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Webcasting for Sustainability.

Presentation for Sustainability Building Reps.
place: Februrary 17, 1999, MUB 321.
presenter: jim.cerny@unh.edu (Computing & Information Services)

http://www.unh.edu/NIS/Courses/Misc/sustain-17FEB.html

The Issues.

What are our alternatives in using Internet technologies to do bulk or mass notification to a target audience? The following issues come up when considering the needs of the senders, receivers, and tech staff:

  • Does the audience have access?
  • Does it imply a passive or active audience?
  • Does it avoid spamming, i.e., can someone avoid receiving the notice?
  • Does it make good use of the technical resources, i.e., bandwidth, disk storage, and other system resources?
  • Does it accommodate degrees of urgency, from immediate (warnings) to long-term (conferences)?
  • Is it easy for the senders to use, e.g., does it allow require any special skills or permissions?
  • Does self-policing work for content, within a framework of University policies?
We will look at the kinds of notices you are interested in sending and consider how well the "fixes" listed below will work, with special mention of Webcasting as an emerging solution.
Webcasting. Web publishers can now broadcast content to their users on a a regular schedule with new "push" and "pull" technologies that are collectively referred to as Webcasting. Users benefit by having the information that is most important to them automatically delivered directly to their desktop without having to go look for it, and also by being notified when the information has been updated. [from Microsoft]

Technological fixes.

  • System connection (login) notices.
    • Usually limits on number, permission, and focus.
    • People quickly stop reading them.
  • E-mail.
    • Uses a nearly universal technology.
    • Very easy to author and launch.
    • Need for mailings lists, static and dynamic.
    • Wide difference is people's spam (junk mail) threshold.
    • Inefficient use of system resources to send many separate copies.
    • Hard to ignore due to its in-your-face nature.
  • Web pages.
    • Uses a nearly universal technology.
    • Not as easy as e-mail to author and launch.
    • Need acccess to a server.
    • Efficient use of system resources, with one copy, only transmitted by those who ask for it.
    • Easy to ignore due to need to visit the Web page.
    • Subscribing to notification services, e.g. NetMind.
      http://www.netmind.com/html/users.html
    • Possible to build personalized Web-based newsletters, e.g., MyYahoo
      http://my.yahoo.com/
  • Webcasting.
    • Family of "push" technologies.
    • Involves proprietary Microsoft technology (Active Channel).
    • Requires a proof-of-concept pilot.
    • Configuration and support needed? Back-end database?
    • Becomes a kind of "home" page.
    • Allows for personalization by recipient.
    • Allows for alarms.
    • Allows distributed authorship, but implies some gatekeepers.
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/backgrnd/html/msdn_pushwp.htm