Geeking At School

One of the biggest things I'd like to change for our school district is our email system. We're currently using Novell Groupwise--which isn't a bad system overall, it's just clunky and not so user-friendly and is WAY overloaded with features that we'll never use. I'm a Google guy...I've used many different webmail clients, and, out of all of them, Gmail is by far the best--especially when integrated with Google Calendar and Google Docs. Schools can get Google Apps for Education, which includes email, calendar, and docs for free. FREE is very appealing for school districts. So why have we not implemented this yet? Well...it boils down to a little problem called email archiving. We're required by law to archive emails for use as forensic evidence. Google offers a service called Postini to archive Google mail (which used to be on its own, but I believe Google bought them out) but costs a LOT of money...money that we do not have. We implement a system called...

Every blog has to have the typical 'first post' post. Or maybe not...but every blog I have attempted to start has had one, so there you go. The intent of this blog is to share some information that I have been gathering over the years working as a computer technician...and to basically keep notes for myself so I can remember what I've implemented over the years and how. The main focus (if not the only focus) is going to be on open-source/free software, since I work for a school district, we have no money, and I'm just that type of guy. My current project I'm working on (or thinking of working on) is called WPKG, a way to deploy applications over the network without using Group Policy etc. The school district I work for is on a Novell network (!!!!) that's running severs that are 15 years old so I don't have much to work with, but do the best I can with what I've got. I've come up with some pretty cool stuff, so stay tuned--I'll blog about that la...