Social networking site for techies, profs

All India Council of Technical Education and Microsoft have collaborated to take this step of hosting Live@edu. It will offer services including e-mail, instant messaging, Microsoft Office web apps, 10GB inbox for 7.5 million engineering students and 5 lakh faculty members spread over 10,000 technical institutes across the nation. It will also comprise of additional file storage of 25 GB, document sharing, instant messaging, video chat and mobile email.

Human Resource Development minister Kapil Sibal, said that it is an era of collaboration and we hope to empower 7.5 million students and 5 lakh teachers with this use of technology as Live@edu is the first project of its kind.

More than 10,000 schools in over 130 countries have enrolled for live@edu. This project will go live within 3 months and will supposedly use cloud computing for a wider accessibility to higher technical education. It will act as both a social networking site while being a platform for interaction regarding their researches on the portal and applications for educational needs. It is also a platform for providing solution for a better communication and collaboration between institutes and students.

This service is being provided by Microsoft for free and since cloud computing is inexpensive and simple, it removes the need to spend time and money on installing software and managing servers. AICTE chairman S S Mantha said that this site will prove to be helpful for students as it will contain the research work of every student on the portal for exchanging ideas. Know more...

The cloud suite has more than 22 million people according to Microsoft, while MD Sanket Akerkar said that the implementation is in process and the deployment would be completed by mid-June.

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