increasing concerns over data center power consumption costs and 
its effect on global warming have highlighted other important potential 
benefits of fiber-optic networks such as ours. Of particular importance 
is the power required to keep such data centers cool; not only does the 
very process of artificial cooling naturally generate more heat than it 
removes, but it also creates a substantial carbon "footprint" through 
consuming large amounts of electricity often generated by less than 
environmentally friendly means.

Today, the costs both economic and environmental of powering and cooling 
data centers have become a major issue. According to a March 20, 2008 
BusinessWeek article titled It's Too Darn Hot 
<http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_13/b4077060400752.html%3F>, 
the cost of power consumption by data centers doubled between 2000 and 
2006. Andy Karsner, Assistant US Energy Secretary for energy efficiency 
points out that "the demands for computing will grow exponentially, but 
electric consumption can't grow the same way." So, there is a major push 
to find solutions to this cooling conundrum.

Featuring cheap energy and a chilly climate that reduces the need for 
cooling data centers, northern countries such as Canada and Iceland may 
offer a natural solution, and many major commercial companies are 
considering locating data centers in these places.

However, locating data centers far from most human habitation in effect 
turns data centers into yet another advanced piece of isolated and 
remote scientific equipment -- like telescopes or deep-ocean 
observatories -- that must nevertheless be accessed quickly and 
transparently.

Happily, the means to achieving this are already with us and used every 
day by the world's research and education communities: optical networks 
like CalREN which are already used to provide a cost-effective means of 
shipping data to and from such locations. CalREN provides CENIC 
Associates with an excellent means of dealing with escalating power 
demands as well as answering the increasingly pressing question of 
climate change. Consolidated data centers even within California offer 
considerable opportunity to control costs, though with worldwide fiber 
connectivity, facilities beyond California and even beyond the United 
States are quite attractive, too.

CENIC would be pleased to assist with any such initiatives of our 
Associates.

[***] <#top>
CENIC Participates, Presents at Community College CISOA Conference
by Ed Smith, CENIC Project Manager
------------------------------------------------------------------------

As in years past, CENIC participated in the recently held California 
Community College annual conference of the CISOA/RP 
<http://www.cisoa.org/index.php?module=sthtml&op=load&sid=s1_012_news&article=15> 
(Chief Information Systems Officers Association/Research & Planning 
Group) with a booth in the vendor display area and as presenters.

"Having a presence at the CISOA conference was a great way to both meet 
with member institutions and communicate the system office plans for 
improving the campus connections to the CalREN network," said Ed Smith, 
who also presented the planned improvements in a break-out session along 
with Catherine McKenzie from the CCC System Office 
<http://www.cccco.edu/> (shown at right) and Deborah Ludford from the 
North Orange County Community College District <http://www.nocccd.edu/>. 
Ms. Ludford is Vice-Chair of CENIC's DC Technocal Advisory Committee 
(DC-TAC) this year and will assume the position of Chair of the DC-TAC 
next fiscal year.

CENIC President and CEO Jim Dolgonas also attended the conference and 
gave an update on current and upcoming CENIC activities during the 
System Office presentation.

[***] <#top>
Governor Schwarzenegger's California Broadband Task Force Wins 2008 
Gigabit/Broadband Award
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the past half a dozen or more years' concerns have been expressed 
regarding the availability of broadband services in California, 
especially in rural areas. Efforts such as CENIC's own Gigabit or Bust 
initiative sought to raise the visibility of networking needs across the 
state.

Shortly after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's election to office, he 
explored using technology to increase the efficiency and effectiveness 
of state operations. Subsequently, he issued an Executive Order 
directing state agencies to consider the use of videoconferencing as a 
way to avoid travel costs. Closely on the heels of a major report by the 
CA Public Utilities Commission <http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/> on the 
status of broadband in California, the Governor issued an Executive 
Order in October 2006 calling for the creation of a Broadband Task Force 
<http://www.calink.ca.gov/taskforcereport/> to identify steps toward 
increasing broadband deployment in California.

