Quick and dirty review of Notify

A new notifier software for gmail users just arrived! Notify by Vibealicious, a new canadian startup provides a menubar app to help you keep track of what’s going on in your up-to-four mailboxes. Its direct competitor is the Google Notifier. The interface is simple and elegant, and does what you expect it to do. For those who cannot bear having email arrive without knowing about it, Notify might be just what you need.

Usability – Notify’s interface is a lot more elegant and intuitive than Google Notifier. Account configuration is easy enough for both of them.

Functionality – Notify allows up to 4 accounts. The interface is tabbed, which makes it easy to switch to other accounts. Google Notifier does not have this functionality. Note: Gmail Notifier add-on for firefox has this ability for multiple accounts. Notify also allows you to change the interval it checks for updates. however, it doesn’t look like it has calendar alerts unlike Google Notifier. This could be a deal breaker.

Growl support – Notify has built-in growl integration. This could the deciding factor for some of you out there. Gmail notifier for mac does not have built-in growl support although you can add a plug-in.

Conclusion – Notify looks promising but still lacks some functionality. What will really make it soar will be adding support for other IMAP-capable mail, and calendar alerts. Ability to label messages right from the menubar, and accessing my https-enabled gmail in my browser with one click will be nice too.

Verdict: Spideroak ~ Dropbox

Been using Spideroak for over 2 weeks now, and Spideroak seems comparable to Dropbox in almost everything, with the approach adopted by Spideroak slightly safer and user customizable. More details on what they do can be found for spideroak here and dropbox here. I shall discuss the pros and cons from my (read: user) perspective.

Similarities

Automatic backup + versioning
cross-platform (mac, linux, wins). So no problems here.
Ability to share folders
Web Access

Differences

Ease-of-use – Dropbox is easier than Spideroak, simply because dropbox has less functionality and is less customizable. Spideroak has 5 tutorials, while dropbox only has one.

Syncing procedure – Dropbox requires you to drop the files you want to sync into one specified folder, which changes the structure of your files. Spideroak allows you to specify the files you want to sync through a normal window dialog. This really depends on the way you work. For me, i like dropbox’s method better because everytime i need to sync something, i will just click and drag the folder into dropbox’s folder, and it will sync. Spideroak requires you to fire up its dialog and check the folder you want to sync (although you could always specify a folder called “dropbox” or whatever you want to call it which is set to sync in spideroak and do the same thing).

Sync versus backup - Spideroak differentiates between sync-ing and backing up files. no difference to me though.

Zero-knowledge protocol – Spideroak uses Zero-knowledge protocol, which means that no one can access your data. more information can be found here. Dropbox does not have place much information on this on their website except the fact that its AES256. More information can be found here. Again, no difference in my opinion, as i wont trust the company anyway, and if i have something really really top secret, i would mount my own encrypted image, using Leopard’s disk utility or Truecrypt.

Pricing – Spideroak’s pricing is a lot less than Dropbox’s pricing.

Verdict

If you are just looking for some online backup of some documents that you have, or online syncing of some documents which you are currently working on, AND your files are less than 2GB, then you’ll be fine with either dropbox or spideroak, although for a gentler learning curve, dropbox is the one (although spideroak is really really easy to use as well).

If however you are looking for a complete solution, or your files are super duper kill-you-if-i-tell-you kind of secret, and your files are more than 2GB, then definitely you will have to go for spideroak, for its Zero Knowledge protocols and cheaper price.

Backup Options Online

Have been using dropbox for the past 6 months to keep some of my more important files. Have talked about online storage in a previous post. If you’re still looking for a solution for your online storage needs, Maclife just did a comparison of 5 different solutions, you can look up the comparison here. Personally, dropbox have been more than sufficient for my needs, and the 2GB limit (for the free account) have forced me to continuously think about what’s important to keep and what’s OK to lose (should my traditional backup onto external harddisks fail in addition to my Macbook’s harddisk failure). Have also used it to share files amongst some colleagues during one of our collaborations on a conference presentation, and dropbox did its job well. The ease of use, the effortless syncing amongst different computers are all big pluses for dropbox. Will now try Spideroak to see whether its comparable.

MS Live Services Plug-in for Moodle

Microsoft just released a Live services plug-in for Moodle. If your school is using Moodle, and still deciding between Google Apps or Live@edu, this (check out the video) might just swing your opinion towards Live@edu. This integration of Live services gives a gigantic boost to your Moodle experience, and with a single, integrated login, it greatly facilitates user adoption, as we know how difficult it is to get teachers onboard if it involves another platform, another username and another password. Go check it out.

Facebook – A compelling alternative

Firstly, for anyone out there without a facebook account, you need to get one here PRONTO!

