Category: Company-Watch
May 14, 2010, 02:00 PM ET
Google Gives Students a Portable Voice
"We've heard," says Google's official blog today, that "college students, in particular, really appreciate getting their voice mail sent to their e-mail, sending free text messages, and reading voice-mail transcriptions, rather than listening to messages (especially handy while in class)."
And not-so-coincidentally, Google has a service that does just that. Google Voice for Students gives a person all this for nothing—as long as that person has an e-mail address that ends in ".edu." The rest of us, well, just have to know someone well-connected to get an invite.
Actually, it's a nice service. You get a new phone number, and can forward all your other phones to that, and get all your mail in one place. And once you stop being amused by the way the transcription feature sometimes turns your friends' words into things they didn't really say, you will find it to be useful. Maybe on your...
Read MoreJanuary 28, 2010, 10:00 AM ET
Elsevier Introduces New Features for Online Health-Science Textbooks
A leading publisher in health-science textbooks is the latest to add interactive tools to online books and one of the first to offer e-textbooks without an expiration date.
Elsevier introduced the Pageburst service this week, with interactive features such as social networking, integrated multimedia, and incorporated grade-book tools. Daniel Behan, the company's product director for e-books, said health-science students were a good market for interactive, permanent e-textbooks because they often need to reference multiple texts throughout their education.
Flipping through pages of material every time they need information is too time-consuming for students, Mr. Behan said.
"Obviously we aren't going to fundamentally change student behavior," he said, "Students today aren't going to act the way that students did 15 or 20 years ago, where they were willing to sit down and read."...
Read MoreOctober 19, 2009, 03:00 PM ET
After Latest Loss in Patent Case, Blackboard Looks to the Supreme Court
Blackboard Inc. plans to ask the Supreme Court to review its patent battle with its rival Desire2Learn after a federal appeals court last week denied the company's request to have a larger panel of the court reconsider the case.
The company will soon file its request for consideration by the nation's highest court, said Matthew Small, Blackboard's general counsel, in an interview Monday, though he acknowledged that "it is very unlikely that any case is ever heard by the Supreme Court."
"I think we have a very good reason to ask for the decision to be reheard," he added. But he declined to give specifics, noting only that "it would be inappropriate for me to characterize a future legal pleading here."
He played down the latest ruling and the company's request for Supreme Court consideration, noting that Blackboard officials have long said they would fight the case until all possible...
Read MoreSeptember 10, 2009, 01:00 PM ET
Google Touts Big Gains In Campus E-Mail Business
Google is touting its growing influence in the area of college
e-mail systems. To celebrate the start of a new academic year, the
company unveiled
a Web site that makes it clear just how widespread its presence
is in higher education.
The site features a map that looks like a big game of Risk in which
Google owns all the pieces. It shows the 145 colleges that have
signed up to have Google Apps Education Edition as their official
campus e-mail service.
The
Official Google Blog announced the site in honor of the now
five million students who have "gone Google" and agreed to use the
platform. According to the blog, the number of students who have
registered for the service has risen by 400 percent since last
year.
As for Google's major competition, Microsoft's Live@edu, a spokeswoman for that company would not specify how many college accounts it has.
Read MoreJuly 27, 2009, 02:09 PM ET
U.S. Appeals Court Rules Against Blackboard in Latest Patent Ruling
A federal appeals court ruled Monday that part of one of Blackboard's software patents is invalid, reversing a decision that forced Blackboard rival Desire2Learn to pay $3.3-million in damages for infringement. Blackboard will now have to repay those damages, according to a disclosure filing by Blackboard.
In Monday's action, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit partly overturned a lower court's ruling that Desire2Learn was violating a Blackboard software patent. Both companies make software that colleges use to provide course materials to students, run online discussions, and track grades.
Since the lower coart ruled, Blackboard has won other, similar patents that are not affected by Monday's ruling and remain vaild. Matthew Small, Blackboard's chief business officer, said that he was "obviously disappointed" by the decision and that the company planned to appeal...
