05-06 November 2004 Great White North Photojournalism Workshop
Our Pressrunner™ product suite for photojournalism administrative and photo management tools will be presented in Toronto on Nov.5 & 6 (Friday & Saturday).
See details at 2004 Great White North Photojournalism Workshop
17 December 2003
Support JDRF the Challenge http://www.sirius.ca/diabetes
Dear friends, please visit www.sirius.ca/diabetes.
JEAN RICARD Climbs ACONCAGUA for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
(JDRF). J.R. and I have worked on may projects together from the early
days of Systemshouse Ltd. For those who know J.R. we wish him a good
and safe climb, and please if you are feeling charitable at heart,
please make a pledge now.
20 November 2003
The goal of the evaluation is to assess donor support to basic education at both the international level
(by looking at donor agency policies and practices) and at the local level
(by assessing the effect of donor support to basic education in four selected countries).
This project was coordinated by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada in association
with Goss Gilroy Inc. (Canada) and Education for Change (UK).
Technical services was provided by Jurado & Associates to publish the documents in CDR format
including an interactive CD based referencing programs using XML, Adobe and Macromedia flash.
The initial publication was produced on 4000 CDs. J&A is also preparing an Internet based application
which will provide enhanced capabilites in retrieving information from an ODBC compliant
bibliographic list of references.
September 2003
THE PARTNERSHIPS FOR TOMORROW PROGRAM - II
Partnerships for Tomorrow Program (PTP) Canada & Central and Eastern Europe
The Partnerships for Tomorrow Program, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and
administered by the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, is a travel fund mechanism designed to
contribute to the democratic and economic reform process in the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe (CEE - 28 countries including Czech and Slovak Republics).
The PTP supports small projects that aim to strengthen partnerships and linkages as well as
professional and institutional capacity within the context of reform. It promotes the involvement of a
wide range of participants from all sectors - Canadian and CEE institutions, private organizations, NGOs,
professionals, businesses and communities. More information is available at the following websites:
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
http://www.aucc.ca/ptp-ppa/index_e.html
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/canadaeuropa/youth/pftp_ca-en.asp
J&A was selected as the prime contractor to develop and support the PTP projects administrative intranet module and
the Internet Online application components for this program.
The Internet application is now available at www.AUCC.CA site under the Programs and Services section.
28 March 2003
HES OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED
HES is an acronym for Higher Education Scholarship program. Jurado & Associates won the contract to build a new application for AUCC last May 2002. This new system was recently completed and launched to simplify the administration of core activities in a scholarship management program. This system was designed as a workflow model where each step in a defined process can be tracked and controlled through a computerized system. The system controls the steps by presenting visual custom checklists required to complete each identified task in the process. In this document, the new computerized application will be called HES-1. Another feature of HES-1 is a built-in support for generating bilingual correspondences, commonly known as document modeling, for the each of the defined tasks.
HES OFFICIAL LAUNCHING MARCH 28, 2003
Program sponsors (i.e. corporations with scholarship monies) maintain existing contracts with the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) to administer the complete aspects of the scholarship program. The terms of award, the process of selection and the manner of payment(s) to award recipients are defined by program sponsors and translated into related tasks by AUCC program officers using the computerized system. HES-1 was designed to support distinct processes involving the application and vetting of applicants, the selection of winners among these applicants, and the payments to award winners throughout the life cycle of the award. Throughout the entire process, the computerized system operates by implementing ”rules” which define the progression of the applicant or winner from one status to the next, confirming that certain logical steps or requirements have been accomplished and that certain funding has been received and is available for disbursement. These “rules” have been configured into a table-driven mechanism such that any logic by which applicant or winner progresses through the system can be easily administered by AUCC program administrators and that changes in such logic would not normally require programmer intervention. A very high percentage of the core logic, such as requirements for automated correspondence and reports or changes in procedure, is driven from user-defined tables.
The HES-1 system is used to administer different types of awards: open, competitive awards; awards limited only to company employees and their families; as well as awards which are designated solely by nomination. The same system also administers the systematic processing of alternates or replacements to a previously awarded scholarship. Each yearly renewal of a multi-year award can also bring about additional requirements regarding continuation. Awards can be for a single year or for a number of years until completion and payments can be phased into several instances per year which can involve remittances based on a foreign currency. The HES-1 system has been designed to be extremely flexible so that it can capture the particular nuances of each type of scholarship program in terms of the processes which are involved specifically in the following areas:
APPLICANTS - Applicant information data entry
APPLICATIONS - Data entry for applications. Applicants can apply to one or more scholarship programs. The selection process is also administered here, through validation of eligibility, automated student GPA calculations, ranking, assignment of selection committee, scheduling of tasks, production of reports to aid selection committee deliberations, generation of notification letters to program sponsors, winners, alternates and non-winners.
SPONSOR PROGRAMS - This is an administrative module where program officers construct the rules of how the awards are to be managed based on the terms of the scholarship award, specific requirements for eligibility, and payments.
FINANCIAL MODULE - The two main components of this module are the receivables(A/R) and payables (A/P). These components are subsets of AUCC's corporate accounting system. They provide the journal vouchers to the main accounting system for invoicing (i.e. request for funds) or cheque printing to pay the award winners. A high degree of control is maintained in ensuring allocation, availability of funds and the issuance of payments to the award winners or the academic institutions. Payments in foreign currency are also enabled.
REPORTS - This module provides management control for system reports. Standard, as well as ad-hoc reports can be generated.
Technical Description.
HES-1 was developed on a Oracle database 8/9i host server and Oracle 6i Forms+ Reports client desktop components. The Oracle 6i package has an advance feature which can support platform independent clients via Web protocols. We elected to design and develop the system to enable the desktop components to be easily ported for Internet use if necessary. The screen forms were designed to visually emulate Web forms but incorporating a higher degree of instant event response and field-by-field validation features which are not currently feasible with standard Web development tools. The implication is that it requires custom downloadable plug-in component to operate in the Internet, similar to the concept of plug-ins used by Adobe PDF reader, Macromedia Flash player, etc. A library of software object classes was developed for this application, to facilitate support for bilingual or multilingual users.
HES-1 at AUCC is implemented on the desktop only because the users are all located in a single location. A Web based scholarship application form will be available shortly. The ability to interface with corporate accounting systems via XML or scheduled FTP agents is available.
NEW PHOTO ARCHIVER PRODUCT RELEASE.
22 March 2003 - A new application designed and developed by Jurado and Associates to manage large image archival and Web based retrieval system was recently completed last week. It is now going through final beta testing in one of our client site. This is the 3rd product in the series of PressRunner ™ Internet applications that directly address the needs of the newspaper industry.
The first product PhotoReq v1, was developed as an Internet based task request and response database for photographers and reporter collaboration. After a year of development and many customer design change request, the product finally has a very happy group of national clients and the product sold itself by word- and-mouth.
The second product (PhotoSched) is a planning and resource scheduling tool to satisfy the needs of shift work or subcontract employees. A hybrid product which combines the functionality of PhotoReq and PhotoSched is also available. These products are in the category of "Service Provider Hosted Application", where we would host the customer's data and our customers are provided with online access.
Our new product, PressRunner Photoarc v.1 is designed to operate on the client's location only because of the high volume of data that is designed to managed. The following features has been incorporated in designing the new application.
Easy to install and maintain. No special technical skill set is necessary to administrate.
Operated and managed using standard Web browser interface. No other client/desktop software is necessary.
Designed to process image data from international press photo services feeds.
Automated indexing and management of images to facilitate backup on CD/DVD.
An automated extraction of IPTC (International Press and Telecommunications Council) image tags to a database or index tables.
Facility to add extra information to IPTC contents on the database to support extended retrieval capabilities.
Support of high capacity disk drives to replace the need for slow and expensive CD/DVD jukebox devices.
Can provide more than 5 times retrieval speed than other competitive applications based on CD/DVD jukebox technology.
Attain an almost 85% savings in computer hardware procurement and capacity expansion. Currently, a standard 200 GB disk drive will hold the equivalent of 300 CDs. A standard server CPU tower case can be configured to hold 4 x 200 GB disks (i.e. 1200 CDs).
Minimum System Requirements:
CPU 1000, 256 Mb Ram, NT4/System 2000 OS server, CDRW /DVDRW, 80 GB disk.
Options: Custom applications for Oracle license holders is available for high concurrent user access.
Sales information
Contact Scott Parker :: email parker@aei.ca
tel: 1-613-3716176
As of today, we are not aware of any competing product that can deliver close to the features that we offer.
We are providing the product under an annual license agreement. The package can also be purchased.
You will find that our cost is less than 50% than any application designed to do the same task,
that is, before the extra savings provided on the hardware configuration required.
THE NATIONAL CAPITAL MARATHON WEEKEND
Pictures of the NATIONAL CAPITAL MARATHON WEEKEND, held in Ottawa last May 10 & 11, 2003 have been made
available for free downloads, courtesy of Pressrunner.Net There are about 280 pictures in the collection.
Go to http://www.infoview.biz/ncrun2003 for the link. Check the site! If you participated in the run, then most
likely your picture or pictures are in the collection.
www.InfoView.biz http://www.infoview.biz/ncrun2003
QUEEN'S GOLDEN JUBILEE MEDAL
Tito Jurado awarded with the Queen's Golden Jubilee medal
presented by Honourable Senator Pierre DeBane,
held at the Parliament, October 2002