The advantages are many -

1. Low barrier of entry for students – most already have an account, and they are familiar with its interface .
2. You can be sure that students are on it, in fact, it is difficult to get them off it.
3. Due to Facebook’s popularity, and Facebook Platform’s functionality, you can be ensured that it will always get updated to reflect new technology and educational developments.
4. With the opening of Facebook’s API, you can now develop for facebook, and customize apps for your own use.
5. Free.

As we discussed in another cloud computing post, Google Apps Education Edition and Microsoft Live@edu offers many compelling applications which satisfies most of the needs.

Apps to install

Needs	Google Apps	Live@edu	Facebook
Office Suite	Google Docs	Office Live Workspace	Zoho Online Office Suite
Websites	Google Sites	Windows Live Spaces	Advanced Wall
Video	Google Video	Windows Live SkyDrive	Video, Webinaria
Online Storage	Nil	Windows Live SkyDrive	Files, Huddle
Email	Gmail	Live Hotmail or Exchange Labs	Email
Instant Messenging	Google Talk	Windows Live Messenger	Windows Live Messenger
Calendar	Google Calendar	Exchange Labs	Calendar by 30boxes
Desktop Sharing	Nil	Microsoft Sharedview	Nil

For Office work, all 3 major web office suites offers facebook integration. You can chose from Zoho Online Office Suite , ThinkFree Docs or Google Docs for Facebook. For a detailed comparison of the 3 web office offerings, jump here. Thomas provides a walkthrough for Zoho on his blog.

Workspaces by Huddle or DivShare for sharing documents and files and working on projects

Slideshare (Beta) for uploading presentations and slideshows. (Does not require registration)

Windows Live Messenger for private voice chat. (requires registration)

calendar from 30 Boxes is the critically acclaimed personal calendar that lets you get organized and easily share all or parts of your schedule. Includes easy sms reminders, integrated to do list, and simple integration with facebook. (requires registration)

Email for all your emailing needs. Links to your email account.

Video for sharing higher quality video and audio than most video-sharing sites. Plus, each video has per-video privacy so you can restrict who can see it. Videos can be tagged and commented on.

webinaria for making screencasts

Facebook Mobile allows you to use facebook on the go. Use Facebook Mobile to upload photos and notes from your camera phone straight to Facebook. You can also receive and reply to Facebook messages, pokes and Wall posts using text messages, or use your phone’s mobile browser at m.facebook.com.

For Teachers

Coursefeed or Courses 2.0 for use as a virtual classroom noticeboard.

Experiment

Started an experiment on it in 22 Dec 2008, will end in June. Check back for results!

The 3 incarnations of collaborative apps

In recent years, there have been an explosion in Web 2.0 tools that aims to greatly enhance your productivity. In this post, we are going to talk about online collaborative tools that educators can utilize to facilitate collaborative/group/project work. Collaboration apps essentially refers to applications that allows people to collaborate. These could include developing a group report, or creating a set of annotated class notes, or simply updating details. On the professional side, educators could also use these tools to develop a lesson plan with colleagues, update minutes of a meeting, or to collaborate on a paper for submission to a journal/conference.The more I look at these, the more i feel these are going to play a major part in shaping the future workplace.

The first incarnation of collaborative tools came in the form of web office suites like Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Zoho & Thinkfree Office Suite.These web office suites allow collaboration in the form of editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentation slides. Zoho, in particular, offers other productivity tools like calendaring functions, notebooks and wikis. This first wave of collaborative tools are particularly useful when there are many authors, and all 3 suites supports versioning. There have already been many reviews done online comparing the web office suites, for example in the readwriteweb and computerworld, so we wont go into it here. The beauty of these web office suites is that anyone with a browser can access them, but this access comes at the cost of functionality. 

While many tout the benefits of cloud computing in general, and web office suites in particular, established companies like Apple and Microsoft have been dabbling into cloud computing in a different way, via iwork-dot-com, and Microsoft Live Workspace. Their flagship office suites have web functionality, but do not exist completely in the cloud, relying on the full-fledged office suite lying in your computer. This is a different mindset from the web office suites, because this treats cloud computing as simply a web extension of  your computer. This is what i like to call the second generation of collaborative tools – software suites which resides mainly in your own computer, but with a web extension. These, of course, have greater functionality than web office suites, and are more powerful, but they are more costly. 

Next, we will talk about what is the third incarnation of collaborative tools, tools like dropbox and syncplicity. These tools allows files on multiple computers to be synced as long as the computers are on-line, and contains a lot more potential than the first or second generation of collaborative tools. In reality, these tools have been around for a while, in the form of Windows Live Sync (formerly known as FolderShare) by Microsoft and Mobile Me by Apple. However, recent tools like dropbox have upped the ante by providing a simple syncing process and at the same time, providing opportunities for collaboration via versioning history and shared/public folders. 

