News ASsignment 3

JJ Cook
Mrs. Pemberton
LIB 103
October 28, 2008
News Assignment 3
Zimbra by Yahoo will be making their debut on Tuesday. Zimbra is a provider of a communication and collaboration suite that rivals Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange. Zimbra manages all your mailbox content including messages, contacts, calendars, and attachments. Zimbras parent company is Yahoo. “Zimbra planned to become a host for on-demand versions of its suite, the company's co-founder and CEO Satish Dharmaraj told IDG News Service in September 2007, days after Yahoo bought his company.”
Zimbra is using Yahoo’s data centers to become a hosting provider for customers in the education market that want to access the suite on demand. Previously Zimbra has only counted on third-party hosting partners to offer the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
“Most of the about 400 educational institutions that use the Zimbra suite have it installed on their own premises, said John Robb, vice president of product marketing and product management.”
The demand for Saas programs is growing among educational institutions. Educational universities like Zimbra software on their own servers for security and privacy reasons.
Since Yahoo has acquired Zimbra in 2007, Zimbra has doubled its installed base to about 20 million mailboxes. It now has more than 30,000 customers in over 80 countries. US$2 per year per mailbox without advertising is the price of the hosted suite for students and alumni. The paid option adds synchronization capabilities for I phones. Faculty accounts cost US$8 per year per mailbox including synchronization with Outlook and Blackberry devices.
Zimbra is a fast growing server. With their rivals being Microsoft Office and Outlook/Exchange this can affect students and faculty at educational institutions. With Yahoo being the parent company, Zimbra has potential to enter a lot of markets and affect the market share of Outlook/Exchange and Microsoft Office.
Perez, Juan C. Yahoo’s Zimbra Reaches for the Cloud. http://www.pcworld.com/ /businesscenter/article/152911/yahoos_zimbra_reaches_for_the_cloud.html. Tuesday, October 28, 2008.

Reading Assignment #3

Reading assignment # 3 I am guilty of being on the google diet. If I am doing research for a project or just need to find something on the internet I will “Google It.” Google has become the academic library's main competitor. Google are for “those who want fast, easy access to unlimited, full-text content using interfaces that require no critical thought or evaluation.” James Morris, the dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University coined the term “infobesity” describing Google research: “a junk-information diet, consisting of overwhelming amounts of low-quality material that is hard to digest and leads to research papers of equally low quality.” Providing access to the nutritious information that library holds in a manner that Google provides access would be genius. The answer to this problem might be commercially produced databases called aggregators. The databases will use Boolean searching and other features that will give better search results for people that willing to give the time. I feel like we should Google-ize are online library and databases. Students do find the electronic resource information very confusing. It would make perfect sense to googlize everything. Bottom line is we need students to stop using low quality information and start using high quality information.Bell, Steven. “The Infodiet: How Libraries Can Offer An Appetizing Alternative To Google.” Chronicles of Higher Education Vol. 50, 24 (2/20/2004).

reading assignment 3

Reading Response #2

Reading Response # 2
JJ Cook
LIB 103
Ms. Pemberton
Sept 16, 2007
Reading # 2
Foster, Andrea L. “Information Navigation 101” Chronicles of Higher Education Vol. 53. Issue 27(2007): pA 38-A40.
This article informed me that this generation of college students are not as tech savvy as we are made out to be. Students can manage their ipods, cruise the internet, update our facebook and my space profiles, and browse the xbox marketplace from their t.v. These our mostly recreational and social ways of using the most recent technology. It turns out that when it comes to research us college students do not know what to do. With the increasing information on the internet it is becoming harder for the students to find information, valid information at that.
There used to be only one source for students to find information and that was the library, now you have all these sources with " no definite status of authority." an example of a source with no definitie status of authority would be Wikipedia where anyone can go on the website and edit the information that will be seen. The changes that are made are saved for the public to read them.
The number of online databases has increased drastically from 10,000 to 18,000. With their being so many databases it is hard for students to decide where to look and how to find what you're looking for that is why their has been classes formed to help the students "locate and evaluate the electronic data." With students flooding in information I think it is essential that the students are taking these classes to learn how to properly find the correct information for their projects.

News Report #1

thusman said...
Tropical storm Hannah is heading to the Carolinas. Hannah has been moving through the Bahamas today with 70 mph winds, just below hurricane strength. In Haiti, tropical storm Hannah killed 61 people. The storm is supposed to hit land sometime Saturday possibly picking up strength and becoming a hurricane.Officials have held off evacuating coastal residents inland, the officials are not sure where Hannah will hit. The storm is predicted to hit along the Carolina’s coast but officials have told residents as far north as Washington to be prepared for Hannah. Officials couldn’t decide whether or not to evacuate 1 million residents between Savannah and Wilmington NC. Orders to evacuate could come around noon on Thursday beginning with voluntary evacuations. Hurricane Hannah might be closing schools around the Carolinas affecting students going to the library for library class. This hurricane might also damage important equipment that is used for information technology.Lots of precautions are being taken. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine declared a state of emergency in order to free up state resources. Governor Mike Easley assures “We have in place everything that we need.” Some precautions that have been taken include Islands at Cape Lookout National Seashore were to close at 5 p.m. today. The marines at Parris Island S.C. rescheduled their graduation and South Carolina restricted their port operations.While we are worried about the current storm there are three other storms out in the Atlantic that could bring us lots of trouble in the future. The category 4 hurricane Ike is trailing a couple days behind Hannah with Tropical Storm Josephine behind Ike.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_re_us/hanna_us;_ylt=AjXXFozmALSvUzdGwIOdzx9vzwcF