Noulakaz

The blog of Avinash, Christina, Anya and Kyan Meetoo.

Archives for 2007

Google provides email to UoM students

By 32 Comments

The University of Mauritius is now using Google Apps to provide enhanced services to all 6000 students. They will get:

  • GMail = a web-based mail client with chat facilities with 2Gb of storage,
  • Calendar = with collaborative features i.e. perfect for organizing meetings,
  • Docs = collaborative online word-processor compatible with Word and the OpenDocument Format,
  • Spreadsheet = collaborative online spreadsheet compatible with Excel and the OpenDocument Format.

Let’s hope that the bandwidth the students have at university will be sufficient for them to use these apps!

The students will also have the possibility to read and write emails from their mobile phones using either a customized web interface to Gmail or a nifty Gmail Java application which Google offers for free. (Crap! The application only works with Blackberry devices!)

What is cool is that everything is powered by Linux and Open Source Software.

I am happy :-)

IBM Lotus Symphony available for free

By 19 Comments

IBM has just released a “new” free office suite (word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software) called IBM Lotus Symphony.

Joel Spolsky thinks that this is a non-event and that the software will fail to get a large number of users. (Personally I am very happy with OpenOffice.org and NeoOffice)

I love this paragraph from Joel’s post:

“As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.”

Will I ever be able to tell my students to learn Assembler after this?!?

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

By 11 Comments

The New York Times will stop charging for accessing parts of its web site including 20 years of archive (from 1987 onwards).

The reason is (I quote):

“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive. The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”

Fantastic! Instead of making us pay, the New York Times will get its money from advertising.

As a corollary, is it possible to have a (paper) newspaper in 2007 which does not have a website with 100% free content? Will that be possible in 2010? I have my doubts.