Peddie Power!

Quick quiz... How much of the electricity used by the Athletic Center is currently being generated by Peddie's solar panels?

A. 0% - 15%
B. 15% - 30%
C. 30% - 45%
D. Over 45%

Before I give you the answer, take a look at the picture below. Unless you have flown over Peddie recently, you might not be aware that solar panels are installed in all of the locations highlighted in green. The capacity of the Peddie solar array is almost 1 megawatt.

While the size of our installation is impressive and a "megawatt" certainly sounds like a lot, the most important statistic is of course the answer to my question above. How much of the electricity that is used by the Athletic Center is being produced by our solar panels? If you would like to know the answer to this question you don't have to take my word for it, you can see for yourself anytime! We now have a real-time web accessible display of how much electricity we are producing. Currently this can be seen on the display in the Technology Center, but you can also view it from any Flash enabled web browser by going to the Peddie solar statistics web page. A sample of the solar stats page is shown below.
[Note: if you have any trouble viewing the stats page using Chrome just manually refresh the page and it will display properly.]

One thing that it is important to keep in mind when you view the page is the difference between power and energy. Power is a measure of the rate at which energy is being consumed or produced at a given instant in time. On the Peddie solar statistics page, power is expressed in kilowatts (kW) with 1 kilowatt equivalent to the amount of power used by ten 100-watt light bulbs. On the other hand, energy is a measure of the quantity of power consumed. On the solar stats page, energy is expressed in kilowatt hours (kWh).

One helpful way to conceptualize the relationship between power and energy is to think of water in a garden hose. You can think of power as being a measure of the strength of the stream of water coming out of the hose at any instant in time. Using this analogy, energy would then be the volume of water that came out of the hose over a period of time.

The solar stats page shows a graph of the power currently being delivered by the solar panels and by the electric utility company as well as a comparison of today's energy delivered by solar vs. utility. The bottom of the page shows the energy statistics for solar vs. utility for today, this week, this month, and even this year. When you look at the figures for this year keep in mind that the solar array did not come fully online until late spring.

Lastly, you will also see the current irradiance displayed on the page. The irradiance is a measure of the amount of power in sunlight measured in watts per square meter. If solar panels could turn all of the sunlight that hits them into power then the amount of power they produced would be their area (measured in square meters) times the irradiance. In practice, power is lost in many ways so the efficiency of solar panels is much less than 100% and the efficiency fluctuates based on several factors. It is interesting to see how things such as the time of day, time of year, and cloud cover affects the irradiance.

Your Peddie Backup

As I hope you know, the multicolored umbrella icon on your desktop is a very convenient way for you to backup files stored on your local hard drive, but do you know...

• what folders get backed up?
• that photos, music, and videos do NOT get backed up?
• where your files go?
• how you can check to make sure your files are really getting backed up?

It you don't know the answers to these questions, then you are probably not aware that if you have been storing your irreplaceable photos on your Peddie laptop and you are not backing them up to an external hard drive or an online photo service then your photos will be irretrievably lost should your hard drive fail.

Spending time ensuring that your files are backed up is like buying insurance--if you wait until you need it then it will be too late. Please don't wait until after you have lost irreplaceable files (years of family photos, countless hours of school work, etc.) to invest time making sure that your files are backed up.

We maintain a KB article named Peddie User Backups which thoroughly explains Peddie user backups. Please take a few minute to review this page so you understand the limitations of the Peddie backup program. If you have any questions, stop by the Technology Center and we will be glad to answer them.

Gmail Gems - The "Labs" Tab

If you haven't spent a few minutes scanning the Labs tab of Gmail settings, it is well worth your time. The Labs tab contains dozens of tools which can be used to customize the way Gmail behaves and to add functionality. While officially these tools are only experimental and may "change, break or disappear at any time," we have found that most are very stable and Google rarely removes a Labs feature.

To view the available Labs features click the gear icon in the top right corner of your Gmail screen and then select Mail settings. When in the Mail settings screen, click the Labs tab. Note that Labs also appears as an option right on the gear icon's drop down menu, but I'm not sure it will stay there whereas the Mail settings option will always be there. To enable a Labs tool, simply click the Enable radio button next to the tool and save changes.

Below are some of my favorite Labs tools. If you have a favorite that's not listed feel free to post its name and what it does in the comments section of this post.

Inserting Images
Standard Gmail still only allows you to include images as attachments, not embedded in your email (i.e. appearing in the body of your email). While including images as attachments is best if all you want to do is send someone some images, if you want to write a comment about an image then being able to insert the image into the body of your email is important. To do this, you need to enable the Inserting images Labs tool.

Canned Responses
If I were only allowed to enable one Labs feature, this would be it. Canned Responses allows you to create a clipboard of frequently used content and easily paste it into any location in the body of an email. Some uses include:

• Create multiple signatures that you can select from when replying to an email. I have a standard signature, a signature for posting to listservs, etc.
• Create email templates for messages you send often.
• Create boiler plate instructions for questions you commonly answer.

Undo Send

Did you ever click Send on an email only to realize you forgot to CC someone? Or worse, realize you sent your email to the wrong person? The Undo Send labs feature delays your email for a configurable about of time (5 to 30 seconds) during which time an Undo link appears at the top of your screen allowing you to cancel the send. However, once the message has been sent, there is no getting it back.

Mark As Read Button

This is a very simple feature which adds a Mark As Read button to your Gmail button bar. Without this Labs tool if you want to mark an email as read you either have to open it or select the option from the More drop down button. While a very simple tool, if you often have to mark emails as read it is a click saver.

Corralling Group Emails

One of the more common complaints we hear about Peddie email is that emails sent to groups (e.g to the Class of 20xx or FacultyStaff groups) fill up your inbox making it hard to quickly process the more important emails sent directly to you. If there were an easy fix for this we would have implemented it years ago. We have looked at many different options from Google Groups to custom applications, but in every case the cure either would not work or would be worse than the disease.

However, don't despair! There is an effective way to corral these emails using Google email labels and filters. Below is an example of how to do this for emails sent to the Class of 2015 group.

Example: Corralling emails sent to the Class of 2015 group.
After following the instructions below, all emails you receive that are addressed to classof2015@peddie.org will skip your inbox and the label _Class of 2015 will be applied to these emails. Whenever new messages arrive, the _Class of 2015 label will be bold and the number of unread messages will appear next to the label. While this will not reduce the number of message you receive, it will keep these messages from swamping your inbox and allow you to process them much more efficiently when you have time.

1. In your email, click the small gear icon in the upper right of the screen and select Mail Settings.
2. Go to the Labels tab and click the Create new label button. When naming your label, we recommend prefixing it with an underscore or the number zero so the label will appear at the top of your label list. (e.g. _Class of 2015 or 0 Class of 2015). You might also find it helpful to click the show if unread setting which will cause the label to be hidden if it contains no unread messages. Also, make sure the show setting is selected (if it is not a link, it is selected)--this should be the default setting.
   
   
   
3. Go to the Filters tab and click the Create a new filter link at the bottom of the page.
4. Enter classof2015 in the To: field and then click the Next Step >> button.
   
   
   
5. Select the following actions: Skip the Inbox, Apply the label: _Class of 2015, Never send it to Spam. Leave the Mark as read setting unchecked.
   
   
   
6. Click the Create Filter button. To return to your inbox click the inbox link on the left side of the page.

Advanced Filtering Tips
The example above was for a simple filter applied to all messages sent to classof2015@peddie.org. For many, simple filters like this will be all that you will need, but if needed filters can do much more. Below are some examples of more complex filters. When entering complex filters, you should enter the entire filter expression in the Has the words: search criteria field.

Example 1: Suppose you want to create a filter to include all-school emails (i.e. emails sent to all of the classes and to faculty and staff). To do this, enter the following in the Has the words: field:

to:(classof2015 AND classof2014 AND classof2013 AND classof2012 AND facultystaff)

Example 2: Suppose you want to create a filter to filter emails sent only to students (i.e. emails sent to any "class of" group but not to faculty and staff). To do this, enter the following search expression in the Has the words: field. Note the "-" in front of the "to:" which prevents emails sent to facultystaff@peddie.org from matching the filter.

to:(classof2015 OR classof2014 OR classof2013 OR classof2012) AND -to:(facultystaff)

The two examples above just scratch the surface of what is possible. For a complete description of all the advanced filtering/searching options available please see the Google help article Using advanced search.

Lastly, if you don't know how to create a filter to do what you want, stop by the Technology Center or send an email to techhelp@peddie.org and we will be glad to help.

Google Apps Avalanche!

Currently your Peddie Google Apps for Education account gives you access to the limited set of the Google applications listed below:

• Email / Gmail (http://email.peddie.org)
• Calendar (http://calendar.peddie.org)
• Docs (http://docs.peddie.org)
• Chat
• Sites (http://sites.peddie.org)
• Groups (http://groups.peddie.org)

As you probably know, this is only a small subset of the dozens of Google applications available to those with personal Google accounts. Other Google applications include YouTube, Picasa, Blogger, Reader, & Books. A more complete but not exhaustive list can be found here.

Since Google Apps for Education launched about 3 years ago (Peddie switched in September 2008) Google has slowly added new apps to Google Apps for Education at the rate of a few apps per year with Google Groups being the most recent addition. In what is by far the single biggest improvement which Google has made to Google Apss since it was launched, Google is in the process of allowing Google Apps accounts to have access to virtually all of the Google applications previously available only to personal Google accounts.

It actually is even better than this, because what Google is really doing is transitioning Google Apps accounts to the same infrastructure as personal Google accounts. The result is that anything you can do with a regular Google account, you will be able to do with your Peddie Google Apps account.

Benefits

Many More Google Applications
As mentioned above, you will be able to use you Peddie Google Apps account to sign into most Google applications. A detailed list of exactly which accounts you can use is posted here. Note that we may not enable all of the applications listed.

Any Google Sign In Page

Another subtle, but potentially a very useful consequence is that you will be able to use your Peddie Google username (i.e. your email address) and password to sign in on any Google sign in page. This will be especially important as more 3rd party sites build tools that work with Google applications such as Google Docs. For now, this just makes things simpler allowing you to sign in on any Google sign in page, not just on Peddie-specific sign in pages.

Negative Effects
As with any change of this magnitude there are some negative consequences that are a necessary result of the major changes Google is making.

One Web Browser - One Google Account

You will only be able to be signed in to one Google Account at a time in a single type of web browser. For example, you will not be able to sign into your personal Google account and your Peddie Google account in Firefox at the same time. If you have two Google accounts (i.e. a personal Google account and a Peddie account) we recommend you use one type of browser for your Peddie account (e.g. Chrome) and another for you personal account (e.g. Firefox). While Google has enabled limited multiple sign-in functionality (click here for Google's help page explaining this), we do not recommend this because we think using different browsers for different accounts will provide you with the better, more trouble-free experience.

Conflicting Accounts

Now that Google has included all Google applications, there is a possibility of conflicting accounts because it was possible to create a personal Google account (e.g. for YouTube or Picasa) using any email address, even your peddie.org address. If you have a conflicting account you will receive an email with further instructions. The bottom line is that conflicting accounts won't lose any data, they will just have to change the account username to something different than a peddie.org email address. For more information as well as a video explaining the issue, please click here for Google's help page.

When & What Do You Need To Do?

So the most obvious questions is when will this transition take place? We will initiate the transition on Thursday, February 10th. It will take up to 24 hours to take effect on all accounts.

The second question is what do you need to do? The short answer is nothing*. The change itself is anti-climatic as you will notice little besides a notification from Google that your account has been transitioned. If you want to confirm that the change has been successful, try signing in to your account using the standard Google Accounts sign in page (http://www.google.com/accounts) using your full Peddie email address and password. This page will not currently work with your Peddie Google account, but will once your account is transitioned.

* If you have a conflicting account you will have to change your username for your personal account as mentioned above. Again, you will receive an email if this is the case.

Additional Information

If you would like to know more about this transition, please click here to read Google's main help page which provides detailed information about this transition and how it affects you.