Email for College but not for High School?

With Microsoft aggressively opening their new Live email accounts to colleges, the war is on. It was only several months ago that google announced that they were opening Gmail to colleges. The service they both offer is both slightly different but the interesting part id the push to get market share.

Giving email accounts to college students is a good way to get them to keep it forever. Google didn’t seem like they were actively going after colleges to join their program but Microsoft announced their service with 72 colleges read to join.

While this seems like a good thing it also seems rather redundant. Most colleges offer an email address even if it is only for the 4 years you attend the college. High Schools on the other hand do not offer email as a rule and could benefit from services Microsoft and Google could offer. Being able to create school mailing lists and perhaps even class groups would be invaluable.

google, gmail, live, microsoft, email, college, highschool

I don’t remember this happening on The Jetsons

NYPD spy camThe NYPD are installing 500 of these high tech surveillance unites. Wasn’t there a science fiction movie with those things? When do they start flying and shocking me every time I jaywalk? I can’t wait to hear about the NYPD using them to see if there is a long line at the corner pizza shop or if the rumor about girls hiding bombs under their skirts is really true.

This is going to go horrible horribly wrong. (via BoingBoing)

Education is Key

With web design so new there is a lot of talk about people coming to it as a second career. Many with out any design training at all. This of course has advantages and disadvantages, letting you come at web design with a fresh perspective but lacking the technical knowledge to back it up (though Dan Seems to do okay). Others, like Patrick and myself, are young, out of design school, and have wanted to work in the web as a first career choice.

Recently at SXSW Mark Bolton and others had a panel about design and art direction on the web and how it is really lacking. In my mind this has to be partially be because of the lack of people who understand design at a very high level.

It’s my hope that in the future, as the web matures, that more focus will be put on higher education and deep understanding of design principals. Education that doesn’t stop at a BFA but continues to a MFA.

Ricardo Miranda has a great introductory post up about how to start thinking if an MFA is a good idea for you. If you’re in design and never got a degree in it getting an MFA might be a good way solidify your foundation in design. And if you’re like me and already have a BFA an MFA might be a great way to make those formal skills razor sharp.

I still hope to make it to an MFA one day and every good guide and how to I can find will only make my decision that much more informed.

mfa, gradschool, sxsw2006, ricardomiranda

The Future

"I'm counting on medical science to cure everything in another ten years so that as I grow older all I have to worry about is which dialect of Chinese I need to learn in order to shop for groceries, pay bills, and play World of Warcraft." - Greg Storey

That’s such an awesome quote from Greg that it needed repeating. I have often wondered the same thing. Though sometimes instead of Chinese I think of Portuguese since there is a huge tech movement in Brazil to rival America.

I wonder if once people can live an extremely long and healthy life if they will be less likely to throw it away in a war. I can keep hoping.

Google Calendar!!

Google calendar is awesome. I’d review it but you can read a review over at Techcrunch.

Google Canendar message in the top left corner

My quick notes are that I love the tiny blue menu in the top left. I like the idea of easily switching between the different google services. If only it was on the other google pages. It’s much more useful then the current account info on the top right corner.

So far there is no Gmail integration but I’m sure they want to get the bugs out of it and get it working before they grind both services to a halt.

There also doesn’t seem to be a way to group edit a calendar. Hopefully this does become the feature they never implement. The ability to create groups in Gmail took over a year.

Update: They added the blue menu to gmail! But doh! They made the links open in a new window! I wanted to SWITCH between them not open more windows. At the very least I’d like to be able to edit that in the settings.

google, googlecalendar, gmail, calendar