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‘Skunk works’ building IT tools 

by Dick Peterson
Public Relations
They can give us a fish, or teach us to fish.

From left are: Robert Gorlitski, database and digital signature guy; Nathan Zorn, the system and unix guy, who does the credit card programming and performance monitoring of the internal MUSC network and PPP server; Brian Dadin, creative talent behind the web design; Josh Starmer, builds tools and prototype systems builder with Dr. Tom Higerd in the College of Medicine; and Kelly Hartley, who builds small applications, like student parking registration, using the tools to interface to the student database.

Well, get ready. It looks like we're going fishing—fishing for new ways to use our computers to solve problems, save money and increase production.

Associate provost Frank Starmer, Ph.D., and the group of young computer techies he calls his “skunk works” are building the tools we need to do just that. The idea is that anyone with problems to solve, money to save (or make), or production to increase can tap into these readily available tools and put together a solution based on passing information from one tool to the next. 

With a minimum of time and effort, they can combine them in ways to replace many of the labor-intensive, paper-wasting, time-consuming procedures now being used throughout the university and medical center.

“We feel that solutions based on these tools are better than special-purpose and highly integrated software systems,” said Josh Starmer. Tool-based solutions, initiated by Nafees Bin Zafar and Frank Starmer, are being continued by Josh, Kelly Hartley, Robert Gorlitsky, Nathan Zorn and Brian Dadin.

They fabricate lines of web-based computer code and making them available on the ITlab Internet site  (http://www.itlab.musc.edu).

“None of us can predict the future,” Starmer said. “We could design computer software for a specific purpose, but in the time from specification to design to implementation, the application might well be outdated and obsolete by the appearance of some dramatic new innovation.”

As an alternative, the set of tools they build allow MUSC computer users rapidly to apply their own creativity and design their own applications—easily, quickly and with minimum to no expense. 

Furthermore, each “composition” of tools can be more readily adapted to changing needs. The main idea of this approach is to rapidly prototype a solution to a specific problem and then adapt the prototype to the users' needs. 

“We'd like everyone at MUSC to be a part of our team,” Starmer said. “We enjoy hearing comments about what we're doing here, and we want to give away our tools.”

For CCIT's Melissa Forinash, “comments” is the operative word in the whole IT tools concept. She sees a campus of MUSC computer users as a beta test site for the tools developed by Frank Starmer's team. They provide the vision, she said, but it's up to the Center for Computer Information Technology to roll them out for use by MUSC computer users and identify the bugs they find.

Talk to Audio-Visual's Kevin Rockwell about the tools. With the rise in popularity of PCs, the department's standby for slide printing, AppleTalk, was discontinued from the campus network. The deletion of AppleTalk destroyed parts of the campuswide network interface to the Slides Direct system, where someone could submit a file and have their slides made.

So the “skunk works” developed WebPrint, a tool that allows slide printing from anywhere— from the campus, from home, or from anywhere in the world by way of the Internet.

For Rockwell, it's a mixed bag, however. With the passing of AppleTalk, WebPrint does the job. On the other hand, it's more complicated, he said. “I have to spend time explaining to people how to use it. First they groan, and then they say, ‘Cool!’” The real advantage is being able to order slides from anywhere. But then the files are getting bigger, and it takes a long time to download. “They have to call in to be sure we received them.”

“Frank's group provides the vision. We try to work out some of the realities,” Forinash said, describing the balance they have achieved between vision for what information technology can do and making the technology work in reality. CCIT deals with the maintenance involved—Will use of a tool overload the server? And with marketing—How many people will use each tool, and is it worth the server space and maintenance it requires?

“I think it's a great thing,” Forinash said. “Putting tools in the hands of people is the way to go. It increases creativity and productivity. It's a win-win for everybody, it puts no one out of business, and it gets more work done.”

So, what are the tools Starmer's team has put on the MUSC web to demonstrate what can be done?

For starters, there's the PDF. That's computerese for portable document format. See that desk drawer there to your lower left, the one filled with every imaginable form? Leave request forms, IIT forms, DO forms, ...and list goes on ad infinitum. Just think how great it would be to pull up any one of those forms in your computer, complete it right there on the screen and print it. Better yet, fill it in and just send it (no print, no paper) by web-based e-mail to its next destination, complete with a digital signature that can't be forged or changed.

You can do that with the PDF, web-based e-mail, and digital signature tools. And it doesn't matter if you're using a PC or a Mac. They're all web-based. The tools are usuable on any computer equipped with a web browser.

Based on the computer-user's user-name and password, the digital signature is encrypted to protect the form from being changed without authorization.

And how about a personalized MUSC home page? Let's call it “myMUSC” and instead of that picture of the beautiful MUSC horseshoe, let's greet ourselves each morning with design-your-own links to an up-to-date weather report, The Catalyst headlines, this week's events, seminars, the library, the complete Information Technology toolbox, and more. Well, the future is here.

Homeroom, a tool designed for the workaholics and insomniacs among us, lets us place files in a protected place on the web for access by user-name and password from anywhere at anytime. From home, or from an Internet cafe in Paris. It's been done.

And the credit card validation tool brings the technology of amazon.com to musc.edu. Pay tuition, buy books, browse the gift shop, and when your shopping cart is full, enter your card number and expiration date. The tool checks the credit and comes back with a validation number. Once state law, regulations and procedures catch on to the idea, it's done!

There are more tools, but too many to describe each here. And more are being added all the time. Find them at <http://www.itlab.musc.edu> and explore. Browse the tutorials as well. You can find a link to them on the myMUSC page.