Monthly Archives: March 2007

Students paying big bucks in penalties for sharing music files

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The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is serving 'pre-warning' litigation letters to thousands of students on college and university campuses. These letters are served to campus IT departments, which in turn are obligated to deliver them to students. They indicate that the computer at a specified internet address has been serving up copyrighted materials illegally. If that internet address is assigned to you, you're on the hook. The letters warn that a civil law suit will follow. Students, however, have an option to settle in advance at a discounted rate, often for several thousand dollars. (Read more)

Regardless of what you think of the tactic or the music industry, they mean business. If you are using a music file sharing software and you're sharing those files with others, you are vulnerable. PSU does not condone or support file sharing. It is wrong and illegal.

Please stop! In addition to the RIAA, Congress is starting to get involved, too. If the practice continues, higher ed institutions may be required to exert controls around specific types of traffic on our network. That will have consequences for legitimate file sharing and traffic as well.

You have alternatives! Use your iTunes for music streaming. Go to Ruckus.com or another free music service. Share your CDs. But stop grabbing and sharing music for free with file sharing programs!

If you don't, you may pay dearly.

Schools outsource email to Google Apps

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"40 ,000 [Arizona State] Students Leap to Google Apps"

"Initially offering new e-mail accounts based on Google's Gmail service (but retaining the "asu.edu" domain) on an opt-in basis, [CIO] Sannier and his team found that students were making the switch at the rate of around 300 per hour. Today, more than 40,000 ASU students and faculty have made the switch, and he expects to shut down the University's in-house mail servers near the end of this term." (http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=48227)

Aquinas College outsourced student and employee email to Google.

What does this mean for PSU? Nothing yet, but as we look at how we spend our valuable technology resources and time, it begs the question of whether we should continue to provide what is fast becoming a commodity service on the web.

There are no easy answers. Google may not provide you the level of service and support you get from ITS staff now, particularly when it comes to retrieving lost emails or important backups. Then again, we all deal with that reality anyway as we use our ISP providers for personal email. Does this change the liability of the University in regard to maintaining records? New laws are emerging that might indicate otherwise.

The core question is this: what is the value of a PSU-provided email, for students and employees? And what does it cost in terms of servers, licensing, and staff time and effort?

Regardless, we need to watch how these new ventures fare.

Trade in Microsoft Office for Google Apps?

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An interesting trend is emerging in how basic computer software is delivered. Google has introduced new programs--Google Apps--for word processing and spreadsheets. These new programs are designed to work with several other online Google applications; email, calendars, web documents and photo management. All are types of software we've traditionally installed on our personal computers. Google is offering them as an online service. Your computer doesn't host anything, it connects you to a Google-hosted space of your own.

 

This piece was written in Google Docs, an online word processing program. It has all the basic formatting, editing and proofing tools, yet it's a lot less sophisticated than the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. And while I've been weaned, trained and reliant on Word for almost two decades, this is an interesting challenge to my habitual self.

 

Google Apps is 'software as a service.' You don't buy the software as you would with Microsoft Office, you connect to Google's applications online. You save your documents on Google servers. You'll never have to upgrade the software, Google takes care of all that. You just use the application. Log in and write. The same with spreadsheets. The interface is designed with an emphasis on simplicity.

 

Documents created with Google Apps are sharable. Simply invite others via an email link to join in. The document can be open by several users simultaneously so they can collaborate in its development. That alone is worth the cost of admission.

 

Ah, but it's free.

 

This is a shift from software delivery of yore. We used to install and host software on our personal computers. Microsoft was the most common application with their Office suite of products. Veteran users of these products--Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook--have come to rely heavily on them.

 

Yet here comes Google with their free apps. Software as a service. They want to entice you to use their services. For Google, everything is about getting us to use their search function.

 

Here are some significant differences in using Google apps.

 

  1. The applications are only available online. You have to have an Internet connection to access them.
  2. You store your documents (and ideas) on Google servers.
  3. The applications are far less sophisticated than those in Microsoft Office.

For many of us, those trade-offs are too high a price to pay. We prefer to keep our documents on our computers and local servers. Yet Google is playing to a new generation for which instant messaging, mySpace and web-based applications are second nature. They're innate googlers.

 

The question for mature and sage users of Office: Would we change our personal computer paradigm?

 

  • Would we buck the Microsoft empire to go with the emerging Google empire?
  • Will we continue to pay a hefty annual sum to Microsoft so that all of our employees can use Microsoft Office?
  • And, the question I hear most, would we store our precious and confidential documents on Google servers?

Ask your own questions. Anyone can google 'Google Apps' and start the process by signing up for a personalized Google account.

 

I'm thinking about what I want to say to new PSU students at orientation this spring. Many ask about computers and software to buy. I think the best advice is to get a good laptop and hold off the purchase Microsoft Office. Rather, sign up for a Google account. Unless they're writing super-sensitive, personal documents, storage of their work on Google servers isn't an issue. A student could keep all their materials online. Man, would they be dialed in. Drop in at any computer connected to internet and access all their documents.

 

If I was 18, that's what I'd be thinking.

 

Your thoughts?