In dropbox, you can share a particular file on your desktop with the rest of the world by dropping it into the Public folder. Any file here will have a particular URL attached to it which can be viewed by anyone. If you are collaborating on a set of documents with a group of people, dropbox allows you to specify your collaborators for a particular folder, and any changes made to that folder will be reflected in your collaborators folders as well, whenever they get online. More importantly, dropbox also stores previous versions of your files, which can be easily restored. Best of all, for the first 2GB of your files, dropbox is free, and it also works on all platforms. Check out a review of dropbox on youtube.

Cloud Computing for Schools – Live@edu Versus Google Apps

Cloud computing, in the simplest sense of the word, simply means doing your computing online and storing your data online. Web-based email clients (like Gmail and Hotmail) are one of the applications of cloud computing. Instead of using an email client from your desktop, and storing your emails on your own hard disk, everything is done online. For more information, try the entry at wikipedia.

As you well know, the current generation of students probably live out their entire lives online. They check email on the web, chat online, blog, interact on facebook, put up videos on youtube etc. Everything is becoming increasingly web-based. On top of that, the current generation are fully capable of managing large virtual teams (think World of Warcraft) and utilize the power of their personal networks (think Facebook) to achieve their goals. We need to start leveraging on this. Currently, i believe that most schools are still of the opinion that all IT should be in-house: host their own web servers, their own email servers etc. I am of the opinion that this is a very archaic way of thinking. Not only is it expensive (in terms of maintenance), it is also inaccessible. IMO, the first school that is able to utilize the power of blogs, wikis, social networks, RSS, pod casting, taggings, web 2.0 project management,  in an integrated and unified manner to empower their students and staff will prevail in the end. Recently, both Microsoft and Google have come up with pretty compelling online platforms to satisfy most of your computing needs. In this post, we will talk about two major offerings by Microsoft and Google that might transform the way we look at education’s IT needs.

Google Apps Education Edition is basically a bundle of applications that Google offers to Educational institutions free-of-charge. This is especially compelling because many students are very familiar with Gmail’s interface, and Google Apps are all accessible from that interface. Besides Gmail, Google Apps Education Edition also offers the following: 

Google Docs	Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentation
Google Calendar	Calendars, Room/Resource scheduling
Google Sites	Website Creation
Google Talk	Instant Messaging, VOIP, file transfer
Google Video	Share Videos

For more detailed information on Google Apps Education Edition’s offerings, jump here. 

Microsoft Live@edu is Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps. This is compelling because every administrator or office user is familiar with Microsoft (since we all use MS word, Powerpoint, Excel and maybe Exchange). Microsoft Live@edu offers the following: 

Office Live Workspace	Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentation
Live Hotmail or Microsoft Exchange Labs	Calendars, Room/Resource scheduling
Windows Live Spaces	Website Creation
Windows Live Messenger	Instant Messaging, VOIP, file transfer
Windows Live SkyDrive	Share files
Microsoft SharedView Beta	Desktop Sharing with up to 15 other users

For more detailed information on Live@edu’s offerings, jump here.

From an educational perspective, the question is of course: is Google Apps better than Live@edu? We will do a matchup of the bundled applications with a running score tally. In cases where there is a clear winner, it is highlighted in bold. In cases where it is a tie, both scores will increase. 

Comparison

	Google Apps	Score	Live@edu
Office Suite	Google Docs	0:1	Office Live Workspace
Websites	Google Sites	1:2	Windows Live Spaces
Video	Google Video	2:3	Windows Live SkyDrive
Online Storage	Nil	2:4	Windows Live SkyDrive
Email	Gmail	3:5	Live Hotmail or Exchange Labs
Instant Messenging	Google Talk	3:6	Windows Live Messenger
Calendar	Google Calendar	4:7	Exchange Labs
Desktop Sharing	Nil	4:8	Microsoft SharedView (beta)

Office Suite (Winner: Live@edu) - Both Google Apps and Live@edu offers a comprehensive Office Suite – Google Docs and Office Live Workspace. 

1. Editing Prowess – Live@edu has a big advantage. At its present stage of development, Google Docs is still far from MS Office’s editing ability. Google Docs works well for documents that are mainly text-based, and even then it’s editing capabilities are limited. Office Live Workspace, being simply the online extension of MS Office, is much better with more functions.
2. File Types – Moreover, Google Docs only allows certain file types as listed in Uploading and exporting. However, Office Live Workspace basically allows you to upload any type of files. Here, clearly, Live@edu wins. 
3. Real-time Editing – Google Docs allows users to edit a documents at the same time. Office Live Workspace allows collaboration in the sense that users can edit the same documents, just not at the same time. However, this is mitigated by Microsoft SharedView (beta) which allows a single user to share his/her desktop with 15 other users, so that they can edit a document in real time (Google Docs allows 10 for document and presentations, 50 for spreadsheet at the same time). Here, Live@edu has an advantage. It is hard to imagine a scenario where you will need 50 people to collaborate on a spreadsheet, but the ability to share your desktop is highly useful in some scenarios.
4. However, herein lies the caveat. You need to own MS Office on your desktop before you can use Office Live Workspace. If you’re implementing this for your school, you might need to buy some site license fee to allow students to have a copy of MS Office each. (i’m assuming all teachers will have MS Office already). Clearly, for teachers, Office Live Workspace might be better, but for students, depending on your school’s resources, Google Docs might be a cheaper alternative.

