Flakes promote winter on a July day

The lunacy pictured above hit campus on Wednesday thanks to the department of housing and residences, which hosted the first-ever “snow-put” competition — like shot-put but with snowballs — as a promotion. Housing staff members created a winter scene on the Biology green and asked people passing by to take their shot.

More than 200 people competed in the competition, says Mike Iley, marketing manager for the residences. Cara Kennedy won the female competition with a throw of 59 feet (18 metres, or about the distance from the pitcher's mound to home plate). Dan Domansky won the male competition with 106 feet (32 metres). Both champions won flex dollar credits for their WatCards, and freezies and bottles of water were given out to all competitors to combat the high temperatures.

In addition to the snow flying through the air on the hot July afternoon, more than 500 flyers were distributed to students walking through campus informing them that now is the time to apply for residence space in the winter 2008 term. There's also an online draw for a chance to win a pair of Blue Jays tickets.

Residence spaces for winter 2008 are mainly available in Village I, with limited opportunities in Mackenzie King Village and UW Place. Students can submit an entry for the Jays tickets draw, or learn more about the winter 2008 residence application, online. The draw closes today at 12 noon.

Says Iley: "The snow-put competition drew a lot of attention, was a ton of fun, but more importantly it gave the staff in our department the opportunity to connect with students directly. We’re here to help students with their housing needs, and participating in events like this one allows us to get the word out about how we can help.”

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Spring classes end, exams loom

On this last day of classes for the spring term, here’s a notice from the registrar’s office: “The last day to file an Intention to Graduate form is August 1, 2007, for students expecting to graduate at fall convocation, October 20, 2007. Forms are available online for undergraduate and graduate students. If you have submitted a form earlier in the year for Fall 2007, do not submit a new form. If you have submitted an Intent for Spring convocation but were unable to fulfill degree requirements, you must submit a new Intention to Graduate Form for Fall 2007 convocation. Convocation information is also available online.”

Exams for spring term courses will start August 2 (that’s next Thursday) and run through August 15, with exams for distance education courses concentrated on August 10 and 11. There will be no exams on Monday, August 6, which is Civic Holiday. The UW libraries are open extended hours all through exam season. Unofficial spring marks will start showing up on Quest on August 16, and the “fully graded date” is September 21 (a change from the originally announced date of September 14). Meanwhile, fees for the fall term will be due September 5 by bank transfer, or August 27 by cheque.

In other matters: Fall first-year students have been given a deadline of today (at 4:30) to sign and return their contracts for residence rooms. • The campus recreation program is offering free fitness classes July 30 through August 10 to help burn off exam-time stress. • Chemical engineering professor Bill Anderson will become director of admissions for the faculty of engineering on September 1, taking over from George Davidson of mechanical and mechatronics engineering.

Guillermo Ordorica-Garcia, a doctoral student in the chemical engineering department, writes that the International Energy Agency and its greenhouse gas abatement research program “are organizing a 1-week research program for young scientists, to be held in August 2007 in Germany. Only 50 students have been invited internationally to participate in this top-notch GHG event. Of the 50, Canada might send only 2-3 representatives. I am one of them. My doctoral research involves clean energy production with CO2 capture and minimal greenhouse gas reductions. I have been working in this field for roughly seven years now. I have published my research in peer-reviewed journals, and presented my work in three international conferences and a number of other events.”

The engineering faculty’s e-newsletter reports that Bryan Tatone, who graduated in June with a BASc in geological engineering, has been awarded first prize in a national competition for undergraduate geological engineering design projects. His project analyzed the stability of rock slopes and evaluated stabilization alternatives for a rail corridor in southeastern British Columbia. Tatone will receive his award at the annual Canadian Geotechnical Conference to be held in Ottawa in October.

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June CS grad helps launch RSS tool

A student who graduated from UW a few weeks ago is among the three young partners in a company whose software product, launched this week, promises to cut through the information chaos.

“Our goal is to make RSS manageable and relevant for every reader,” says Ilya Grigorik, who received his degree in computer science at June’s convocation. He’s referring to Really Simple Syndication, a widely used channel that delivers a torrent of blog entries, podcasts and even the Daily Bulletin.

Grigorik is co-founder and “chief architect” of AideRSS, which, in its simplest formulation, “makes RSS feed management tools”. He observes that “the daily number of posts most people receive makes it impossible to stay on top of the news, frequently resulting in the mark-all-as-read syndrome. In this process, important stories — true information gems — are lost.”

He established the Waterloo-based company earlier this year, in partnership with Francis Lau, who received his degree in CS and economics from UW last year, and Kevin Thomason, a Wilfrid Laurier University graduate. “Our launch has been very successful thus far,” Lau reports, “as we are already featured on the front page of Digg, Del.icio.us and Slashdot.”

Says a news release: “Already well received in beta testing, AideRSS feed management tools fill a dire need to help manage the overwhelming numbers of posts and news stories generated every day on the internet. Today, people spend significant amounts of time trying to sift through the stories to find the good stuff and read what really matters.

“AideRSS addresses this by filtering incoming feeds based on social engagement metrics such as comments, bookmarks, trackbacks, and more. Like a newspaper editor, who picks relevant stories off the newswire services, AideRSS analyzes all of the posts in an RSS stream, assigns a PostRank score, and delivers only the most relevant stories into your inbox based on the chosen filtering level.”

Users can use the AideRSS website directly to filter, sort, and read their RSS streams in a customized “My Feeds” section, or AideRSS can deliver a filtered feed into their favourite feed reader (such as Google Reader, Bloglines, Thunderbird, or some web browsers). “With the number of blogs growing by millions each month and an ever increasing number of posts each day,” says Thomason, “we figure AideRSS can save hours of reading each month.” The company is promising that “There is no cost for the AideRSS service and a free version will always be available.”

AideRSS is also offering technology to millions of bloggers and web publishers around the world. “Through PostRank filtering, AideRSS is able to deliver and share the author’s top stories through a simple web widget, allowing the publisher to easily identify and share their best content directly on their site — resulting in more page views, and higher readership.”

CAR

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