Google for email support

I was wondering if this would happen. Google's email service is fantastic, better than any other webmail client that a college could offer, IMHO. And it looks like I am not the only one with that opinion. One school is now outsourcing their email support to Google. Will others follow?

Liberal Education Today - Campus turns to Google for email support: "One American campus is outsourcing its email to Google. San Jose City College email accounts will be hosted by the search giant, who has been running its email program, Gmail, for several years. Users' email domains will not appear as Google's."

via NITLE's Liberal Education Today

Mozilla's Songbird

While sitting and listening to a Ruckus demo today, Ken showed me Songbird, Mozilla's recent entry into the media player/organizer race. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm hoping it does what Firefox did for web browsing. Currently the download is Windows-only, but give them time... this is only version 0.1!

"Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions."

Elgg

Found this blogging tool aimed at educational institutions. It might be worth a try:

elgg.net :: the learning landscape: "The concept behind the system is to develop a fully customizable learning landscape. To achieve this Elgg is a hybrid of weblogging, e-portfolios and social networking. It is hoped this combination of features will provide an engaging environment for learners to create their own learning space and then connect to others, forming online communities of learning."