Pursuant to the Executive Order, Dale Bonner, Secretary of Business, 
Transportation and Housing, convened and led the task force. The 
California Broadband Task Force brought together public and private 
stakeholders to identify barriers to broadband deployment and approaches 
for reducing them, to identify opportunities for increased broadband 
adoption, and enable the creation and deployment of new advanced 
communication technologies. An accurate snapshot of areas in the state 
that lack adequate access to broadband services is one of many valuable 
outcomes of the work of the task force.

The final Task Force report <http://www.calink.ca.gov/taskforcereport/> 
was released on January 17, 2008. The ongoing attention that Governor 
Schwarzenegger and his staff have given to broadband technology issues 
is admirable. Through his leadership and his willingness to elevate the 
importance of broadband deployment and usage in California, the Governor 
has contributed to a more technology friendly climate in the state, 
paving the way for additional opportunities for advancement in this area.

California Broadband Initiative Manager Anne Neville accepted the award 
on behalf of the California Broadband Task Force.

[***] <#top>
K-20 Education Collaborative Effort to Create Rich Online Course to Help 
California Students Pass Required High School Exit Exam, Wins 2008 
Educational Award
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) represents the state's 
most recent attempt to improve education by tying graduation to a single 
standardized measure of competency. Statewide, approximately 48,000 
students in the Class of 2006 found themselves unable to get a diploma 
due to the need to pass one or both portions of the Exit Exam 
(mathematics and/or English Language Arts), and controversy ensued. In 
response, the State Legislature made block grants available through the 
California Community College Chancellor's Office <http://www.cccco.edu/> 
to local Community Colleges that wanted to serve this population of 
students. The Butte-Glenn <http://www.butte.edu/> and Lake Tahoe 
Community College <http://www.ltcc.edu/> Districts independently applied 
for grants, and finding they shared a common vision on how students 
should be served, they entered into a partnership, planting the seed 
that would become the statewide CAHSEE: Stepping into Your Future 
<http://www.cahseesteps.net/> initiative.

Given limited funds, students in roughly forty counties were not going 
to be able to be served by grant-funded community college programs. Even 
if sufficient funds were available to offer programs in every county, 
many 18 and 19 year old students would not be able to participate due to 
the need to work or meet the needs of young children. That reality drove 
the Butte-Glenn CCD, the Lake Tahoe CCD and their partners to the 
conclusion that online opportunities for students were sorely needed.

Teachers, faculty, and staff from the state's K-20 education community, 
public libraries, and nonprofit community technology centers have worked 
together to develop two highly engaging hybrid courses that prepare 
students across the state for the CAHSEE. This CalREN-enabled program 
includes online interactive exercises as well as "face time" with 
instructors via web based collaboration tools and/or videoconferencing.

Gordon D. Cremer (Bute-Glenn Community College), Stephanie Couch 
(CENIC), and Rudy Rizo (LA USD <http://www.lausd.net/>) accepted the 
award on behalf of CAHSEE: Stepping Into Your Future.

[***] <#top>
With Pac-10 Internet Video Exchange, 2008 High-Performance Award Winner, 
Collegiate Athletics Enter the Digital Age via Reliable Broadband Networking
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today, the typical Office of Intercollegiate Athletics is a far 
different place than what most people knew as "the gym" in past student 
days. Walk into any coach's office and you will see, besides the normal 
sports gear, piles and piles of video tapes and DVDs. Video of athletes' 
performance is critical to coaching today, and all teams analyze their 
opponent's previous performance. However, to prevent wealthier schools 
from having an unfair advantage, NCAA rules disallow in-person scouting 
of opponents. Instead, and with the NCAA's blessing, each team 
videotapes its own games and exchanges these video files with their next 
opponent one week before a given game.

Prior to the 2005 season, these video exchanges consisted of exchanging 
physical media via courier services such as Federal Express. This was an 
onerous task for all schools, and was particularly so for those schools 
located long distances from airports or without appropriate courier 
services. It was also very costly; for example, at UCLA 
<http://www.ucla.edu/> these courier services could cost roughly $6,000 
per year per sport.

Many of the video coordinators at the 110 division I-A NCAA schools 
realized there must be an electronic solution, but attempts to use FTP 
(the Internet-based File Transfer Protocol) were deemed failures due to 
extremely long and unreliable file transfer times. For example, a single 
football game is typically an 18 Gigabit video file, and teams must 
exchange all of their current season's past games each weekend. A single 
game video transfer could take 10-15 hours and by the end of the season, 
a team may have ten or more games to transfer.

