Opening the door in yet another state to its web applications, Google on Oct. 5 said that public schools in New York state now have the option to deploy Google Apps Education Edition if they choose to do so, InformationWeek reports. Covering 697 public school districts as well as private and charter schools, the deal has been approved by the New York Institute of Technology (NYIT), in conjunction with the New York State Teacher Centers and associated Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), as well as teacher unions and state professional organizations. NYIT will be providing deployment assistance, training, and support for schools that decide to adopt Google Apps. “We’re excited that NYIT is committed to providing schools the deployment and professional development resources they need to make Google Apps for Education — including Gmail, Docs, Sites, and Calendar — a powerful tool for teachers and students across the state,” said Google Apps education manager Jaime Casap in a blog post. The state’s decision could bring as many as 3.1 million K-12 students and hundreds of thousands of teachers to Google Apps, though it’s unlikely that all of the state’s school districts will “go Google.” In April, Oregon became the first state to make Google Apps Education Edition available statewide. Iowa and Colorado decided to support Google Apps Education Edition in June, followed by Maryland in August…
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Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
In Schmidt’s vision, Google will search before you even ask
In the not-so-distant future, you’ll be walking down the street and your phone will beep and offer you a few lunch suggestions just around the corner, or it might tell you that the museum across the street is having an exhibit of that artist you once Googled: That’s Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s vision of the future, Computerworld reports. In a keynote address at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, Schmidt said that at some point in the future, Google’s search technology will be autonomous, meaning it will offer users search results even before they’ve looked for them. “While it sounds like science fiction to suggest that technology can help search for things you don’t even yet know you need, the opportunities to improve human discovery are very real in the future,” said Augie Ray, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Combining a person’s context — where they are, who they’re with — with their past opinions and actions, and the opinions and actions of others, can create tremendous value for people.” Autonomous search would take your past experiences, likes and dislikes and use them, along with geolocation information, to give you information about things that might interest you wherever you might be. Analysts say this kind of technology could be a reality within five years. However, it could be a big drain on the battery life of mobile devices.
But the bigger issue could be privacy. For this type of search technology to work, your phone and Google would need to know where you are all the time. And many people might have a big problem with that…
Google promises Docs editing for iPad
Google said on Sept. 20 that Apple iPad owners would soon be able to edit Google Docs files on their tablets, according to a report in ComputerWorld. The announcement was made the same day as the company added two-factor authentication to its enterprise-oriented Google Apps suite. Google Apps includes Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. “Today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad,” said David Girouard, president of Google’s enterprise group, in a post to a company blog.” In the next few weeks, co-workers around the world will soon be able to co-edit files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices,” Girouard said. Google did not set a specific date for delivering Google Docs word processor and spreadsheet editing to the iPad…
…Read MoreGoogle Apps adds two-step verification
InformationWeek reports that Google on Sept. 20 plans to offer its users improved security through the introduction of a two-step login verification process. Initially, two-step verification will be available to Google Apps Premiere, Government, and Education edition users, at no extra charge. But Google plans to make the technology available to all its users in the coming months, once the company is confident it can scale the technology to meet demand. Google is expected to make the announcement at an enterprise conference called Atmosphere, which is being held in a hotel near Paris, France…
…Read MoreGoogle engineer fired for accessing teens’ Gmail, chat logs
Google this week confirmed that it fired an engineer who accessed the Gmail and Google Voice accounts of several minors and taunted those children with the information he uncovered, PC Magazine reports. David Barksdale worked in Google’s Kirkland, Wash., office as a site reliability engineer, where he had access to user accounts. As first reported by Gawker, Barksdale accessed the Gmail and Google Voice accounts of several teenagers he met through a local technology group, and made them aware of the data he’d uncovered. After receiving complaints from the teenagers’ parents, Google quietly fired Barksdale in July 2010. “We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google’s strict internal privacy policies,” Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google, said in a statement. “We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls—for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly—which is why we take any breach so seriously.”
…Read MoreGoogle unveils tool to speed up web searches
Google, which can already feel like an appendage to our brains, is now predicting what people are thinking before they even type, reports the New York Times. On Sept. 8, the company introduced Google Instant, which predicts internet search queries and shows results as soon as someone begins to type, adjusting the results as each successive letter is typed. “We want to make Google the third half of your brain,” said Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder and president of technology. Google’s new psychic powers result in much faster searches, but the change might affect the many businesses that have been built around placing search ads on Google and helping web sites figure out how to climb higher in search results to increase revenue. It is a sign that even as Google expands into other businesses, like display advertising and cell phones, it remains firmly focused on search, its core business and one that accounts for more than 90 percent of its revenue. It has faced competition recently from Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Google has made its new product the default way to search the web. Instant works with the most popular modern browsers and will show up on cell phones and in browser search bars in a few months. “It’s been awhile since there’s been a game changer in search, and this is,” said Jordan Rohan, an internet analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. “It changes how people search.” He added that it was a feat of computing and engineering that could not “easily be mimicked by Google’s competition.”
