Advertised Programs: Google Earth and Picasa Have Arrived

Just this week both Google Earth and Picasa (a photo editing program) were added to the growing number of programs offered to certificated staff laptops through Advertised Programs. We are particulalry excited to offer staff Picasa because it works with the integrated camera in your laptop. Yes, now you can take your picture and capture video with your laptop! If you're likely to install Picasa, visit the Advertised Programs page of this blog to find out more.

What's an Advertised Program?

“Advertising programs” is how we are providing optional programs (e.g. iTunes, Google Earth, etc.) for certificated staff laptops. Individual users determine whether or not to download and install these programs based on their particular needs. To find your advertised programs follow this path: Start→Control Panel→Programs→Run Advertised Programs. Then, select and run the programs you’d like to install. (This 3-minute video shows you how it’s done: http://vimeo.com/9865333)

Why advertise programs? Why not just push them out to everyone?
With each new application you add to your laptop, you add another layer of complexity. How well does Google Earth behave with Adobe Premiere Elements? Does Picasa play well with iTunes? Truth be told, we don't know. All advertised programs are downloaded and tested before being advertised to staff, but there's no way to test every possible combination before advertisement. So, think of it this way: When you get a newly imaged laptop, you're getting the base model. No air conditioning, no sun roof, no GPS, no custom speakers. The base model is solid and should include everything that is essential, but it doesn't have some of perks people want. Those you can add later, but when you do, you might encounter unanticipated problems. Let's say you take your base model and have a fancy new radio installed. After that installation, you notice that your heat won't turn off. You take the car in to be fixed. Is it a problem with the base model? Probably not--it's probably a problem that occured because of the new radio installation. How can we be sure? Let's remove the radio. Ah, now the heat turns off--problem solved. Advertised programs works the same way. If your laptops starts encountering problems after you install something we can just uninstall it and see if that fixes the problem. Or, in some cases, we can return you to the base model (reimage your laptop) knowing it will work just fine. If the image included ALL the optional programs, we'd have to spend countless hours problem-solving and perhaps rebuilding the image.

Important Details about Advertised Programs
• After re-imaging, you will need to re-install any optional programs you had previously downloaded. They will be waiting for you in Run Advertised Programs.

• If you have recently been reimaged and are running Windows 7, you will notice that the Adobe Digital School Collection, as well asWindows Movie Maker have been moved to Advertised Programs.

• In the future, as new programs are added to Advertised Programs, we’ll let you know about it here.