News and Updates

Tech Tip Tuesday: Fix Your Passwords in Chrome with a Single Tap

By July 27th 2021

A new feature in Chrome will now help you change your passwords with a single tap.

On supported sites, whenever you check your passwords, Chrome will look for passwords that may have been compromised. If it finds one, you will see a Change password button from the Google Assistant. When you tap the button, if the site supports this feature, then Chrome will not only navigate to the site, but also go through the entire process of changing your password.

Animation showing how Chrome will help you change stolen passwords automatically.

Importantly, you can control the entire experience and choose to go through the change password process manually from the start, or at any point during the process.

And even if a site isn’t supported yet, you can use Chrome’s password manager to help you create strong and unique passwords for your various accounts.

Learn more about Chrome’s automated password changes.

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Research Thursday: Highlighting ACLS Humanities E-Book collection

By July 22nd 2021

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a digital collection of over 5,400 seminal books in the humanities and related social sciences. Books in the Humanities E-Book collection have been recommended and reviewed by scholars and constituent learned societies of the American Council of Learned Societies.

screenshot of ACLS Humanities E-Book homepage

The top e-book categories in the collection are:

  • Women’s Studies
  • European History
  • Film & Media Studies
  • Literature
  • Music & Musicology
  • Religion
  • Philosophy

ACLS HEB has taken deliberate steps to acquire titles that embrace and engage communities historically overlooked by the academy, especially communities of color.

Tech Tip Tuesday: New Image Options in Google Docs

By July 20th 2021

Google Docs now offers more options when you create and import documents with images. Images can now be positioned above or behind text in a Google Doc.

Users have always been able to insert and manipulate images in a Google Doc. These new options will enable you to superimpose text onto an image, or vice versa.

Screenshot of a Google Doc containing a photo of the night sky, with superimposed text reading "Capture the night sky this Milky Way season."

This video from GCF Learn Free gives more tips on using images in Google Docs:


Come join our July Tech Tuesday Workshops to learn more about collaboration tools.

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Recent Updates to Colleague

By July 19th 2021

Over the past weekend (August 17th and 18th), LITS Enterprise Services performed scheduled maintenance to the Colleague server. The Colleague database and server have been upgraded to a version supported by Ellucian.

Staff and administration who use Colleague may notice some differences. Among the big changes:

  • You will now be able to log in using your Allegheny College Google account instead of your separate Colleague password. If you are logged into your @allegheny.edu Gmail in the same browser, Colleague should log you in automatically. If you are not, it will ask you to log into your Google account.
  • Printing information out of Colleague is more limited than before.
  • All users will now use Colleague screens instead of an FTP client to access the data they need.

LITS is aware that some users logging into Self Service may encounter delays at login, and is investigating the issue.

If anything in Colleague, Self Service, or WebAdvisor does not appear to be working, please open a Web Help Desk ticket. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the InfoDesk: infodesk@allegheny.edu / 814-332-3768 / extension 3768 from campus phones.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Using Comments in Google Sheets

By July 13th 2021

While commenting tools have long been available in Google Sheets, Google is now offering  new ways to discover and navigate comments in Google Sheets that are more similar to the ways you may already be familiar with using comments in Google Docs. These changes make it easier to review, respond to, and resolve comments in Sheets.

You now have easy ways to see and navigate all comments in a spreadsheet by clicking:

  • The comment icon in the Appbar.
  • The “open all comments” item in the sheet tab.
  • The “open” from any comment anchored to a cell.
  • A new button in the comment overlay that allows you to page between comment threads in a document.

Just like in Google Docs, you can use comments to add supplemental information, recommend updates or revisions, or assign action items to collaborators on the Sheet.

Learn more about sharing and collaborating in Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Come join our July Tech Tuesday Workshops to learn more about collaboration tools.

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Tech Tip Tuesday: Replace Your Background in Google Meet

By July 6th 2021

In Google Meet, you can replace your background with one supplied by Google, or even upload your own.

This feature is now available in both Google Chrome and the Android app.

A brief moving image showing a user selecting from among several background images in Google Meet.

You can also upload your own images to use as a background.

Using Chrome on desktop, you can even use a video. Google offers three videos to choose from, with more on the way. Google also plans to make video backgrounds available for mobile in the future.

Learn more about using Google Meet.

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Scheduled maintenance: Internet

By July 1st 2021

One of the College’s Internet service providers will conduct required maintenance on the fiber cables supplying the College between midnight and 6:00 a.m. on July 2, 2021. There is no anticipated outage of service.

If you do experience any loss of Internet connectivity via the Allegheny College networks that persists after 6:00 a.m. on July 2, please contact the InfoDesk at infodesk@allegheny.edu or open a Web Help Desk ticket.

Tech Tip Tuesday: Remember to Clear Your Browser History

By June 29th 2021

David Nield of Popular Science offers a great explanation of Why and How to Clear Your Web History in Any Browser. In short, routinely clearing your browser history (also often referred to as “clearing your cache”) can help protect your privacy, speed up your browser performance overall, and help you avoid mysterious glitches with web pages displaying incorrectly or behaving in odd ways.

LITS offers brief instructions on clearing your browser history on Microsoft Edge or Safari, or in Google Chrome or Firefox.

UPDATED: Please be aware that, depending on your choices in this process, you may be logged out of your accounts, and will have to log back in when you revisit them next. In some cases, you may lose custom settings for some sites as well.

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