At a Pac-10 video coordinators' meeting prior to the 2005 football 
season, Steve Pohl of the University of Oregon <http://www.uoregon.edu/> 
suggested the Pac-10 look into using the high-bandwidth connections that 
academic colleagues already enjoyed through CalREN in California and 
interconnections across Internet2 to universities in other states. UCLA 
Video Coordinator Ken Norris contacted Chris Thomas of UCLA's Office of 
Information Technology asking for assistance. Together, the two men 
designed a pilot program involving four conference schools (UCLA 
<http://www.ucla.edu/>, USC <http://www.usc.edu/>, Stanford 
<http://www.stanford.edu/> -- all CalREN-connected CENIC member 
institutions, and the University of Washington 
<http://www.uwashington.edu/>, plus a site outside the Pac-10 
conference, Notre Dame <http://www.notredame.edu/>. Instead of using 
commercial Internet connections, these sites interconnected via 
high-bandwidth links that all of these schools have to each other via 
advanced next generation Internet networks for high-speed FTP-based 
electronic video exchange for the 2005 season, using a specially tuned 
FTP implementation from the French National Particle Physics Institute 
<http://www.in2p3.fr/> in Lyon, France. The increase in speed of 
transfer over these links turned a previously unsuccessful solution into 
a viable option.

Based on the success of this pilot, all ten video coordinators for the 
Pac-10 voted unanimously to move to full electronic exchange for the 
2006 season, and the new technology was an unqualified success. No 
Pac-10 school exchanged conference video via courier, and all 
participants were delighted by the time savings and ease of electronic 
video exchange. The success of the program in fact was a significant 
motivator for some schools to upgrade their connectivity and to improve 
their own campus networks to eliminate bottlenecks.

The ten Pac-10 video coordinators also responded to the outstanding 
reliability and predictability of CENIC's CalREN services, and in some 
particularly illuminating ways. At the beginning of the season, vide 
coordinators were downloading videos on Saturday night to be sure of 
meeting their coaches' 5:00 PM Sunday deadlines. As they gained 
confidence in the system, however, downloads began to take place after 
noon on Sunday, a clear expression of faith that the network could be 
counted on for quick, robust delivery of large video files on a regular 
basis.

Ken Norris and Chris Thomas of UCLA accepted the award.

[***] <#top>
High Energy Physics and Digital Cinema Tie for 2008 
Experimental/Developmental Award
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The bleeding-edge category of Experimental/Developmental Applications 
includes some of the most far-sighted and visionary research projects 
anywhere on the globe, and in 2008, CENIC found it impossible to choose 
only one winner. Consequently, a tie was declared between the 
international high-energy physics computing project UltraLight and the 
equally global, super-high-quality digital media exchange and production 
projects of CineGrid.

"Ties aren't the sort of thing we work toward," says CENIC President and 
CEO Jim Dolgonas. "We have four categories, and we generally aim to give 
four awards. But this year, choosing between UltraLight and CineGrid 
would simply have been impossible. Both projects are absolutely stunning 
and showcase everything that a researcher could hope for in terms of 
what reliable high-performance networking can help them achieve." Adds 
Dolgonas, "Both projects will be influential in shaping broadband 
applications for decades to come, and we're thrilled that CENIC could 
play a central part in enabling them. Enabling California's research and 
education community is, after all, why we were created."

The UltraLight <http://www.ultralight.org/> collaboration is comprised 
of an international team of researchers currently working on advanced 
global systems and networks to meet the needs of experiments due to 
begin at CERN's Large Hadron Collider <http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/> in 
2008. In a demonstration at the SuperComputing 07 
<sc07.supercomputing.org/> conference held last November in Reno, NV, 
seven individual 10-Gigabit fiber paths (six provided by CENIC and one 
by Internet2) were used bi-directionally at high efficiency to move vast 
files of scientific data at blinding transfer rates of 80 Gigabits per 
second of bi-directional transfer. This is the equivalent of twelve 
full-length Hollywood movie DVDs in one second!

