I just watched a video demonstrating the capabilities of Google Apps - where Google basically puts all of their services on your domain. Users of gslounge.com, in this case, would check their email using a GMail interface, and calendar using GCal etc.
There are strong benefits to the Google Apps approach: no software installation, upgrade and maintenance, they would handle login to our domain and because the start page is iGoogle it would be entirely customizable for every student. Because of the hosting we'd get a huge amount of storage space for no extra cost and very good system uptime. Students could also customize their homepage with the iGoogle widgets.
But some drawbacks come to mind. Using Google Apps would almost create a parallel universe of email address, calendaring and document sharing from the Columbia University system. And frankly, who needs another email address? How would we integrate the heavily requested blogging, forum and survey features? And how do we handle single sign-on between the Google Applications, the blogging and forum applications we add later and WIND? And not least: how do we qualify gslounge.com as an "educational institution" in order to not pay $50 per user? It's also not clear how we could use the gslounge.com homepage to advertise the groups and individuals who contribute to the site. Once a user signs up, how would they be notified that the international club has a party schedule for Friday night?
Your thoughts?
Thanks,
Brody
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Google Apps?
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4 comments:
Brody - here's a challenge to our current thinking. There is a company out there that already utilizes all these wonderful connectivity tools and allows events, interests, and announcements to go posted seamlessly. This company is intertwined with the college experience, and people are notified in their emails when there are updates. It's pretty damn sticky too! In a perfect world, if every new and incoming GS student used and remained faithful to facebook, how would that improve communication, and if it did, how could gslounge.com function as a fine sidedish to the wonderful student management tools facebook has invested millions of dollars in?
Indeed, we absolutely have to figure out the right way to capitalize on how the student body is connected via facebook. How do you see this working in practice?
Brody
but, i've tried to remove all th blinders. IF, and that's big if, every single incoming student can be connected via facebook - does that solve our dilemma for the most part?
not every GSer wants to be on facebook. It is a necessary evil many GSers would prefer not to be distracted by. The facebook idea is not apealing to many older and independent GSers who don't want to have a CC experience at Columbia.
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