Google putting its digital library to the test

Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.
Google Book Search has about 12 million books available.

Google Inc. is giving researchers nearly a half-million dollars to test the academic value of its rapidly growing online library.

The grants announced July 14 will be used to help pay for 12 humanities projects studying questions that will require sifting through thousands of books to reach meaningful conclusions.

Google is hoping the research will validate its long-held belief that making electronic copies of old books will bring greater enlightenment to the world. The company’s critics, though, have argued that the internet search leader has trampled over copyright laws to build a commanding early lead in digital books so it can boost profits.…Read More

Google launches do-it-yourself app creation software

Google is bringing Android software development to the masses, reports the New York Times. The company will offer a software tool, starting July 12, that is intended to make it easy for people to write applications for its Android smart phones. The free software, called Google App Inventor for Android, has been under development for a year. User testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students, and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors. The thinking behind the initiative, Google said, is that as cell phones increasingly become the computers that people rely on most, users should be able to make applications themselves. “The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on sabbatical at Google and led the project. The project is a further sign that Google is betting that its strategy of opening up its technology to all kinds of developers eventually will give it the upper hand in the smart-phone software market. Its leading rival, Apple, takes a more tightly managed approach to application development for the iPhone, controlling the software and vetting the programs available. “We could only have done this because Android’s architecture is so open,” Abelson said, adding that the project aims to give users, especially young people, a simple tool to let them tinker with smart-phone software, much as people have done with computers…

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Brown University expands Google services, could save $1M per year

Brown University will bring Gmail to 7,000 staff, faculty, and graduate students.
Brown University will bring Gmail to 7,000 staff, faculty, and graduate students this fall.

Reports of Gmail’s demise, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. After a spring that saw at least three prominent universities move away from Google’s free hosted eMail and applications, technology officials at Brown University will expand the use of these tools beyond its undergraduates this summer after faculty clamored for the services over the past year—a move that could save the university $1 million annually.

The Ivy League university in Providence, R.I., launched the free Google Apps for Education for its 6,000 undergraduates last academic year—a migration that made students “happy,” “productive,” and “excited,” Brown’s IT director of support services, Geoff Greene, wrote in a June 29 post on Google’s official blog.

“And then some people got jealous,” Greene wrote.…Read More

Stores see Google as ally in eBook market

Independent bookstores were battered first by discount chains like Barnes & Noble, then by super-efficient web retailers like Amazon.com. Now the electronic book age is dawning. With this latest challenge, these stores will soon have a new ally: the search giant Google, The New York Times reports. Later this summer, Google plans to introduce its long-awaited push into electronic books, called Google Editions. The company has revealed little about the venture thus far, describing it generally as an effort to sell digital books that will be readable within a Web browser and accessible from any internet-connected computing device. Now one element of Google Editions is coming into sharper focus. Google is on the verge of completing a deal with the American Booksellers Association, the trade group for independent bookstores, to make Google Editions the primary source of e-books on the web sites of hundreds of independent booksellers around the country, according to representatives of Google and the association.

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Business school swaps Google Apps for Microsoft Live@edu

A French business school plans to trade Google Apps, used by around half its staff and students, for Microsoft’s rival Live@edu service, IDG News Service reports. Skema Business School’s 6,250 students, 500 administrative staff, and 128 teaching staff will have access to Microsoft’s Live@edu hosted eMail service, which includes calendar and contact management, instant messaging, video conferencing, and 10GB of storage space, the school announced June 23. Staff and students also will be offered Microsoft Office 2010 under a site-wide licensing program, and access to Sharepoint Online, giving them each 25GB of storage space for documents, whether shared or their own. The applications will run in Microsoft’s European data centers. The school is making the move as part of a three-year collaboration agreement with Microsoft, which will also see the company offer internships to Skema graduates and supply staff to teach elements of a course on social networking, the school said. Skema was created last November from the merger of two French business schools, CERAM and ESC Lille. ESC Lille, with around 3,000 students, adopted Google Apps Education Edition in April 2008, one of the first schools in France to do so. Switching to Live@edu will allow Skema to harmonize the IT systems used by staff and students of the two schools, and will enable it to integrate them with the software used to run the school…

