They have three really interesting graphs that show the increase of Google apps and especially Gmail vs. Outlook. If you are looking for data, this is a good place to start.

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1. Offline Access – What happened to Gears?
2. Mobile Editing
3. Pricing
4. Collaboration – This is where Google has always had the lead… will they keep it?
5. Google Chrome

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Larry Seltzer wrote a great article this morning on PCWorld where he went through the potential pitfalls to consider in a migration from Exchange to Google Apps. These are his conclusions:

1. Mobile Support is Equivalent
2. Migration Testing is Incomplete, Slow
3. You Have a Choice of Email Clients – Which You’ll Appreciate
4. Folder Don’t Work the Way You’re Used To
5. Using the Google Interfaces is not an Easy Adjustment
6. Google Calendar is Less Capable than Exchange
7. Google Apps Can Work Differently as Time Passes
8. Google Apps Doesn’t Play With Other Google Apps
9. Your Compliance Needs May or May Not be Met
10. Google Apps Premier Can Replace Exchange, But It’s No Given

He ends with this great summation: “There’s no way around the fact that by migrating from a mature, stable, and well-understood platform like Outlook and Exchange to an evolving newbie like Google Apps, you’re a pioneer. You may discover gold in California or ruination in Death Valley based on your combination of needed capabilities, users’ adaptability, compliance requirements, and degree of cost savings needed to justify the disruption.”

In the end it will work for him, but he bring up some good points here. There are some things to be considered before just jumping on this bandwagon. I personally like point #7… Google Apps not only can work differently, but will work differently as time passes, but I think that is a good thing. They are constantly innovating and pushing the limits of how we work in a technology driven industry.

You can read the full article at the link below.

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I have long been a HUGE fan of OneNote.  It may be one of the most under utilized tools for educators and students!  Take the chance to see what it is all about with this free webinar next Tuesday 1/20 from 4-5:30pm Eastern Time.

OneNote and Education : Get a Free Copy of OneNote 2007 – Tuesday, 1/20/09 Webinar – “Get connected and collaborate in your Classroom with OneNote”.

If you are an educator and attend the live session you will get a FREE copy of One Note!  That is awesome!  Here is the schedule of what they will be covering!

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Get tips on how OneNote can help you organize class materials and class work, create collaborative work environments, and share workspaces. In this webinar we will cover:

– Getting Started with OneNote

– How to get organized with OneNote

– Organizing class materials & class work

– Creating collaborative work environments

“Covered software includes Visual Studio Professional Edition, XNA Game
Studio, Expression Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server.”

From the article:

The Microsoft patent details a “unique monitoring system” that includes wireless sensors that read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure.” Further, the system would “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that the employee needed help.

We had a group do some stuff with biometrics in our HCI class this past semester, but this is way out there… what do you think?  Scary or Useful?

Could be useful in education.  Having a system like this would allow a teacher to monitor a class and pinpoint those who need help.

There are a lot of nice features in the new version of Office.  I had a chance to try out the new reference tool as well.  Although I still prefer Zotero, it is still pretty nice and many people will love it.

What about you?  What do you like/dislike about Office 2007?  Anyone had a chance to try out Mac’s Office 2008 yet?

Roles:

• Collaborative Solutions
• Portal Solutions
• Content Management Solutions
• Search
• Forms Solutions
• Business Intelligence Solutions

This class was more of a workshop so I didn’t have much time to type out stuff as we went through it. Suffice it to say that there are a LOT of options, including easy creation of Blogs and Wiki’s. This product makes it really easy to create and customize all sorts of information with click and drag, or simple select.

Microsoft is going a long way toward creating easy configurable products with many, many customizations for users. I only wish more Educators could afford products like this…

If you check out Mac’s ‘Introducing the iPhone‘ webage you will see that it is a typical smart phone with e-mail, calendar, SMS, photo, music, and internet support. That in itself isn’t too exciting. Most smart phones come with that now a days. What people are really raging about is the interface, but I mostly just chalk that up to eye-candy. What can the iPhone REALLY do for educators? Here are three features that I believe will impact education.

1. Multi-Touch Display

By far the most promising technology is the multi-touch display. In this case, it is the technology that will make the difference, especially in the long run. Multi-touch displays are not a new technology. (Apple’s explanation of how it works.) I heard somewhere that people have been working on this since the 80′s and recently Microsoft announced their similar “Surface” computer. What is unique here is the mass production of a multi-touch device. The iPhone will be the first multi-touch device in the hands of millions of people.

When I first came across this technology it was in a TED presentation by Jeff Han. At the very beginning of his presentation he said he was excited. He went on to explain why:

I really, really think this is going to change the way we interact with machines from now on.

He was absolutely right. This new interface will allow people to interact with the computer in a much easier and more human-like manner. This is going to be the jumping off point for a whole new generation of computing. As more and more data becomes available on computers this will be the first technology that will help us to better manage that information.

From a mobile perspective, it has always been a hassle to use a mobile device. Perhaps the multi-touch display will be the missing link for actually using a mobile device in the classroom.

If you have not seen the “This is How” commercial for the iPhone, take a look, it will give you an idea as to the interface.

2. Widgets

Most computer users are already familiar with the wonderful world of widgets. Widgets are most easily categorized as mini-applications. They can be anything and everything from simply displaying the weather and RSS feeds, to fully functional translation devices. There are literally thousands, if not tens of thousands of widgets out there. In the Information and Reference categories for Macs alone there are over 300 widgets… not a bad start.

Educators, and others, will begin to use the widgets and build others that can easily be added to the iPhone thus capitalizing on the mobility factor.

3. iPhone Applications and a Fully Functional/Easily Browsable Internet

Several weeks ago Steve Jobs alluded to the iPhone being open to third party applications. Today Webware mentions that that is going to be possible with the fully-functional browser.

Athough I normally have quite a bit of vision, I admit I only know at this point that this is going to be important and that this is going to open the flood gates of creativity. Imagine harnessing the power of a multi-touch display in a test. Allowing students to more naturally interact and manipulate the test and then send it back to you over the air, anywhere.

A fully-functional browser, and most importantly, easily-browsable internet will finally allow rich multimedia, and navigation that has been impossible before. Up till now, browsing the internet on a mobile device was terrible. And if the page wasn’t formatted in mobile format, forget it. Now students and teachers can really interact with the internet, and best of all manipulate it.

Yeah, but…
As it stands right now, there is no high speed internet over the cell signal (G3), but there is built in WiFi. All I have to say to that is… don’t worry, this isn’t the final product. We all know things are going to be added on and prices are going to drop.

That brings me to my second point, and perhaps most relevant to education. Price. Right now it costs $499 for a 4GB model and $599 for an 8GB model. That is awfully pricey for an educational tool, and it certainly going to be a long time before most of us educators get our hands on one, let alone enough students to design lesson plans around having one. But I would like to point out that the new Microsoft “Surface” devices are going to cost around $10,000. Even if you could only afford one per school or organization, you would have a multi-touch display that could be shared among a lot of people.

Other Thoughts:

So what am I missing Apple enthusiasts? How could you use the iPhone in education? Maybe we could start a contest to see who could come up with the most creative way to use iPhones and see if Apple won’t supply a bunch for a class. Do you think it is going to live up to the hype?