Experimental Special Topics Lectures

    During 2005, the University began to make serious use of a system called Media Site Live. I had the opportunity to deliver a series of lectures in Macedonia using the system. After that experience, I decided that the technology might be useful for delivering short lectures on topics of interest to students, alumni, and the general public. Below are two such experimental lectures. Beware that as of May 2005, they still required Internet Explorer as the browser.

    • The Document Processing Revolution
    • The Trasition to E-Business

    I also developed a short lecture on my experiences with using the system for the folks at the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education. It is included below as another example.

    • Visits, Vignettes, and IDI

    If you view one of these videos, I would appreciate it if you would drop me a note and share your reactions.

    Selected Short Courses and Lectures

    This page contains links to sets of powerpoint slides in various formats. Immediately below, you will find notes for e-business, XML, Unix, and Java. Far and away, the notes for ebusiness are the most extensive and cover theory, technology, and examples. The XML lectures are also fairly extensive and up-to-date. The Unix and Java notes are fairly basic and meant as an introduction.

    Further down the page you will find a series of individual lectures that I have voice annotated as part of an experiment. These lectures, because of the audio and video are rather large and don't work very well on slow speed connections.

    If you look through the notes or listen to a lecture, I would appreciate it if you would drop me a note and share your reactions.

    Online Notes: Special Topics

    • Theory and Technology for E-Business
      These lectures provide an Overview of E-Business with a focus on technology. I have used the lectures for seminars offered in Norway and Thailand as well as with a variety of organizations in the United States
    • A Short Course on XML
      These lectures were developed over the summer of 2001 and reflect the best data I have at the current time on XML. XML is a hot topic and there is a lot of interest in it and the related standards. The only lecture missing from this set at the current time is one on RDF which I am still working on.
    • An Introduction to Unix
      These lectures were developed over the summer of 2001 for an external client who wanted to bring staff up to speed on Unix. The set was revised extensively in 2002 for use as a introduction to Unix for students in the graduate introduction to information science.
    • Java
      These lectures provide an Overview of Java with a focus on internet and web based applications. The lectures were initially prepared for an external client using them for staff development effort. I am slowly working on converting them to a suitable form for use in a course here at Pitt.

    Annotated Lectures

    I have been experimenting with some technologies to put lectures on line. Samples of some of these lectures are included below. All of them are very large in size because of the audio or video components. Even with a high speed connection, you may experience drop-outs or delays. If you view one, I would appreciate it if you would drop me a note and share your reactions. They are first cuts at working this way, so there are a few "ums" and "aahs" that have to be removed. Also, the slide transitions are less than optimal, but these are technological limitations that can be overcome if people find them useful.

    The HTML/PowerPoint slides require Internet Explorer Home PageIE 5.0 or greater. The Realaudio and Realvideo require Realplayer 8.0 with a particular codec -- which will automatically be downloaded. The software is available from the links below:

    • An Introduction to Game Design (requires IE5)(temporarily unavailable) addresses several aspects of computer game design. In includes an brief introduction to game theory and mathematical modeling. A little discussion of distributed processing and Graphical User Interface Design follows. The lecture concludes with a brief introduction to Java Swing.
    • Important Concepts for Client Server(requires IE5)(temporarily unavailable) provides a review of important concepts for client server systems. It begins by discussing how an operating system works at a very high level, and relates these ideas to the development of server programs. It introduces various unix commands to access operating system information and describes the equivalent API calls. Programs, and in particular the kinds of errors that occur in programming, are also addressed. The lecture then turns to processes in memory and how the operating system communicates with them and how processes running on different machines communicate.
    • Unix for Client Server(requires IE5)(temporarily unavailable) This lecture provides a review of unix tools and commands. It is very specific to the environment at Pitt and in particular at SIS. It begins with a lengthy discussion of the various ways to access our unix system. It spends a good deal of time talking about the resources that exist to further your knowledge -- man pages, answerbook, application help systems, etc. It examines a few unix utilities -- ftp, grep, etc. and finally provides a very brief introduction to workshop, the SUN IDE.
    • Current State of E-Business (requires IE5) provides an overview of the current state of E-Business focusing on defintions, coontext, and trends. It also provides an overview of the opportunities present.
    • Concepts and Technologies for E-Business (requires IE5) is an address prepared for the annual meeting of NACUBO that provides and introduction to the technologies and business models prevalent on the Web.
    • Approaches to E-Business addresses E-Business in the context of workflow automation, reengineering, and cooperative processing.
      • Approaches to E-Business (requires Real Player8.0) This version has a talking head and audio overlay and uses a lot of bandwidth.
      • Approaches to E-Business (requires Real Player8.0) This version has audio accompaniment without a talking head and is the least bandwidth intensive of all the presentations.
    • Web Site Conceptualization (requires IE5) addresses the process by which a business comes to determine what a web sit can do for them and how the basic design of the system is set up in the context of competitive analysis and benchmarking.
    • An Introduction to E"speak (requires IE5)(temporarily unavailable) was designed to provide an overview of the E'Speak environment from Hewlett-Packard which is a next generation component transaction monitor to allow dynamically composable services to be registered, found, and used on the internet. The lecture provides both a conceptually simplified description of E"Speak as well as a high level architectural overview of an instructional services project which is being designed and implemented at the University of Pittsburgh to demonstrate the use of this environment.
    • An E"speak Revisited(requires IE5)(temporarily unavailable) provide a review of our experiences in developing an e'speak marketplace. It is a follow on to the previous presentation and covers many of the same topics, with updated information.
    • Information Technology: Four Perspectives (requires IE5) is an overview of the current state of infortion science. The presentation addresses four topics -- what is information, how are colleges and universities preparing people for the future, what is the nature of this digital revolution, and what does the future hold.

    Accesses since Dec/18/2002: