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Today saw the launch of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud collaboration and communication suite that is specifically aimed at schools and universities, replacing Live@edu, which will remain available for 18 more months to give its customers time to migrate into the newer software, writes Juan Carlos Perez for IDG News.

Occasionally there is a piece software that comes along which astonishes me that I can download it for free. We have been recently investigating the ability for our users to sync their docs with a cloud service, primarily for backup. We have looked at Google Drive, DropBox and SkyDrive and there are many others. All have advantages / disadvantages however there is one thing that none of them seem to do - local storage. We simply can't have 1,500 users all trying to sync to the Internet and expect it to work across our 50 meg pipe.  We need it to be stored locally, on one of our servers. Sure we'll need tons of storage and won't have intercontinental redundancy and failover, but let's be honest we are not backing up nuclear launch codes here. One large RAID 5 storage should do the trick.

"Google's Go language is, not surprisingly, particularly well-suited to cloud development. But according to Rob Pike, one of Go's designers, Go's creators were originally trying to improve C++ but found it "too difficult to couple [necessary] concurrent operations with C++'s control structures, and in turn that made it too hard to see the real advantages." Eventually he gave it up because "C++ just made it all seem too cumbersome.""

"Welcome to the The Granny Cloud! "Grannies" Skyping with children in India and Colombia! Not only "grannies" of course, but grandpas too! And mums and dads and aunties and uncles and… While we do have many grannies it's the attitude that matters - encouraging, nurturing, praising and offering guidance rather than directing, instructing and examining. In this blog you'll find reports from grannies about how their Skype sessions went - grannies sharing and learning from each other."

A fantastic Google Presentation by John Pearce looking at Web 2.0 tools and other cloud based apps to support thinking

A fantastic Google Presentation by John Pearce looking at Web 2.0 tools and other cloud based apps to support thinking

"Forget devices, the future of education technology is all about the cloud and anywhere access. In the future, teaching and learning is going to be social, says Matt Britland"

"Visit Crate and sign on. You'll be presented with a list of crates, normally representing separate areas of files. Select one of the crates. Drag-and-drop all of the files you want to your heart's content. After a short uploading period they'll be stored on the cloud. Mmmmm, legendary cloud. Now, you can share away, either by crate or by individual file. We provide a short URL for ease-of-use. You can also invite someone to add files themselves!"

"This video was produced as a contribution to the EDUCAUSE book, The Tower and the Cloud: Higher Education in the Age of Cloud Computing, edited by Richard Katz and available as an e-Book at http://www.educause.edu/thetowerandthecloud or commercially at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0967285399/ref=kinw_rke_rti_1 Produced in 2007 as a conversation starter in small groups. Released in 2011 as a conversation starter online."

"Our infographic to end the week is one of the better ones I've run across recently. It's about data centers, one of the more talked about topics in recent months. This one explores power consumption by making comparisons between standard usage and what can be accomplished with more efficient technologies."

This year, Gartner is adding big data, Internet of Things, gamification and consumerization to the Hype Cycle that weren't present in 2010. According to Gartner, private cloud computing has reached the peak level of hype, and cloud/Web platforms are slipping into the "trough of disillusionment" in the face of Platform as a Service (PaaS).

"Schoolchildren are at risk of having their online activity tracked and monitored for targeted advertising by internet firms through free cloud based education services. A survey has found that many parents do not know about data mining - the process of tracking email and web browsing habits in order to target advertising - but once they do they have grave concerns for their kids' online privacy, and believe schools need to do more to protect it. The survey commissioned by American IT industry group SafeGov asked 1000 Australian parents about their knowledge of data mining."

"Woolworths and Coles have taken the supermarket war to the cloud, with the two giant Australian retailers taking diametrically opposed options via Google Apps and Office365."

Yesterday, Microsoft unleashed a desktop sync app for SkyDrive. Today, Google followed by finally launching Google Drive - after a series of early appearances hinted that it was going to be arriving very, very soon. So now that the dust has settled, how do the two new services stack up with the current king of cloud storage and sync, Dropbox? Let's take a look.

Via Richard Byrne "SugarSync is a cloud storage service that offers apps for iOS and Android. Using the apps you can take pictures of anything including those handwritten notes and upload them to your account. SugarSync synchronizes your files across all of your devices so that you can access your files anytime you are connected to the web."

"Drag photos, videos, documents, websites, text snippets, and more directly from your desktop or browser. Drop them into your Dropmark collection. They're automatically uploaded to the cloud. Share your collections with anyone, add collaborators, or keep them private and just for yourself."

Schools that 'go Google Apps' often use 'free' as the selling point to persuade their administrators or constituents. It is true that organizations are saving thousands to millions of dollars moving their local infrastructure to the cloud

Schools that 'go Google Apps' often use 'free' as the selling point to persuade their administrators or constituents. It is true that organizations are saving thousands to millions of dollars moving their local infrastructure to the cloud

"My hunch is that we will hear something from Apple late2011 about Thunderbolt use with iPads/iPhones .. now that the technology is out there on two of their most popular devices .. Thunderbolt seems to be a more viable and smart near-term solution for device sync rather than a full-on cloud sync."

Dropbox Kisses and Makes Up?

OpenClass is a dynamic, scalable, fully cloud-based learning environment that stimulates social learning and enables the distribution of content at massive scale to students wherever they are.