This achievement relied in part on one of the 2006 Innovations in 
Networking Award Winners, MonALISA <http://monalisa.caltech.edu/>. 
MonALISA, developed over the last six years by Caltech and its partners 
at CERN and the Universitatea Politehnica Bucharest, is a globally 
scalable framework of services to monitor and help manage and optimize 
the operational performance of computing grids, networks, and running 
applications in real time. This framework is ideal for creating and 
dynamically managing dispersed collaborative environments over Internet 
networks.

Accepting on behalf of the UltraLight project was Julian Bunn of the 
California Institute of Technology <http://www.caltech.edu/>.

 From the very tiny, very specialized world of high-energy physics, the 
next award winner moves to the world of digital cinema and 
entertainment. The international nonprofit CineGrid 
<http://www.cinegrid.org/> promotes research, development, and 
deployment of ultra-high performance digital media -- sound and picture 
-- over advanced networks, using grid computing technologies for 
networked collaboration. CineGrid has organized a number of experimental 
projects designed both to showcase what advanced networks can support in 
the world of digital media, and to test those same networks, pushing 
them as far as they can go in the pursuit of the most immersive possible 
experience. CineGrid @ Holland Festival 2007 certainly did that and more.

On June 20-21, 2007 CineGrid recorded and streamed live 4K digital 
motion pictures with 5.1 surround sound of the operatic performance "Era 
la Notte" from the Holland Festival <http:/www.hollandfestival.nl/> in 
Amsterdam over CalREN and partner IP networks to California. The 
75-minute live performance was transmitted nearly 10,000 kilometers, in 
real time, to the University of California, San Diego 
<http://www.ucsd.edu/> where it was viewed in 4K on a large screen, with 
surround-sound, by an audience in the 200-seat auditorium of the 
California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology 
(Calit2 <http://www.calit2.net/>). People in the audience in San Diego 
reported that they felt as if they were actually in the concert hall in 
Amsterdam.

This technical experiment was particularly interesting for many reasons 
but primarily because live performances require utterly reliable 
throughput and low-latency responsiveness. A less than perfect 
connection would be instantly noticed and may not be fixed later since, 
during a live performance of course, there is no "later."

The CineGrid @ Holland Festival 2007, which is being recognized for the 
2008 Experimental/Developmental Award, confirms that even these most 
demanding types of streaming media distribution can be done over 
high-performance fiber-optic infrastructure such as CalREN, today.

Accepting on behalf of CineGrid was Tom DeFanti (Calit2 at UCSD), Laurin 
Herr (Pacific Interface), Natalie von Osdol (Pacific Interface), and 
Naohisa Ohta (Keio University).

[***] <#top>
Jerry Keith Wins Outstanding Individual Achievement Award
------------------------------------------------------------------------

CENIC will also present an Outstanding Individual Achievement award for 
2008 to Jerry Keith in recognition of the outstanding contributions he 
has made to CENIC and the CalREN community. Not only did Jerry serve as 
Business Advisory Council (BAC) chair and CENIC Conference Committee 
chair multiple years, but he assumed both roles during times of 
transition, when strong leadership was most essential.

As chair of the CENIC Conference Committee in 2004, the first year in 
which we handled planning directly, Jerry adeptly managed the 
relationship with our external events coordinators, providing an 
essential link between these coordinators and the conference planning 
committee. As continuing chair of the Conference Committee in 2005, when 
we brought all logistics for this event in-house, Jerry ensured that 
every detail was addressed, leading to a successful and well-run 
conference. In addition to the myriad conference issues, he also 
provided the wireless equipment and technical resources to create a 
back-up network connection both years when he realized previous 
conferences had not included a backup link. Two years later, as the 2007 
Conference Chair, he once again provided much-needed guidance due to the 
departure of our in-house conference coordinator just two short months 
before the event.

Jerry also took over the role of BAC Chair at a pivotal time. In 
2004-05, amid spirited discussion related to the transition of our 
funding model, Jerry led the successful effort to establish a new fee 
schedule for member institutions.

CENIC is recognizing Jerry Keith for his leadership in two highly 
visible areas of interest to the CalREN community during times when good 
leadership was critical. We are honored to provide him with this 
well-deserved recognition

[***] <#top>
Three Stellar Keynote Speakers, Live Demos Wow CENIC 08 Attendees
by Janis Cortese, CENIC Manager of Publicity & Communications
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This year's Keynote Speakers were as illustrious as the winners of the 
2008 Innovations in Networking Awards, with Rachelle Chong, California 
Public Utilities Commissioner <http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/> giving a talk on 
Monday titled "Building Tomorrow's California: Broadband Highways and 
Environmental Leadership." (Video of this address can be found on the 
CENIC 08 conference website <http://cenic08.cenic.org/video.html>, along 
with the other Keynote Addresses and many presentations.)

In her engaging address, Commissioner Chong considered the utility of 
government regulation in promoting broadband, where the market can be 
trusted to provide adequate penetration and where government regulation 
is needed, and the broad array of economic and social benefits, both 
current and projected, to the state thanks to broadband deployment, 
availability, and adoption.

Tuesday's Keynote Speaker was Dan Bursch, the Naval Postgraduate School 
<http://www.nps.edu/> National Reconnaissance Office chair and former 
NASA Astronaut.

His talk, enhanced by many beautiful, high-resolution photographs, was 
titled "Expedition Four to the International Space Station: 
Collaboration off the planet" and examined the technological and even 
psychological aspects to collaborating across distances normally not 
spanned by fiber-optic cable, using examples of his own experiences on 
the Space Shuttle and during his tenure on board the International Space 
Station.

A dynamic and witty speaker, Bursch also related anecdotes about his 
time in orbit that alternately held the audience rapt and elicited 
laughter.

The Wednesday Keynote Address was equally fascinating, given by UC Santa 
Cruz <http://www.ucsc.edu/>'s Sandra Faber and titled "Piping the Light 
of the Cosmos Through Dark Fiber." Her talk considered the vast quantity 
of data (by her projects, soon to equal an Exabyte) generated by 
professional and amateur astronomy, the problems associated with 
analyzing it, and the ways in which high-performance networking can 
mitigate them. In her talk, she shared with a wowed audience some of the 
most advanced (and unwieldy without cutting-edge networking, in terms of 
processing and file size) simulations of galactic formation, galactic 
collisions, and planetary behavior to date.

Like Chong's address, both Bursch's and Faber's addresses are also 
available in MP4 format on the CENIC 08 conference website.

On March 10, after a day of fabulous general sessions presentations and 
breakout sessions on both teaching and learning and network technology 
and research, attendees to CENIC 08 were also treated to demonstrations 
on precisely the sorts of applications made possible by networks like 
CalREN and the difference they can make to people throughout the state 
and beyond. UCLA <http://www.ucla.edu/>'s Joan Slottow, the 
Exploratorium <http://www.exploratorium.edu/>'s Sherry Hsi, and San 
Diego State University <http://www.sdsu.edu/>'s Eric Frost shared with 
attendees in Exhibit Hall East achievements in media-enriched teaching 
and learning, grid computing, and emergency response.

Sherry Hsi presented the great media resources made available by the 
Exploratorium that can be used to enhance learning throughout the state 
and beyond, including lessons and demonstrations that students can use 
to gain hands-on experience with scientific ideas -- and that teachers 
can use as well to present these ideas in an engaging, participatory 
manner.

Joan Slottow's demonstration built on her presentation introducing 
attendees to the UCLA Grid Portal <http://grid.ucla.edu/>, which 
provides a single web interface to those computational clusters that 
have joined the UCLA Grid. Additionally, the UCLA Grid Portal can 
directly access some clusters outside of the UCLA Grid, including 
clusters on the TeraGrid.

Eric Frost's presentation was riveting, concentrating as it did on an 
event of vivid importance to people throughout California: the 2007 
wildfire season. Using stunning high-resolution photographs of the fires 
themselves, Frost was able to demonstrate how such information, properly 
used by emergency responders, could present an integrated, real-time 
model of such an emergency situation quite unlike any that first 
responders have been able to use before, transforming how such 
situations could be dealt with and enhancing understanding of how they 
develop.

