maniac Posted March 16, 2009 Posted March 16, 2009 Has anyone ever heard of Youth Bytes Desktop Communication System? Just found out our student support unit had a demonstation of this last week, although they ommited to invite me for whatever reason (well why would they I'm only responsible for the entire computer network ) I only found out today when a member of their staff e-mailed me forwarding on a copy of the presentation they were shown last week and saying their technical guy will be in contact soon to discuss the program with me Anyway, been trying to find out information on it all morning, and as their website is down for updating, I can't find much out at all. According to their presentation it's a desktop messaging program that runs on the student desktops allowing the school to put messages there, publicise events etc. with click thrus to relevant websites etc. Also according to their presentation the product is in use in just 21 schools which is a worryingly small number. Anyone shed any light on this product? Mike.
SYNACK Posted March 17, 2009 Posted March 17, 2009 Sounds like a fancy application to do exactly what you could do with Active Desktop and a local web page.
Diello Posted March 17, 2009 Posted March 17, 2009 Funnily enough - the EXACT same thing has just happened to me! The presentation talks of network infrastructure configuration, new server etc. - waiting to talk to them soon before anything happens. Not sure the teachers will like it - great big flashing box on the screen akin to looking like skyware... great for keeping them on task...
maniac Posted March 17, 2009 Author Posted March 17, 2009 Funnily enough - the EXACT same thing has just happened to me! The presentation talks of network infrastructure configuration, new server etc. - waiting to talk to them soon before anything happens. Not sure the teachers will like it - great big flashing box on the screen akin to looking like skyware... great for keeping them on task... Out of interest, which school do you work at (PM if necessary) because the meeting they had at this school, they also had people from other schools here looking at the product. Just wondering if yours was one of them as you're also in Kent. Mike.
maniac Posted November 25, 2009 Author Posted November 25, 2009 Well managed to put them off this system until now, but the powers that be have decided they want it as apparently it's being funded by Kent for now. Dispite not wanting to put any more overheads on the system than we have already, my objections were ignored, they wouldn't even give me time to test it properly, just a 'we're having it' So does anyone actually have this up and running at their school and if so, can anyone give me any real account of how well it works, what affect (if any) it has on workstation performance and how much time it takes to maintain and run it? Mike.
Edu-IT Posted November 25, 2009 Posted November 25, 2009 Just had a play with the demo. That's going to be annoying! It's actually quite ugly too. http://demo.youthmedia.co.uk/?id=E3F106EA-9507-498A-A083-41E414F0928D&isYW=1 Edit: Facebook from the desktop? Nice.
Diello Posted November 25, 2009 Posted November 25, 2009 Well managed to put them off this system until now, but the powers that be have decided they want it as apparently it's being funded by Kent for now. Dispite not wanting to put any more overheads on the system than we have already, my objections were ignored, they wouldn't even give me time to test it properly, just a 'we're having it' So does anyone actually have this up and running at their school and if so, can anyone give me any real account of how well it works, what affect (if any) it has on workstation performance and how much time it takes to maintain and run it? Mike. Kent are funding it for the first year - afterwards it costs the school. It doesn't really effect performance, it's just a flash browser in the corner of the screen at the end of the day. It usually runs itself, but can be fiddly if it does stop working for whatever reason. Funniest thing has been the teachers complaining about it, wanting us to get rid of it, & us just happily smiling saying we can't as our ECM Co-Ord has said we must have it, watching them get ready to give her their wrath! Funniest time was us having an external presenter in, who was greeted by a message asking him if he had gonorrhea when he logged on!! 2
maniac Posted November 25, 2009 Author Posted November 25, 2009 Kent are funding it for the first year - afterwards it costs the school. It doesn't really effect performance, it's just a flash browser in the corner of the screen at the end of the day. It usually runs itself, but can be fiddly if it does stop working for whatever reason. Funniest thing has been the teachers complaining about it, wanting us to get rid of it, & us just happily smiling saying we can't as our ECM Co-Ord has said we must have it, watching them get ready to give her their wrath! Funniest time was us having an external presenter in, who was greeted by a message asking him if he had gonorrhea when he logged on!! Just out of interest, any chance you could tell me how much RAM it uses at runtime? I'm just interested, as I've worked really hard in this school to remove un-necessary tasks running in the background so I'm wondering if I'll be back at square 1 with regards to memory useage on my machines. Mike.
