Nan-Tastic: PolyLink adds Alumni, Cal Poly News Adds RSS Feeds
Alumni: Sign in to PolyLink Now for a Chance to be a Nano Winner
There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but there is such a thing as a free iPod. Just ask alumni Tylia Smith (B.S., Biological Sciences, 2005) and Mike Shick (B.S., CivilEngineering, 2005).
Both logged in to PolyLink and created their personal page between August and October, 2007.
Along with all other alumni who did the same thing, Smith and Shick were automatically entered in a drawing for one of five free iPods.
There are still three iPod Nanos waiting to be given away to PolyLink members. Log in to www.calpolylink.com and create your own personal ID, password and profile today -- and you could be the next Nan-tastic giveaway winner.
The next PolyLink iPod drawing will be held on March 25. All PolyLink members who have created their own ID and personal page will be automatically entered in the computerized drawing. Sign in and create your personal page now for the chance to be the next Nan-tastic winner. And watch for news about more PolyLink Nano giveaways later this year.
To get started in PolyLink, all you need is your first-time login code. It appears on the mailing label of this Cal Poly Magazine. (If you’re not alumni, you will not have a login code on your magazine label).
Magazine in hand, head for the Internet and www.calpolylink.com. Look in the gold bar up top for the words “First Time Login.” (Or look for the gold ‘First-time Login’ text link in the main sign-in box.) Click on that text link, follow the instructions – and you’ll be in.
Go Orange: Don’t Be Afraid to Push the Button
You can do it on National Geographic. You can do it at the Washington Post. You can do it with the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times or CNN. And now, you can do it with Cal Poly News and PolyLink: Push the Orange Button.
Buttons like this are popping up on information web sites all over the Internet. Pushing the orange button (above) and others like it will get you the latest news headlines, sent to your computer monitor as an “RSS” feed.
RSS feeds collect and bring news headlines from your favorite web sites – like the Cal Poly News Web (www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu) and PolyLink (www.calpolylink.com/news) -- to your computer monitor when you sign in. That means you don’t have to do a lot of Web surfing to get the latest headlines.
To get started, look for the orange button or similar buttons on your favorite web sites.
If you use Internet Explorer 7.0 or the Mozilla Firefox Web browsers, just clicking on these orange buttons when you see them will show you the latest RSS news headlines available.
IE 7.0 and Firefox will both let you “bookmark” those headline “feeds,” or add them to your existing “Favorite Feeds” list.
Or, you can also download a free “feed reader” program to your computer to compile your RSS feeds for you. Search Engines like MyYahoo, MyGoogle, and MyMSN and others are now offering personalized RSS sections. Users can sign in and create a personalized area pulling in headlines from multiple news Web sites– from The Discovery Channel to E! to Cal Poly News.
Later this spring, PolyLink will also offer personal page RSS feed sections and displays. PolyLink members will be able to gather all their favorite RSS feeds from across the web for easy, one-stop reading. The feeds will also let other alumni see members’ favorite feeds – and YouTube videos. Watch the next Cal Poly Magazine for details.
Right now on PolyLink, alumni, parents and friends can already sign up for alumni-oriented RSS news feeds at www.calpolylink.com/news. Everyone can also sign up for RSS feeds on the latest Cal Poly alumni travel offerings, gatherings and outings at www.calpolylink.com/alumnievents. No sign-in is required to read or subscribe to RSS feeds from either page.
One RSS perk for PolyLink members only: Every PolyLink group page offers an RSS feed. PolyLink alumni: hit the orange button and subscribe to your group feed, so you’ll know when you can see new group photos, get group news or find out when another alum has posted a message there.
For more details about RSS, RSS feeds and how and why to use them, visit this “Internet for Beginners” section on About.com:
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/rssandlivewebfeeds/f/rss.htm
Alumni Photo of the Month Winners: It’s the Hair
Who is this man and why does he fascinate us? If you’re one of the 10,000+ Cal Poly Update e-newsletter readers, you may remember this photo. It’s Cal Poly grad Steve Plath (B.S., Math, 1967).
After graduating from Cal Poly and doing a tour of duty in Vietnam, Plath took his look from boot camp to rock star. He married the foxy lady in the photo, is now the father of two grown sons and a high-end contractor in Marin County. He's also got some of the best "back in the day" photos on PolyLink.
More than 1,000 alumni signed in to PolyLink and visited Plath’s personal photo album after the shot above won him the ‘Photo of the Month’ title in January.
If you’re not in PolyLink yet, you can’t see his album. But you can see the Photo of the Month album and many more university photo albums on PolyLink. Visit www.polylink.com/photogalleries anytime - no sign-in required.
Make Sure You’re Getting Cal Poly E-Newsletters
There are 40,000 alumni, parents and friends who receive Cal Poly Update e-newsletter every month – and 10,000 Update readers. Are you getting Update in your e-mail in-box? Yahoo! mail users in particular tell the Alumni Relations Office that Cal Poly Update and the quarterly Engineering Advantage e-newsletter is winding up in their bulk mail folders. Don’t let it happen to you! For details on how to get Update and other university e-newsletters out of your bulk mail folder and straight into your e-mail in-box, visit:
http://www.calpolynews.calpoly.edu/update/mail.html