Now Software’s Now Up-to-Date and Contact
by Mitchell Levine
A lot of attention’s been paid to the flashiest and most sexy elements of education technology in the last several years: servers, platforms, laptops, and other boutique hardware.
However, a silent revolution has been overtaking technology procurement, as the mobile tech’s little brother, handheld tech has been slowly gathering favor with the education market. With their greater portability, inconspicuousness, and far lower costs, a strong case could actually be made for superiority – if they can provide their end-users, students, with the same functionality as their full-sized colleagues.
Available for both commonly used Mac and Windows platform, Now Software has obviously paid a great deal of attention to the needs of education in their implementation of communications programming. As contact software, the package allows the user, either individual or network, to access an extensive, interactive calendar which can be synchronized across an entire district. Users can schedule resources like AV equipment and labs; synchronize activities, assemblies, and even lunch schedules; and publish it all on the web instantly. Of course, all of the above can be easily printed out through a variety of mediums.
One nice feature allows the user to be configured to separate their personal contacts from those that will be shared across the network, and, in fact, as a security precaution, material can be formatted to only be shared behind your system’s firewall, without a chance of being accidentally published to the entire web. Although the product is not as feature-rich as some of the education specialty packages like Thinkwave Educator and Administrator, it offers the most important benefits of enterprise management for handheld computers, and a highly customizable interface at a greatly reduced price, and therefore earns our Editor’s Recommendation. In fact, the company even offers a free thirty day trial of the software, which can be downloaded at the company’s site, www.nowsoftware.com, along with information about education pricing, and on-line ordering.#