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Connecticut heads up 30-state Google Wi-Fi probe

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal plans to head up a 30-state investigation into Google’s Wi-Fi data gathering scandal, CNET reports. Blumenthal’s investigation adds to the legal headaches for Google caused by the revelation that its Street View camera cars were collecting wireless “payload” data in addition to geolocation data from unsecured wireless hot spots. Ever since Google revealed the extent of its data gathering a month ago in response to inquiries from German regulators, lawyers and politicians have been lining up to express their outrage. “Consumers have a right and a need to know what personal information—which could include eMails, web browsing, and passwords—Google may have collected, how, and why,” Blumenthal said in an online statement. “Google must come clean, explaining how and why it intercepted and saved private information broadcast over personal and business wireless networks.” Google has argued that the data it collected were “fragmented,” because Street View cars were moving and the equipment used to record data was changing wireless channels several times a second. The company also has said that it collected the data inadvertently, and the company’s intent will be a key part of the legal battle between Google and its critics…

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Google music store could launch this fall

With the iTunes’ banner waving supremely over the digital music landscape, Google continues to build its own music service, CNET has learned. According to multiple music industry sources, Google could launch a music service that offers song downloads and streaming music as early as this fall. Google has already signaled that it wishes to give users of phones equipped with Google’s Android operating system a better music offering. At Google’s I/O conference last month, the search engine offered attendees a demonstration of a web-based iTunes competitor. Also TechCrunch reported two weeks ago that it discovered a “Google Music” logo hosted on Google’s domain…

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Google tells lawmakers it never used Wi-Fi data

Google Inc. is telling lawmakers that it never dissected or used any of the information that it accidentally sucked up while collecting data about public Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, reports the Associated Press. In a letter to three key members of the House Commerce Committee, the company apologized for collecting fragments of eMails, search requests and other online activities over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. The company got the information while photographing neighborhoods for its “Street View” mapping feature. Google said it was trying to gather information about the location, strength and configuration of Wi-Fi networks so it could improve the accuracy of location-based services such as Google Maps and driving directions. Going further and collecting snippets of information traveling over those networks “was a mistake,” Pablo Chavez, Google’s director of public policy, wrote in the letter…

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Some colleges have second thoughts on Gmail

Sixty percent of colleges that outsource eMail services use Gmail, according to a 2009 survey.
Sixty percent of colleges that outsource eMail services use Gmail, according to a 2009 survey.

A small-scale backlash against Google’s free eMail service and applications has included at least three prominent universities this year, after many colleges had begun moving to the outsourced Gmail system to save money and simplify support.

The cloud-based eMail system has appealed to college students since Google launched its campus Gmail pilot in 2004, educators said, and Google officials maintain that colleges continued to adopt Gmail even as negative headlines circulated this spring.

More than 8 million K-12 and college students use Gmail and Google Apps, according to the company.…Read More

Google Wave: Now open to the public

Google Wave, a web-based tool to let people chat and collaborate in real time, is now open to the public, CNET reports. The free Google service brought a social dimension when it arrived with much fanfare nearly a year ago, although it was available only by invitation until now. Many educators say Wave could help with online teaching and learning. “It’s clear from the invaluable feedback we’ve received that Wave is a great place to get work done, in particular for teams working together on projects that involve lots of discussion and close coordination,” Google Wave product manager Stephanie Hannon said. “If you tried Google Wave out a while ago and found it not quite ready for real use, now is a good time to come back for a second try.” Google is making Wave freely available to Google Apps users, too. “Google Wave is about getting work done,” said Lars Rasmussen, a Wave leader…

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