Today’s question came from Dave Stacey, who teaches History at Olchfa School. Dave asked “Are there plans to bring other Google services into the Apps for Education package (notebook would be particularly useful)?”
Google replied:
We get many requests for incorporating useful features into Google Apps. The cloud computing (or software as a service as it’s sometimes called) model allows for frequent and regular updates to our products because changes can be automatically delivered over the Internet. While we can’t give precise details today, we are always adding new features to Google Apps to increase its usefulness and we very much welcome user feedback on what they would like to see.
Since the original interview Google have released both Google Forms and Sites as additional tool capabilities within G Apps.
I noticed a post on the Google Operating System Blog that Google has now released a Calendar synchronisation tool that works with Outlook. The tool also works with your Google Apps account login, not just gmail accounts.
I must say one of the best things about Google Apps has been the rate at which new functions are rolled out. I was also pretty impressed with the support group and wiki when I needed a couple of questions answered a couple of months ago. Fair play to Google, I suspect they genuinely are listening!