COMPUTER CONNECTIONS:

INDIANA UNIVERSITY NETS MORE APPLAUSE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Following fast on the heels of an award naming Indiana University Bloomington the eighth "Most Wired Campus in the Nation," Yahoo! Internet

Life magazine has now hailed IU's UCS Knowledge Base as the best on the Web for providing technical computing support.

The magazine, which covers business and play on the Internet, reviews the UCS Knowledge Base in its September back-to-school issue.

Containing over 4,500 resolutions to common and not-so-common computing problems, the UCS Knowledge Base is a primary tool in IU's computing support services, which enable students, faculty and staff to support a large share of their own computing use. Begun as an internal consultant page in 1992, the Knowledge Base has grown into a support resource that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even on holidays. Averaging 30,000 "hits" per week, it now is not only a resource for the IU community, but for online users throughout the world.

The Yahoo! article is the latest in a series of special awards and acknowledgments that IU computer support services have received. The UCS Support Center, where the Knowledge Base was developed, holds a "Service 25 Award" from Service News. The award is for developing Web pages that help students, faculty and staff find computing support 24 hours a day. Other computing trade magazines featuring the Knowledge Base include Desktop Engineering, Computerworld Intranets and The New Review of Information Networking.

Below is an excerpt from the Yahoo! Internet Life article:

"Confused by your computer? Use the Web to make sense of it. And use it wisely. While huge computer-journalism sites such as CNET (www.cnet.com) and ZDNet (www.zdnet.com) contain valuable information about our silicon-chipped friends, they are not targeted at online users with specific, help-me-out problems.

"What sites are? Well, Indiana University's UCS Knowledge Base is a huge collection of technical questions and answers that will allay the fears of novices and numskulls alike.

"Input the keywords 'modem speed,' for example, and the Knowledge Base will deliver a long list of related questions and answers, including, 'Can a phone plugged into the line hinder my modem?' (surprisingly, yes -- Some phone ringing devices have a high enough impedance to interfere with normal modem transmission, especially at higher speeds).

"The site handles specific and general issues. And if you run into a dead end, submit your question to a consultant via e-mail; the answer will be filed in the archives so that it can benefit future visitors."

The UCS Knowledge Base can be found at http://sckb.ucssc.indiana.edu/kb/

For more information, contact Erik Novak, 812-855-0089 or 812-855-3911, enovak@indiana.edu or Karen Adams, University Computing Services, 812-855-2423,kadams@indiana.edu