Dian Schaffhauser in an article for Campus Technology did a good job in boiling down the emergency notification down to 7 key issues.

In a nut shell:

1) Know your resources (and alternatives)

2) Practice the Plan  (just like in elementary school)

3) Expect that decisions will need to be made based on incomplete information

4) Less people involved in decision-making is  better

5) Use multiple channels/modality for communicating

6) Define "emergency"

7) Layer your approaches to communications

Surprised some of my colleagues didn't think of this one:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/funnynews/08/16/strange.name.reut/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

The Desk part is lame, but I definitely can see where aspects of the interface and processes will be making there way into future products.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt_4bfyxOf0

Minority report has nothing on this vision:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muibPAUvOXk&mode=related&search=

Apparently this is available. I haven't seen it yet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlZxuqjJDgk&mode=related&search=

A good parody: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY

I quickly read an article in University Business on the LMS market place.   The writer made some decent  points.   The number for the general rule of thumb cost of a vendor LMS solution caught my eye at: $22/ student.   With discounts it can down as low a $9/student.  That  makes the open source / vendor  debate interesting.  Those figures  came from Brand-Hall Research .

I submitted our innovative implementation of our Alumni portal for a Campus Technology award.  We were not recognized.  (http://campustechnology.com/article.aspx?id=49203) The winner in the portal category was Rio Salado's.  Looks They have a good site.  I like the integration of the www and portal login.  Makes sense.  Other than that most of what was decribed in the article is available in our portal as well.  Must be that my application needed more wordsmithing.  Next time.