Selected Online Material

This page contains links to some online notes and lectures. Immediately below, you will find a few brief talks done using the University's mediasite software. Further down the page you will find a series of individual lectures that I have voice annotated as an experiment. Because the audio files are rather large, they may not work very well on slow speed connections.

Finally, I have placed my notes for courses and tutorials on e-business, XML, Unix, and Java online. 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.

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.

Mediasite 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.

• The Document Processing Revolution provides a easy to follow history of information from the library at Alexandria to the web.
• The Trasition to E-Business provides a very simple a brief introduction to how a business becomes an e-business
• Visits, Vignettes, and IDIis a short lecture on my experiences using mediasite system done for the folks at the Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education.

Annotated Lectures

I have been experimenting with some technologies to put lectures on line. Samples of some of these lectures are included below. They will work best with a high speed connection. 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 presentations are powerpoint converted to flash and should work in any browser.

• Document Processing and XML is a copy of a live lecture delivered on September 15, 2008 to the Introduction to Information Science (IS 2000) class. It provides some information about my teaching and research, a rather extensive discussion of background issues and a very brief overview of XML. The presentation is my first effort to capture a live classroom lecture. Unlike the other lectures available here, it may present some problems for the listener in that my off the cuff commentary, and my in class gesturing are not avialable. I would appreciate any feedback about the weaknesses in the presentation.
• Abstraction and Modeling is an introduction to some of the basic concepts in infortion science. The presentation addresses how we digitize signals and symbols, talks a little bit about abstractions and the role of abstractions models and metaphors in solving problems. While the presentation has a strong beginning, the section on modeling and metaphors is less complete.
• Information Technology: Four Perspectives 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.
• An Introduction to Game Design 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 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 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 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 is an address prepared for the annual meeting of NACUBO that provides and introduction to the technologies and business models prevalent on the Web.
• Web Site Design 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.

Sets of Course/Tutorial Notes

• 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.

Accesses since Dec/18/2002: