This week our Google Apps for Education team is attending the Campus Technology Conference in Boston. This 4-day gathering focuses on emerging technologies in higher education, both in the classroom and campus-wide. As anyone in the education field can attest, the business of teaching - and learning - is changing very quickly. We're continually impressed and excited by all of the innovation happening in this space. In response to a new educational ecosystem,

Everyone knows that a wedding presents fashion dilemmas for the bride. But the beleaguered lady isn't the only one to wrestle with the style demands of the day. Judging by Search, her guests are equally torn over what to zip on for the festive occasion. Over the past week, thousands of people consulted the Web for help on what to wear to particular events. Of the top 20 queries, more than a quarter focused on weddings . With today's wide array of nuptial venues and times,

The sports jersey, as donned by fans, is popular despite many obstacles. First, they're expensive. Second, if worn in a hostile neighborhood (a Red Sox jersey in the Bronx, for example), fisticuffs may ensue. And third, jerseys are often quickly outdated since athletes are switching teams with ever increasing frequency. And yet... people love 'em. Every week, we see countless searches on all kinds of sports jerseys.

Humans are social creatures so when given an opportunity to socialize, we generally get involved. If you access social sites to undertake a social marketing program, you may find yourself getting involved in the social more than the marketing. It can and does happen to us all. There are two strategies that you can put in place that may help your social marketing achieving its goal. The first may surprise. Go with the flow. If you are a social person then be social.

Call it the Google Apps for EDU road show. Starting in Mountain View on Google's campus September 8, members of Google's Apps for EDU team are boarding a Google bus to visit various universities using, or that just started using Google Apps. Google offers these Web-based apps, including its Gmail e-mail, Docs spreadsheets, word processing and presentations software and the Sites wiki,

Google has bought video annotation site Omnisio to have their team join the YouTube team. Omnisio, as covered before , allows users to mix together YouTube videos. Also, Omnisio visitors can add comments over the videos in specific time frames - a feature that made some early Omnisio videos completely unwatchable, but you're now able to select whose comments you'd like to see overlaid. The acquisition statement on the Omnisio homepage says,

Today we're releasing an update to the Live Search home page that received positive feedback from customers in trials last month. The new design features background images that will change frequently, augmented with what we call "hotspots." These interactive areas highlight parts of the image and help you explore search results related to the highlighted area. Users who have tested this new home page have found it both engaging and a great place to start a search.

The plug was finally pulled on the Scrabulous application on Facebook for North America yesterday. The Scrabble look-alike has been under pressure for months from Scrabble copyright holders Hasbro and their tardy Electronic Arts game development partners. The good news for addicts was that the official Scrabble? plug-in was up and'oh nevermind. A hacker disabled the Scrabble set-up on Facebook Tuesday , botching Hasbro's planned user migration.

Have you ever grabbed a YouTube clip and wanted to tweak it for you Web site or blog? Google said on its YouTube blog today that it has acquired Omnisio , a startup that lets users customize clips of YouTube videos with tags and comments . Users can then embed these video clips in a blog or Web site. Omnisio creates a link to the source video and starts playing it wherever you want. The Omnisio team posted a note about working with the YouTube team on its home page today,

Google has wasted no time in acquiring Omnisio an online video tools company that only launched publicly in March of this year. TechCrunch explains what might soon come to YouTube via this acquisition: The service lets users annotate videos, mash various clips up, and synchronize Slideshare presentations to videos (great for conference presentations). Omnisio users can extract sections of clips they find on the web (currently only those on YouTube, Google Video, or Blip.tv).