With a $50,000 grant from Google, four Cornell professors will transform their class into a massive open online course, or MOOC, enabling them to offer the course to countless students worldwide for free, according to the University. 

University administrators stressed the importance of maintaining the spirit of a land-grant institution as Cornell becomes increasingly entangled with some of the world’s largest multinational corporations.

Three of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs will help guide the development of Cornell NYC Tech, advising the administration on both academic programming and the physical shape of the new campus.

In front of a packed Statler Auditorium Thursday evening, Eric Schmidt, executive chair of Google, called the Internet a platform for social change and encouraged students to use the web to solve the world’s most daunting challenges.

President David Skorton touted the benefits of the University's agreement with Google to temporarily host the school’s new tech campus on Tuesday, saying the space will allow Cornell to quickly establish a physical presence in New York City while saving money on prime real estate.

Google is giving a team of Cornell researchers $800 K to try to make internet social interactions more representative of real life.

Like a best friend, movie buff, a website like Netflix can give users recommendations based on their search histories.  According to Thorsten Joachims, computer science, Netflix is one of many “systems that act smart.” Smart systems pick up information from a large amount of people and consolidate that information into regularity. 

Google’s mission to put all “the books of the world” on the web is rapidly dividing the academic community. As the debate comes to a crossroads on Oct. 7 — when Justice Denny Chin must decide to either hear oral arguments for a pending class action or dismiss the settlement — the Cornell Library is trying to straddle a rapidly vanishing middle ground.

University Librarian Anne Kenney stated in a letter to the court, dated Sept 2, that despite reservations, the Library supported the deal as providing an “inestimable … potential benefit to research.”

As part of a transition to third-party e-mail vendors, the University is slated to announce later this week that starting on Thursday students will be able to access their Cornell e-mail through a Google-based server, like Gmail, called “Cmail”

Cmail, provided by Google Apps Education Edition, is currently available to new, incoming students when they activate their Net ID. The University will offer another third-party e-mail alternative –– through Microsoft-based services, Microsoft Live and Outlook Live –– starting this fall.

Features such as Google Talk (instant messaging and video chat), Google calendars, Google sites, and Google Docs will be available to all Cornell students using Cmail. In addition, students will keep their current NetID@cornell.edu with Cmail.

When we think of making the world a better place, we often think of large-scale accomplishments, for instance, donating millions of dollars to research or helping end hunger in third-world countries. And while those are absolutely important, we shouldn't forget to recognize the small-scale accomplishments--the ideas that make our lives easier and more trouble-free.

It's in that spirit that this blog post honors Google engineer Jon Perlow, who has created a feature called Mail Goggles for GMail users. It is intended to prevent people from "drunk emailing", or sending embarrassing emails while under the influence of alcohol.