Adopting Google Apps for Education? Not So Fast!

This from my SANS NewsBite email newsletter:

In an LA Times article the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled that employers may not access employees' text and email messages if the company has contracted
with an outside organization to transmit those messages. According to
the ruling, employers may only access employees' email if the messages
are stored on an internal server. According to the ruling, employers may only access employees' email if the messages are stored on an internal server.

The original case was brought by
Ontario, California police officers who sued after a wireless provider
gave the police department records of text messages they had received.
This is the first federal appellate decision to provide 4th Amendment
protection to electronic messages.

I'll follow this more closely as it will weigh in on a decision to adopt Google Apps for Education. Have you or your district considered Google Apps to replace your internal mail server?? How would you handle e-discovery rules?

Video Sharing Insurance

My children are getting into more activities as they get older and my school district is producing more digital video than you can imagine.

I've come to really like my Canon TX-1 digital video camera. It shoots exceptional video and very nice still shots directly to SD cards. This makes it extra easy to accumulate a bunch of footage that I would really hate to lose.

I try to back up my hard drive frequently but you know how that goes... I also like to keep an archive of video offsite by uploading to my favorite online video sharing site.

I like Vimeo because it allows unlimited file sizes and supports HD video. I worry, though, that Vimeo is not an online giant...meaning I worry about it's longevity. So I find that I also upload my video to YouTube... just because I think it will be around for a while.

To facilitate sharing my video clips to multiple sites I recently learned about TubeMogul from the recent edition of Macworld. TubeMogul allows you to upload once and share to many sites automatically. So if you, too, would like to upload your valuable family and classroom videos to multiple sites for safekeeping, then TubeMogul may be the ticket for you too!

EDIT: Of the many sites that TubeMogul can publish to, Vimeo is not ONE! Yikes! I was hasty and confused Veoh for Vimeo. Maybe it's not the answer I was hoping for.

KP