Monday, September 29, 2008

Bloomsbury Survey Results

As our Bloomsbury Survey of Web Use officially closed last week, we randomly selected our 5 lucky winners, for the £300, £150 and 3 x £50 Amazon vouchers. The winners from the RVC, BBK, IOE and SOAS will be presented with their Amazon vouchers at the Project Demonstrator Lunch on the 11th November at the London Knowledge Lab.

We are currently working with the survey data, which we will share with you on our website soon. We will create a brand new page on our website devoted to the survey analysis, to represent web use patterns, which we will be using as a guide for our next phase of the project - Google Docs API developments.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Google Mobile launches tomorrow!

The long awaited Google mobile phone will be launched tomorrow in the states, which will no doubt run in competition with Apple's Iphone in the run up to Christmas. It's expected the Smartphone's will be released in the UK in November.

Google have kept quiet about the technology of the phone, so no one knows exactly what to expect, other than the mobile phone will run on 'Android', which is Google's own mobile operating system, and it will be touch screen with a pull out QWERTY keyboard. It will also have a built-in GPS (global positioning system), a tilt sensor for gaming and will be available exclusively on the T-Mobile network. We also expect that the new phone will be able to run Google's range of web applications, such as Google maps, Gmail, Googles new web browser Chrome and of course Google Docs : ) So hopefully we can start editing on Google Docs with Google's handheld device, and not just view!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

How students use technology to learn

I grabbed this abstract from the Educause Connect website, which is a website dedicated to transforming education through information technologies.

"Students use technology in natural ways that allow them to do what they want: communicate with anyone they want, in the time and space that suits them best. Easily accessible and user-friendly, collaboration tools allow students to explore, share, engage, and connect with people and content in meaningful ways that help them learn. By relying on the familiar ways students use these tools, faculty can enable new forms of communication and engagement in the classroom, permitting extensions and variations of the informal interactions already occurring in classrooms and hallways, and creating new frontiers for collaboration across geographic boundaries."

To read the full report click here.

Google's new browser

Google have recently launched their very own web browser - Chrome.

Chrome has been recognised as being part browser and part operating system from it's multitude of features, beating other popular web browsers in speed, stability and search.
Although Google say they are not necessarily competing with popular web browsers, such as Firefox or Internet Explorer, instead they are attempting to provide a tool for todays web applications and todays web users. It has been recognised that the web is being increasingly used for online applications, and Google wanted to create a new browser to manage multiple applications such as Facebook, Bebo, Flickr, Zoho and Google Apps. So this is good news for us Google Docs users, as this will mean a much faster and efficient service with all Google's applications.

Check out the 10 best features of Google Chrome: