Normally, I am not a big fan of the publish your own book models, but looking around www.blurb.com I can see where it may have value in educational and other assorted settings. I particularly liked the photo essay possibilities. I can see a class documenting such things as their field trips, class projects, etc. It appears to be a fairly straight forward process as well. Perhaps the next time some of my colleagues visit me at my abode, they will see the equilvalent of family home movies in a book on our coffee table. Then again, probably not.

While some of my colleagues contemplate that email is no longer the killer app, it apparently is still significant enough to be a strategic effort of Google and Microsoft efforts to capture college students as adversting customers by providing life-long email.. It remains to be seen how many college and unviersities will embrace a "partnership" with Microsoft or Google, but I can see benefits and issues either way, especially as it relates to the overall birth-to-bequest strategy that is so important for higher education institutions. Outsourcing a killer app that reduces or affects negatively an institutions ability to foster and engage Alumni could have significant long term ramifications. This bares watching. Here's another article on topic from CIO magazine.

We have a new channel ready to go for our portal. It's a polling channel that was written by one of our students, Adam Brown. Now we have to come up with some polling questions. These questions would have to be of interest to the general community, but not necessarily too controversial - if you get my drift. I'm drawing the big blank. Perhaps a few of my colleagues could help by posting some suggestions in the comments section of this post and help get this ball rolling.

Plymouth State sent several staff to SunGardHE's Summit Conference. It was a great opportunity to share and learn with colleagues from around the world. Here's some shots:
Here's part of the team prior to entry into Disney's Animal Kingdom looking forward to some much deserved r'n'r after a long day of Summiteering.

Dan's presentation was excellent. It was SRO, as were just about all the PSU presentations.

Here's Laurianne stealing the show at the closing event. She's the one on the big screen dressed in black. There were four such screens plus the main stage as the hall was HUGH in order to accommodate the nearly 8000 attendees.

Finally, yours truly, standing in front of the impressive Disney Dolphin resort. At some point, I'll be posting excerpts from my presentation.

Plymouth State had 13 staff attend the conference and presented 14 presentations. Great conference. Great PSU Team.

There's some useful podcasting material for those with an administrative technology bent at: http://www.cio.com/podcasts/