Squelch Posted November 25, 2009 Posted November 25, 2009 We installed it over the summer hols, when your desktop loads you get a looping flash object in the top right corner giving information that changes daily (drug abuse, bullying, smoking related), when you click on it it takes you to more information on whatever subject is being displayed, talk to frank etc. It sits below any other window so open any application to hide it. You can configure your own messages to appear at the base of the window in a kind of mini digital signage sort of way. You get a "server" delivered to your school (in our case a Dell optiplex 745) that needs a tiny amount of configuration on installation then it can be safely ignored. They give you statistics of click throughs so you can see what is catching the kids attention, in our case the smoking related topic caused a lot of clicks so it can be quite useful to some of your staff members. Not much else to say really, it's no hassle and everyone will get used to it being there after a short time. 1
Squelch Posted November 25, 2009 Posted November 25, 2009 Just checked it out via task manager and it's using about 14k of memory 1
maniac Posted November 25, 2009 Author Posted November 25, 2009 Just checked it out via task manager and it's using about 14k of memory 14k, is that right? That's an astoundingly small amount. Sure you don't mean 14,000k ?
StevieC Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 This all sounds too familiar. We have had a very similar phone call.. I think it is absolutely disgusting that they can get away with charging £5K + for a piece of software which took us less than 1 week to produce.... I will be more than happy to produce a dashboard which would serve many more functions that YB for half the money! Looks like no one consults IT.
maniac Posted June 22, 2010 Author Posted June 22, 2010 We've had this live on our system now for several weeks - I managed to postpone installing it until the end of May. To be honest, apart from a few students who asked, I don't think anyone pays much attention to it. However it has affected our slower machines logon time - I've actually had students comment on this, so we're only running the basic client now which uses less resources. The full client caused the machines to lock up. Mike.
sted Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 whats wrong with shoving a shortvut to a web page in the users startup folder so it loads everytime they log on costs £0 adds no software to the pc. Setup time writing/maintianing a simple web page and creating a few shortcuts
StevieC Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 If you don't mind me asking. What is the spec of the machines which locked up?
StevieC Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 whats wrong with shoving a shortvut to a web page in the users startup folder so it loads everytime they log on costs £0 adds no software to the pc. Setup time writing/maintianing a simple web page and creating a few shortcuts Exactly what I've been trying to say.. But colleges seem to still fall for the sales man rubbish!
sted Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 Exactly what I've been trying to say.. But colleges seem to still fall for the sales man rubbish! just set it up and make it look pretty then hopefully they will get the idea theres cheaper ways of doing it that require minimal effort
maniac Posted June 22, 2010 Author Posted June 22, 2010 whats wrong with shoving a shortvut to a web page in the users startup folder so it loads everytime they log on costs £0 adds no software to the pc. Setup time writing/maintianing a simple web page and creating a few shortcuts To be honest, I have no idea exacltly what they want to achieve with the system. However it's not cost us anything as Kent LEA are funding it for the first year. The main thing is the targeted advertising mainily promoting The kind of things covered in PSHE lessons, and it ticks a box somewhere to do with pushing these messages to students. All in all the program doesn't actually cause us any hassle except a noticeable slow down on some of our older machines. The ones which the full client locked up were Dell GX60 desktop machines which are celeron 2.4GHz with 1GB ram in. Our Dell D510 laptops also didn't like it very much when it was the full client. Mike.
sted Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 To be honest, I have no idea exacltly what they want to achieve with the system. However it's not cost us anything as Kent LEA are funding it for the first year. The main thing is the targeted advertising mainily promoting The kind of things covered in PSHE lessons, and it ticks a box somewhere to do with pushing these messages to students. All in all the program doesn't actually cause us any hassle except a noticeable slow down on some of our older machines. The ones which the full client locked up were Dell GX60 desktop machines which are celeron 2.4GHz with 1GB ram in. Our Dell D510 laptops also didn't like it very much when it was the full client. Mike. targeted adds then i wouldnt allow it on the system end of and its free for one year how much next?
StevieC Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 targeted adds then i wouldnt allow it on the system end of and its free for one year how much next? Agreed, No its costs £5,000 but that can be funded by the government! Lol.. That is where tax payers money goes. And then its between 1,200 - 2,400 per year! Thats crazy for a peice of software they charge companies to advertise on!
maniac Posted June 22, 2010 Author Posted June 22, 2010 targeted adds then i wouldnt allow it on the system end of and its free for one year how much next? I cannot dis-allow it on the grounds of the content - that is up to senior management to decide. The only grounds I could deny it on would be technical ones if it interfered or otherwise compromised our system. We extensively tested it and found it to be fine, so whether I personally like it or not it goes on the system. Same with any software or other decisions, unless there's a really good technical reason why it can't happen, then generally it does. Me not liking the idea doesn't really count. For those that don't know what it looks like, I've attached an image of it to this post. For some reason today we've had no ads displaying, but normally that bigger window would have a PSHE related message in it be it sex education, anti drugs message etc. with a click through to a relevant website e.g Talk to Frank. We can control the message at the bottom, and we can control the theme of the ads being displayed which is supposed to be linked to our weekly academy theme. Mike.
StevieC Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 A little repulsive if you ask me. Same situation here Maniac,
localzuk Posted June 22, 2010 Posted June 22, 2010 £5k for that?! It'd take a couple of days of coding to come up with something like that, at most. I'm in the wrong job!
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