The University of Washington, and CSE, provide faculty, staff, and students with access to cloud services from Microsoft (Live@edu) and Google (Google Apps).
A set of important changes are coming soon to CSE Google Apps, including additional services, and a new look. A side-effect of these improvements is an unavoidable bit of disruption; and if you use Gmail or Calendar on a mobile device or thick client, your access will be temporarily blocked when these changes come, which will require action on your part to unblock at that time (details below).
Additional Applications
We will add a set of additional services to the CSE Google Apps domain in mid-December, so that your CSE Google Apps account works more like a “consumer” Google Account. This will bring applications such as video conferencing, Google+ (social networking), Picasa Web Albums (photo-sharing), and more to our department services.
NB: These Additional Services are different from the “core” Google Apps services, in terms of security protections and other legal regulations. It is important to note that the data you put into these additional services are owned by uw, just like the core Google Apps services; and just like every other computing resource you use on campus (and just like any off-site email forwarding you may have set up!). However, these additional services do not offer the necessary protections for “educational records” (FERPA), nor does Google offer you or us any technical support for these additional services – the Google Help forums are the technical support.
New Terms of Service
When we enable these new services, you will be required to accept a new Terms of Service agreement which applies to these Additional Services. (The TOS for the “core” services has not changed.) If you are using a web-app (such as the Gmail, Calendar or Docs), you will simply be redirected to accept the new TOS, then you’ll be sent right back in. But if you are using a phone, or a thick-client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, your access will silently and mysteriously stop! (Sorry… we tried to avoid this, but cannot.) Phone users will need to use a web browser to accept the new Terms of Service, and then your phone/thick-client access will resume. We will send out additional reminders as that time grows near. The current plan is to do this on the last day of Autumn Quarter, near end of the day (16 December).
New Look
As you may have already noticed, several core Google services are receiving a “new look.” For a limited time, you can opt into and out of the new look at will. Soon– by January 2012 at the latest– the new look will become the default choice (and you can opt-out). And eventually it will become the only choice. Most users prefer it.
Legacy Browser Support Goes Away
Along with the new look comes the sun-setting of support for several older browsers, including Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3.6, and earlier version of both browsers. Some services will work poorly with some older browsers, while others will stop working altogether.
Please update your browser if you are using an affected version. Later versions of browsers are generally more secure and are always more capable.
Offline Gmail
As a result of legacy browser support going away (along with Google Gears), offline Google Apps services now requires use of the Chrome browser and a special add-on app. The reason is that Google has switched from using Google Gears (now deprecated), to using HTML5.
More Information
More information about the forthcoming changes is available online at