Websites (Tie) – For team projects, or course pages, Google Apps offers Google Sites and Live@edu offers Windows Live Spaces. Both offers roughly the same goodies, although Windows Live Spaces might be more customizable. However, Google owns Picasa and Youtube, so embedding pictures and videos might be slightly easier in Google Sites. More reviews to come. 

Video (Tie) – With Live@edu’s SkyDrive and Google Video, it is possible to host videos on both Live@edu and Google Apps. Again, with Google’s expertise via Youtube, Google Video might be slightly better. 

Online Storage (Winner: Live@edu) – Google Docs allows up to 5000 documents to be stored online. For more information on the limits, refer to Basic Information. Office Live Workspace apparently offers up to 500 MB. But together with Windows Live SkyDrive (beta), this boosts up your storage space to 5.5 GB. This puts Live@edu at a advantage.

Email (Tie) – Here, i am definitely biased towards Gmail. Refer to earlier post. However, Live@edu is throwing in Exchange Labs, which is basically Exchange, a professional email experience. Jump here for a comparison between hotmail and exchange. Students might be more familiar with Gmail, but staff and teachers will most probably be more familiar with Exchange. 

Instant Messenging (Winner: Live@edu) – Google Talk allows instant messenging, VOIP, and file transfers. Windows Live Messenger offers basically the same features. Here, Live@edu has a slight advantage because most students are familiar with MSN, which is arguably the world’s number 1 IM client.

Calendaring (Tie) – Google Calendar allows multiple calendars and room/resource scheduling. Windows Live Hotmail offers calendars as well. On top of this, Live@edu offers Microsoft Exchange Labs which offers the whole Exchange experience. Here, Live@edu have a slight advantage because most schools are probably more familiar with Exchange.

Desktop Sharing (Winner: Live@edu) – Live@edu offers Microsoft SharedView (beta) which allows a user to share his desktop with up to 15 other users. This not only offers remote log-in options but also real-time collaboration. While Google Docs offers this real-time collaboration to a certain extent, Live@edu goes one further by allowing users to collaborate on anything other than documents in the Office Suite. 

Conclusion

With the myriad of applications that Microsoft has thrown into the fray, coupled with the fact that most of these applications are extensions of available and widely used programs (Messenger, MS Office, Exchange), Microsoft Live@edu offers a much more compelling proposition to educational institutions looking for a collaboration and communication platform for students and staff. The familiar computing environment offered by Microsoft Live@edu to professionals sweetens the deal further.

Better Email = Better Productivity

In this day and age, it is quite clear that email is an indispensible part of everyone’s life. For some people (especially those in senior management roles), having to clear hundreds of emails in a day is fairly routine work. Hence it is important to have a very good email workflow or email interface.

There are two main ways people deal with their email, offline (via email clients like Outlook, Entourage, Mail, Thunderbird etc) and online (via web-based email clients like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail). The real advantage of offline mail is (obviously) that you can deal with it offline, whenever you need it.But the problem with this is that downloading email takes a while, your email client can hang when it encounters large email attachments, and most importantly, it takes up a huge portion of  your hard drive. For a somewhat more detailed discussion, refer to this.

Here, i am just going to talk about what i use predominantly for my emails, which is Gmail. If you haven’t used gmail before, i suggest you try it now. Even if your work email is tied/locked into proprietary stuff like Exchange and Lotus Notes, you should still get a gmail account and start migrating your emails to it. For help on this, refer to gmail help discussions.

There are many things to like about Gmail – huge storage space (although Yahoo has unlimited storage), good search capabilities (its Google!), other integrated features like Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Chat etc (although hotmail is coming up with these as well), good spam filters (best one so far). But there are two things that stand out: one is the way it deals with the many email conversations that you have – it threads them together, saving you time and precious memory space in remembering what went on in previous emails! The other is the way it allows you to organise your emails – via tags/labels instead of the usual hierarchical folders method. This is mighty useful when a email falls into a few categories and you dont have to copy and paste into many folders.

Of course with any new email client, you will have to learn how to fully utilize all its nifty features, so refer to some videos on youtube on how to make use of some of the features i’ve talked about, Steve Rubel’s blog on how to make gmail your gateway to the web, and finally the official gmail blog .