…Read MoreGoogle tool tries to cut through eMail clutter
Google Inc. can sift through more than a trillion web links in a matter of seconds, but can the internet search leader help people wade through their overflowing eMail inboxes? That’s the challenge Google will try to tackle Aug. 31 with the introduction of a tool called “Priority Inbox” in its Gmail service, reports the Associated Press. The feature relies on formulas devised by Google engineers to automatically figure out and highlight which incoming messages are likely to be the most important to each Gmail user. Users who opt to turn on the Priority Inbox will see their messages separated into three categories. “Important and unread” eMail messages will be at the top, followed by messages that have been previously stamped with a star by an account holder. Everything else appears at the bottom. Switching back to the standard view of the inbox can be done with a click on a link along the left side of the web page. Google’s eMail analysis is based on a variety of factors, including a person’s most frequent contacts and how many other people are getting the same message. The content of the message also is factored into the equation. Although it might unnerve some people, the notion of Google’s computers scanning through the content of eMail isn’t new; Google has been doing it for years to determine what kinds of ads to show to the right of eMail messages and to block junk eMail, commonly known as “spam.” With more than 100 daily messages pouring into some inboxes now, people now need help to identify “the bacon and baloney” along with the spam, said Keith Coleman, Gmail’s product director…
…Read MoreTech industry holds closed door talks on open internet
An industry body representing some of the biggest names in technology has hosted a closed-door meeting to discuss the future of the open internet, BBC News reports. Public advocacy groups said such back-room dealings were detrimental. The meeting follows the publication of a controversial plan by Google and Verizon that could allow net providers certain types of internet traffic to be given priority over others. Consumer bodies called those proposals an “internet killer.” Last week a crowd of about 100 people marched to Google’s headquarters in California to present boxes that they said contained 300,000 signatures upholding the values of net neutrality, a founding principle of the net that states that all web data is treated equally no matter where it comes from. The Google/Verizon plan suggests loopholes for mobile traffic and for some specialized content…
…Read MoreYour online profile might hurt job prospects, warns Google boss
The chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, said the enormous quantity of detail left online by users could come back to haunt them when they apply for jobs in future, NDTV reports. “I don’t believe society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all the time,” he told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. Schmidt’s comments could propel concerns about the sheer volume of personal information made available online, most of which is virtually un-erasable. Such information invariably includes the immature boasts of young people who would normally regret their mistakes as they grow older. An estimated 600 million people have personal online profiles, many of which are accessible to total strangers. Prospective employers are able to access photographs, videos and blogs that users might have long forgotten with a few simple clicks of a mouse…
…Read MoreHow online research can make the grade
Not too long ago, the golden rules for high school and college students turning to the web as a research tool were simple: Treat digital content that’s never been in print with suspicion. Be careful what you Google. And thou shalt not touch Wikipedia. But the web has grown up a bit in the past few years, and the presence of digital research journals, fact-finding social media tools, textbook exchanges, and eReaders have made it a much more complicated landscape for students, CNET reports. When things have shaken out, it might be a world where free-for-all online information hubs are accepted—or, if proponents of “collaborative knowledge” have their way, even embraced. “With more and more people using (Wikipedia), it has done a better job of being able to self-correct than in the Wild West days of when it first started up and you had no idea who was vouching for any of this stuff,” said Chad O’Connor, a consultant and adjunct professor of communications at Emerson College. Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source, Wikimedia Foundation spokesman Jay Walsh acknowledged. But he added that the foundation has started an experimental outreach with some U.S. universities to bring faculty and students into the corps of Wikipedia contributors, specifically with regard to articles about public policy—one of the site’s more contentious areas. Meanwhile, just as the academic community has started to accept the inevitability of sites like Wikipedia, the web is also about to foist what might be the biggest complexity it has encountered since the advent of the free-for-all encyclopedia: As the school year starts, the recent proliferation of question-and-answer sites—like the brainy Quora and the soon-to-be-everywhere Facebook Questions—might prove to be students’ next last-ditch time-saver and teachers’ next digital bogeyman…
…Read MoreOracle sues Google over its Android OS
Oracle Corp. has sued Google Inc., alleging patent and copyright infringement in the development of its popular Android smart-phone software, Reuters reports. The suit, filed Aug. 12 in California federal court, claims that Google “knowingly, directly, and repeatedly infringed Oracle’s Java-related intellectual property” in developing Android, Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies.” Oracle acquired Java through its $5.6 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems earlier this year. Analysts said the suit against Google could signal that Oracle intends to be more aggressive in seeking licensees for Java, a technology that is used in many types of internet-based products. Google’s Android operating system uses portions of Java technology. About 200,000 smart phones and other devices based on the Android operating system are sold each day, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said at an August 4 conference…
…Read MoreGoogle defends its net-neutrality plan
Despite much opposition, Google is defending its net-neutrality proposal co-authored with broadband and wireless provider Verizon, PC World reports. The search giant on Aug. 12 issued counterarguments on six points (Google calls them myths) that the company believes have been misunderstood about its proposal. Google says the proposed framework defends net neutrality, would protect the current internet we enjoy today, and is definitely not about writing legislation from the boardroom. Google also says its proposal has not sold out the fundamental concept of net neutrality—the idea that an internet provider should not be allowed to restrict web data traffic based on the traffic’s contents. The problem is it’s unclear whether the Google-Verizon plan really would protect users. The proposal leaves wireless networks out of net-neutrality regulation entirely, although Google disputes this notion. The company believes the proposal’s transparency rules that force companies to publicly report wireless traffic-management policies would ensure that providers play fair. The agreement also would create a two-tiered internet with a net-neutral public internet (the World Wide Web we use today) and a private, non-neutral internet for premium services that could be packaged similarly to cable television. Given the financial incentives from wireless and the private internet, it’s unclear whether the public internet would survive under this system…
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