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Welcome to Your Weekly Paradigm Shift: Very Large "Free" Web E-Mail Accounts
7/14/2004
That has some interesting implications.
If students move to Google and don't forward their mail, you sure better hope that they remember to check their old, sad, sorry, puny institutional account, since that's probably where the university is going to be mailing Important Official Notices That They Should Read.
If students move to Google and do forward their mail, it will be a miracle if you don't end up having your school's e-mail blocked. Remember that when you forward e-mail, from the point of view of the host that's receiving the forwarded e-mail, the e-mail appears to be "coming from" the forwarding host. Thus, when a spammer sends e-mail to your students' institutional e-mail account, and the students in turn automatically forward it to their new Google accounts, if Google happens to looks at that spam, it is going to "look like" it "came from" *your* institutional mail server. We all know what happens to spammy looking hosts, right? They get blocked, yeperoo.
There's also the issue of wide area bandwidth. For the first time students have a serious remote storage resource available to them. Are you ready for the Internet traffic that will be associated with all that storage?
But don't despair: Gmail isn't perfect (even though it sure seems pretty dang good based on the Gmail account I've been testing). Specifically:
- Google Gmail accounts are still in test deployment, and are available by invitation from an existing Gmail user only (then again, if you ask around, you can probably find a friend or acquaintance who has a Gmail account, and more likely than not they'll probably have a spare invitation which they can share with you).
- When you pick a Gmail username, it has to be at least six characters long. J'e, Tom, Sue and Sally simply aren't available as Gmail usernames, sorry.
- Gmail d'esn't work with all Web browsers. As of July 13th, Gmail supports IE 5.5 and later, Netscape 7.1 and later, Mozilla 1.4 and later, Mozilla Firefox 0.8 and later, and Safari 1.2.1 and later. Opera users, sorry, you're not on the officially supported list.
- You need to have Javascript and cookies enabled, which can be rather suboptimal from a security point of view.
- When you use Gmail, Google d'es show you advertising, and the advertising is automatically targeted based on the content of your mail messages. Thus, if you're talking about going to Hawaii with a correspondent, don't be surprised if you see ads for airline airfare specials to Hawaii, or Hawaiian hotel advertising. (On the other hand, the ads are low key and unobtrusive, rather than obnoxious popups, popupunders, or banner ads).
- Some folks worry about Google being able tie their identity to their Web searching and browsing habits via the cookies it uses. (But Gmail d'es have a privacy policy, which you can review to see if it is sufficiently strong to address privacy concerns you may have).
Bottom line, one way or the other, Gmail is here and here to stay. You probably are going to want to start thinking about how you and your institution will cope with it, if you haven't already done so.
Recommended Reading
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:: Linux Application Checker Brings Distro Help - SmartClassroom :: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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: Colorado State Launches New Online School - Web 2.0 :: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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: "That Which Weaves Together:" The NSF Cyberlearning Report
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: Collexis' Lawriter Debuts Social Network for Law Students - News Update :: Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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: VMware's Updates Cause Problems, CEO Apologizes
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: Linux Application Checker Brings Distro Help
: Wayne State Deploys Q1 Labs QRadar to Manage and Secure Network
: SunGard HE Releases New Unified Digital Campus
: Higher Education Fertile Ground for 802.11n WiFi, ABI Reports