Read MoreMay 6, 2009, 04:00 PM ET
Blackboard Plans to Buy Another Rival, Angel Learning
Blackboard Inc. announced this afternoon that it plans to buy Angel Learning, a rival course-management software company, for $80-million in cash and $15-million in stock, adding to the company’s many acquisitions over the last several years.
Both companies have approved the deal, and Blackboard expects the arrangement to become final by the end of May.
Michael L. Chasen, president and chief executive of Blackboard, said in an interview with The Chronicle, that in the short run the combined company plans to continue to sell Angel Learning’s software as a separate product, so the 400 colleges and elementary and secondary schools that use it can continue to do so for now. Down the road, the best features of Angel will be folded into Blackboard software, Mr. Chasen said. “There are a number of great features and functionalities from Angel that we would like to incorporate into our...
Read MoreApril 20, 2009, 03:56 PM ET
Obama Web Gurus Court College Fund Raisers
Yes, you can raise more money from alumni.
So claim the new-media gurus who helped elect Barack Obama president.
The Washington-based company that built candidate Obama’s online arsenal, Blue State Digital, is now courting colleges and universities.
And one of the country’s largest, the University of Florida, has signed on to sharpen and broaden its outreach efforts.
This week’s Chronicle takes a look at Blue State’s technology and strategy. Skeptics argue that techniques that work in the digital war room of a political campaign don’t translate to higher education. —Marc Parry
April 16, 2009, 03:22 PM ET
College Bookstores Move to Put Electronic Textbooks on Their Shelves
It will now be easier for students to find electronic versions of textbooks at several college bookstores, thanks to a new partnership between textbook publishers and an association of college booksellers. But will students choose the paperless option?
The arrangement, announced this week, will give more prominent placement at dozens of college bookstores to electronic textbooks offered through CourseSmart, a venture owned by five major textbook companies. The deal involves CourseSmart and the Collegiate Retail Alliance, which represents 52 independent college bookstores.
Participating bookstores will now display cards near certain books that students can buy instead of the printed book, said Richard W. McDaniel, founder and president of the alliance. Each card contains an access code that, once it is authorized, grants students the ability to download the digital copy via...
Read MoreApril 9, 2009, 04:03 PM ET
New Study Sees Surge in E-Mail Outsourcing
Academia has seen “explosive growth” in the outsourcing of student e-mail systems, according to a new study.
Nearly 20-percent of the senior IT leaders surveyed said commercial providers now host their primary student e-mail systems, said the report from Educause, the nonproft higher-education technology consortium.
Faculty and staff e-mail is another story. Only 2.3-percent of those primary systems were hosted commercially, Educause found, in part because of concern over confidentiality.
You’ll find lots of other campus communications topics addressed in the study, titled Spreading the Word: Messaging and Communications in Higher Education.”
The lure of outsourced e-mail from companies like Google and Microsoft was a hot topic at The Chronicle’s Technology Forum this week.
Steven Zink of the University of...
Read MoreMarch 25, 2009, 04:00 PM ET
Google Announces 'Summer of Code' to Encourage Students to Join Open-Source Projects
Google is handing out $4,500 stipends to a select group of college students who will spend this summer contributing to open-source projects, including ones that compete with Google’s own software.
It’s part of the company’s “Summer of Code,” now in its fifth year. Among the 150 open-source projects that Google has included in the program is NetSurf, a Web browser led by a team in England, which is, at least theoretically, competing with Google’s own browser, Chrome.
“We’re really not so worried about competition,” said Leslie Hawthorn, program manager for open source at Google, in an interview. “Competition is par for the course and healthy in open source.”
Google is offering fewer stipends this year than last year — 1,000 this year compared with 1,175 last year. But Ms. Hawthorn said that the company is committing the same amount of...
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Each day on Wired Campus, The Chronicle's technology reporters highlight key IT developments and put them in perspective.