Thanks for all of the feedback so far, we're listening and doing the best we can to make everybody happy. Its not easy, but we're trying.

We couldn't do too much today as we spent most of the day responding to emails and phone calls, but we squeezed some stuff in:

• Appearance Settings - This is by far the most consistently received comment, so we figured we'd fix this one fast.  Sure, yellow isn't everyone's cup of tea, but it is one of our school colors... and yes, the yellow we were using for our school color isn't the "official" yellow, but had we used the official yellow, eyes would be bleeding... seriously.  So, we built an appearance settings page for you.  Its under your name, just where it was before.  We picked some colors you can use that we thought were tolerable.  However, if you still think our sense of style is lacking, you can pick your own color too.  So there, everyone wins.
• FYI, the official yellow is #FFCC00.  Try it out and then send us a note thanking us for not using it. ;-)
• Alphabetize your Favorites - If you've gone star-clicking-crazy and created a huge mess of favorites, there is now a button to alphabetize them for you on the Favorites page.
• Bug fixes and tweaks
• The login banner on topic pages is a bit more prominent.  This is important because many links now require you to be logged in.
• We removed the "myUMBC is new, send us feedback" banner from framed pages to save a little room for people with smaller screens.
• Links in the Alerts dashboard should not load in the proper window.
• Menus should be reliable and less likely to hang around after you're done with them.

A Special Request from the myUMBC Team

I always try and stress how important feedback is to us.  It is. It drives everything we do.  Every feature and every change was prompted by feedback of some kind.  myUMBC serves an extremely diverse user-base and we'd be foolish to think we'd make everybody happy with any change.  We are people, just like you, we work hard, we try our best, and for everything we've done that you like, we've probably done something else you don't.  We love to hear from you, even if its negative.  All we ask is that you be patient and try things out before you pass judgement, be specific as possible about any problems you may experience, and be respectful of the fact that there is a human being on the other side of the feedback box that cares a great deal about making myUMBC better for everyone.

Can't wait to hear from you all,

- Collier

http://umbcaiga.tumblr.com

They have lots of great events throughout the semester promoting Graphic Design, Animation, Illustration, etc. There are workshops, portfolio reviews, screenings and lots of other fun stuff. Their tumblr is a great way to keep up to date with everything going on!

Usually you have to pay to join AIGA, but is free to join the student group. They’ll also help you become a professional member if you’d like to (about $50). It’s definitely worth it as you get access to their job listings, professional portfolio fair, and you get your own online portfolio.

Did I mention that 2 of our employees, Mayen and Michelle, are the Secretary and Vice President? Pretty Rockin.

umbcaiga:

Hope everyone’s summer has been going well!

Mark your calendars for September 9th, we have a Welcome to ART event! Anyone within the Visual Arts discipline is welcome, no matter what your concentration is. Come to meet and greet fellow students & faculty, have some food, and have a good time!

Some online sites let you use any old five-character strong as your password for as long as you like. Others force you to pick a new password every six months and it has to match a complicated set of requirements — at least eight characters, mixed case, containing digits, letters, punctuation and at least one umlaut. Also, it better not contain any substrings that are legal Scrabble words or match any past password you’ve used since you were 21.

A recent paper by two researchers from Microsoft concludes that an organization’s usability requirements is the main factor that determines the complexity of its password policy.

Dinei Florencio and Cormac Herley, Where Do Security Policies Come From?, Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 14–16 July 2010, Redmond.

We examine the password policies of 75 different websites. Our goal is understand the enormous diversity of requirements: some will accept simple six-character passwords, while others impose rules of great complexity on their users. We compare different features of the sites to find which characteristics are correlated with stronger policies. Our results are surprising: greater security demands do not appear to be a factor. The size of the site, the number of users, the value of the assets protected and the frequency of attacks show no correlation with strength. In fact we find the reverse: some of the largest, most attacked sites with greatest assets allow relatively weak passwords. Instead, we find that those sites that accept advertising, purchase sponsored links and where the user has a choice show strong inverse correlation with strength.

We conclude that the sites with the most restrictive password policies do not have greater security concerns, they are simply better insulated from the consequences of poor usability. Online retailers and sites that sell advertising must compete vigorously for users and traffic. In contrast to government and university sites, poor usability is a luxury they cannot afford. This in turn suggests that much of the extra strength demanded by the more restrictive policies is superfluous: it causes considerable inconvenience for negligible security improvement.

h/t Bruce Schneier

Penny typography by Stagmeister Inc. “Obsessions make my life worse and my work better”. I love that. More here.