[***] <#top>


  National Networking News:

Google Outlines Proposals for "Wi-Fi on Steroids"
Source: News.com <http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9901747-7.html>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Google on Monday said it has a plan to have American consumers from 
Manhattan to rural North Dakota surfing the Web on handheld gadgets at 
gigabits-per-second speeds by the 2009 holiday season.

The company, joined by other heavyweights like Microsoft and Dell, has 
long been lobbying for the Federal Communications Commission to free up 
unused broadcast TV channels known as "white spaces" for unlicensed use 
by personal devices. That portion of the TV band is highly prized 
because it can propagate long distances and through obstacles.

The EUR100 Trillion FTTH Investment Opportunity
Source: Communications Breakdown 
<http://telcommunicator.blogspot.com/2008/03/eur-100-trillion-ftth-investment.html> 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

FTTH is a hot topic already and it is only a matter of time before 
investors start realizing the true potential by launching special 
products or investment funds. The only trouble is, there are few FTTH 
pure plays in the public realm (unless you count any telco as such, 
because FTTH is the inescapable way forward). However, direct 
investments may come into play.

The Swedish Ventura Team recently reported on usage, which provided some 
reassurance to anybody displaying scepticism over what to do with all 
that bandwidth ...

	
Hybrid Courses Show Promise
Source: eSchool News 
<http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53395;_hbguid=75a0c5cf-2d27-4826-987e-8c795427a076> 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hybrid courses," or courses that deliver part of their instruction in a 
traditional lecture manner and part in an online environment, are 
becoming increasingly popular among schools and colleges. Proponents of 
the concept say it capitalizes on the benefits that both face-to-face 
and online learning can provide---and now, there is some evidence to 
suggest that hybrid courses can help students learn more effectively.

Schools Mull Needs of Adult Distance Learners
Source: eSchool News 
<http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=53419;_hbguid=96dad112-41d0-4f7f-ac57-ace8ff935539&d=top-news> 

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many ed-tech advocates have voiced support for distance learning as a 
way for K-12 students to take courses not offered at their regular 
schools or enroll in courses for college credit. But another group of 
learners--adults who turn to distance learning to return or expand their 
schooling--is attracting more and more national attention.

Colleges and universities are examining the needs of adult distance 
learners as they develop online courses that meet the needs of not only 
18-to-22-year-olds, but also those students who might have full-time 
jobs and family responsibilities.

SNIA Forms Alliance with The Green Grid
Source: GRIDToday <http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/2274203.html>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) announced today that 
it has formed an alliance with The Green Grid. The SNIA and its Green 
Storage Initiative (GSI) plan to work with The Green Grid in developing 
and promoting standards, measurement methods, processes and technologies 
to improve overall datacenter energy efficiencies.

"Tackling the challenges associated with energy efficiency and green 
computing will require collaboration across all areas of the IT 
industry," said Vincent Franceschini, chair of the SNIA. "Storage plays 
an important role in power and energy efficiency within datacenters and 
business computing ecosystems."

Moblogging in Schools: With mobile blogging students can share video, 
pictures, ideas
Source: Converge Online 
<http://www.convergemag.com/story.php?catid=231&storyid=106794>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jonathan Furness has a mobile blog that captures the daily life of 
Stepping Stones School in Hindhead, Surrey. Like regular blog spaces, 
Furness posts videos, pictures and ideas, only his version is all 
classroom related and the images are taken with a mobile phone.

One lesson Furness blogs about is his "tubeless siphon" experiment. He 
details what the experiment is based on -- a dyed pink polyethylene 
oxide solution -- and how the experiment was performed ...


  About CENIC and How to Change Your Subscription:

California's education and research communities leverage their 
networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network 
Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, 
high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs 
of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and 
operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a 
high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to 
meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast 
majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In 
order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also 
provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry 
research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and 
educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these 
institutions also donate expertise through their participation in 
various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively 
and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network 
as technology advances.

For more information, visit www.cenic.org <http://www.cenico.rg/>.

Subscription Information: You can subscribe and unsubscribe to CENIC 
Today at http://lists.cenic.org/mailman/listinfo/cenic-today.

[(c) Copyright 2008 CENIC. All Rights Reserved.] <http://www.cenic.org/>

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