WashMyStuff.com

The name says it all. If its dirty, we wash it, so you have more time for studying, working and a personal life. Wash My Stuff offers worry-free laundry service by providing unlimited wash, fold, scheduled pick-ups & drop-off’s. We also provide each customer with a online tracking system so, you can monitor your clothes every step of the way.

Wash My Stuff is a laundry service of dedicated professionals who pick-up, wash, fold and delivery your laundry with a 24 hour tturn around time. All loads are professionally washed so there’s no need to worry about your clothes being mixed up with someone else’s.

Save time and money with the unlimited package which allows you to wash as much as you want for a set price. Unlimited packages are paid monthly or by the semester. No extra fees or charges for delicates and large items such as bed spreads.

Wash My Stuff was created to allow students and working professionals more time for homework, research, friends, family and hobbies. Life is filled with many responsibities, but laundry does not have to be oneof them. Wash My Stuff allows you to concentrate on whats important.

It’s easy, you pack it, we pick it up, wash it, and drop it off.

Fitscape and the iWell Program

Designed, developed, and enhanced this site along side a creative and talented individual: Bryan Rosencrantz. He came up with the idea of Fitscape, an online healthcare software company committed to innovation and total body well-being. He founded it in 1995, and at the time Fitscape was one of the first companies to recognize the benefit of bringing health and wellness solutions online. Yes, even before eDiets and Weight Watchers. Fitscape continues to pioneer new products and concepts to shape the wellness industry online.

This is one of the largest Coldfusion sites that I was involved in, with more than 200 pages and a very complex database schema. Given all this I must say it is a constant challenge with new features and engaging complexities. You might be wondering what is iWell?

USC on iTunes U

Transcript of presentation of USC on iTunes U
Powerpoint iTunes U Presentation
Diagram for Operation Between GDS*SHIBBOLETH*SIS

[ After Slide - Course Creation Process ]
Thank you Suh-Pyng for the amazing introduction. Welcome everybody. I’m going to start off by guiding you through the process of how we got to this point of authenticating and authorizing our user base against iTunes U BEFORE I actually show you the Demo. Faculty tend to do this often when they hold your test results back until the end of class, we’ll be doing something similar here to keep you on your toes.

[ iTunes U Login Slide ]
When we first started with iTunes U our first dilema was how to get our students and faculty to login to this system without issuing yet another username and password for them to remember. So we evaluated what information do we need for this sytem: we need student info, enrollment info, and staff & faculty info. It turns out that we needed the exact same information that blackboard uses. After we evaluted the data requirements we determiend that we somehow need to integrate GDS, Shibboleth, SIS, and our own database to create an authentication and authorization method that will work for us. The result is a process that i will walk you through in the next few slides, and hopefully you will be able to set it up as well for your own needs, while learning how USC iTunes U came to be.

[ Process Slide I ]
First, let’s look at What is Shibboleth? Shibboleth is an internet 2 initative that started in 2002, it enables precisely what we were trying to do in this case… have our user base login without re-issuing everyone usernames and password. As we have done at Marshall when we first developed the Portal and as we have done at the Law School when we developed our portal. On your CD i provided the latest code to install on your servers if you want to setup Shibboleth, and this URL will point you to USC specific instructions on how to proceed with the installations. You will need an SSL certificate though, so contact Verisign or Thawte to purchase this before doing an installation. I recommend Thawte for an SSL certificate simply because it is inexpensive, and they turn around certificates in under a week.

[ Process Slide II ]
Recognize this screen? This is the Login Screen for USC Shibboleth, it is the screen you will see when entering places such as Oasis, Class Registration, Software Downloads @ ITS, or USC iTunes U. However, upon logon to this screen you don’t get much except a token. This token doesn’t have much significance, except that it tells you that you have been recognized as a member of USC. At this point we don’t know any attributes about you, so this is where GDS comes in. GDS Provides attributes such as USC ID or USC PVID and soon to come enrollment information as well. However, there lies our problem… enrollment information is not present upon logon, so we need to bring in a third source… this source is SIS. I’m sure many of us in this room have tried to get information from SIS, otherwise known as the vault, but unsuccesfully. So first we filled in the necessary form to request these attributes from the GDS Committee to get an approval on the attributes we needed after a login, we determined these to be just two… USC ID and PVID. The form is included in your CD, and it shows our request exactly as we filled it in. Why did we only request these two attributes? Well, the rest was information we needed from SIS, so we put in a request to SIS. Did i just say “we”? I meant Suh-Pyng, because if i approached SIS asking for attributes they would probably laugh. Now, that we had everything in place, its time to make all these three datasources come together.

[ The Magic Slide ]
Combining everything we have discussed so far and summarizing it we have these steps:
Get an SSL Cert
Install Shib
Install SQL
Get GDS Attributes approved
Provide SIS with XML Schema
Create an SFTP location on your server
Receive and Import SIS Data
Then Form proper authorization credentials

[ Diagram Slide ]
Now let’s see all this in a diagram, to make it clearer. We receive information from SIS, info from GDS… we merge it on our iTunes box via a series of SQL DTS packages, and stored procedures that distribute the data, and then we form a nicely packaged authorization credential to iTunes over SSL. I’m including all the code for the DTS package and the Stored Procedures in your CD as well for reference, to help you put this together as well.

[ Security Slide ]
You might be wondering how is all this data secured? Well, we haven’t forgotten about security at any point during the development. Very few ports need to be opened to the public, and only a few applications need to be installed on a light box to make this magic happen. Let’s review this screen and what we opened in our case… only two ports are open to the general public: 80 and 443. The rest are limited to our subnet, or even further down to just a single machine. Part of the process when working with so much data is to get an audit to assure yourself and others that everything is in good shape. That’s where we proceeded to contact ITS, and with Luke Shepperd’s help the security team performed an audit on the box. The results were great, and we got the seal of approval from an external security team, assuring us we are safe.

[ Applications Slide ]
Before we get to our demo, let’s think of a couple of other applications for this authentication and authorization method. A few that come to my mind… within the MyUSC Portal for instance, we could display to students the classes they are enrolled in together with a list of books for those classes, so that they don’t have to visit the USC Bookstore website, re-authenticate, and generate a booklist. Or for instance in the Software Downloads section of the ITS website we could provide Class specific software to the students upon login, such as SPSS or Visual Studio, which is now distirbuted within class. For instance, if i was enrolled in a computer science course then i would have access to Microsoft’s suite of development tools. Lastly, in my last portal development, the USC Law Portal… i could display a student photo directory based on course enrollment, so that my faculty would have a photo roster. Any other ideas? MyMarshall integration, new media site EX servers, and in the near future blackboard.

[ Demonstration ]
Ok, i think you have been very patient with us thus far, so let’s get started with a login into USC iTunes U. First I’ll login with administrator access to walk you through the basic functionality it offers, then we’ll have Suh-Pyng login with her Faculty access level, and lastly we’ll have a student login to show us what they see.�

New USC Law Website

The new USC Law website is up and running. After only 3 months of development the site has been reinvigorated to a site that is not only elegant by design but one that was created with the user in mind. The creation allows for easy updating, it houses dynamic graphs, a content management system, timely and engaging articles. After much research and solicited feedback from faculty, students, staff, alumni and other administrators in and outside the law school the USC School of Law is now home to a user friendly web site tailored for its constituents.

The USC School of Law produces more then 100 events per year. Registration for these events has historically been done by printed materials mailed to invitees, a process that is costly and time consuming for those planning and attending the event. The development of online registration allows individuals to get event and program details online, giving them access to event dates, times, and the ability to RSVP when most convenient for them.

The USC School of law produces an exuberant amount of news stories and articles each month. I have worked closely with the PR department within the law school to develop a time saving method of posting the stories that come out of their department. I have created a content management system that allows for users to self select placement of the articles they post and houses an archive of the articles. Administrators also have the ability to enter an expiration date for each piece which will auto delete the story at the designated expiration date. Users will also have the option to refer a given article to a friend.

Flash videos have been added to give the web site a more dynamic feel. Interviews, promotional videos, special events, and commencement ceremonies are just a few of the things that take place at the law school. What I have done is made it possible for people to participate on a more dynamic level by watching these streaming videos.

The online directory is a valuable tool for any organization. The USC School of Law now has the names, contact information and photos for all of our faculty, staff and students. I’m especially excited about this feature as I feel being able to match a face to a name and recognize colleagues whom you might not otherwise see face to face is a valuable asset. I’ve also given users the ability to download a Vcard and input contact information into Microsoft Outlook or Entourage.

With so many departments, areas and content managers within the new USC Law website I felt it was necessary to create a search engine that screened for personal information (PI) on the website. The code created for this search engine makes it impossible for content managers to inadvertently upload social security numbers, phone numbers or other PI that one might not want published.

MyLaw Portal

The MyLaw Portal uses a Microsoft SQL scheme for managing permissions via groups that is very similar to the methods used in Active Directory.  In fact, upon logon it verifies the username, password, and groups against AD, then continues to seek group permissions within SQL.  This integration was made to avoid duplications of username & password, and to avoid duplication of permission management.  The permission schema can be controlled by any member of the IT department and functions by placing users into department buckets, which are then granted access to a particular set of applications.

The administration of users is also done via the portal, whether it be a bulk loading of 200 incoming students, or a single new account.  The creation of the Portal account allows a user access to applications such as: dell warranty repair requests, sign up for training sessions, exam signups, book trading, volunteer log of hours, and a host of additional apps.