With the economy how it is, a lot of people are calling for a mandatory personal finance class for high school students.  I think that's a great idea, but it makes me think of a different topic that I think everyone should learn about:  The Internet

From online banking to Facebook, it's virtually impossible to escape daily computer use.  I don't think technology users need to understand how to program or how to put together a computer, but understanding the basics of the internet seems pretty important to me.

Here's a case where a little basic knowledge would help out a lot.  I get a lot of I.T. related questions from people where they can't get online.  They tell me, "The internet isn't working.  Can you fix it?"  Most of the time the internet isn't the problem.  Either the router is broken or the computer doesn't have any enabled network adapters or something like that.

With that in mind, here are a few concepts that I think everyone should be taught in high school (this is all dumbed down, but the concepts work):

• Modem - A modem is the hardware that connects you to the outside world.  It generally doesn't do anything except take in data from some signal (such as cable or DSL) and convert it into a standard network signal (The kind transferred using ethernet cables).
• Router - This is the blue thing that looks like an alien and says "Linksys" on it.  Your router is not your connection to the internet.  The router is what creates a local network.  Rather than plugging one computer directly into another computer or a modem, a router allows several different network devices to communicate together using local IP addresses.  Your router is the reason multiple computers can share the same internet connection.
• Computer - Your computer runs files locally, but it can gain access to files using a network connection.  If you look at a web page, that page is downloaded to your computer and then displayed to you.  If you're streaming music, the data is sent to your computer and then played.  Computers aren't some magical portal to a series of tubes.
• Troubleshooting - If your computer can't connect to a network, it's either because your network card isn't working or the router isn't working.  If you're on a network but websites won't load it's either because your router and modem aren't playing nicely together or your modem isn't getting a connection to the outside world.  The go-to diagnostic move is plugging your computer directly into the modem.
• Web Servers - Servers are just computers sitting in a room somewhere.  There's nothing fundamentally different about a server that makes them special.  They are connected to a local network just like your computer and the way they serve web pages is through an internet connection not unlike yours.
• Web Pages - Web pages are just text files for the most part.  A server (which is just a computer with an internet connection) sends your computer a text file (and some images) and your computer takes all that and figures out how to display a web page.

Last summer, I was a part of a team of five people (two ZB employees, three consultants) that spent more than a day migrating our hosted email to Mailtrust (a Rackspace company).  The migration cost thousands of dollars, the product was terrible, and it wasted tons of my time.

This evening I spent about two hours migrating to Google Apps for email, calendar, contacts and documents.  I did it entirely by myself, it cost nothing, and so far everything is about a thousand times better than the old system.

I hate to sound like a fanboy, but if Google offers a product, there's no point in looking elsewhere.

Zane Benefits has been using a Microsoft Exchange Server for email/calendar/contacts since I joined and it's been a thorn in my side.  I'm not exactly an I.T. person, but neither is anyone else at the company, so I end up being the one responsible in the event of a technology problem.  For the first year we hosted the exchange server in house (big mistake) and since then we've used Rackspace's recently acquired Mailtrust service which happens to be the biggest waste of money ever.

Anyway, today I snapped and decided it's time to migrate everything over to google apps.  The change won't take place until this weekend, but I'm already happy about it.  There are a lot of things that exchange in particular is bad at and that google in particular is good at, but I'm going to go over the advantages that all Saas applications offer.

In case you don't know, SaaS stands for "Software-as-a-Service".  While the name allows for different implementations, SaaS really just means "web app".  It's not just a website though, it's a web app that takes the place of what a desktop app did in the past.

Saas is also related to Cloud Computing which is when all your data and everything is stored somewhere online (or "the cloud").  While desktop apps still have their place, it's so much easier to support an SaaS I.T. infrastructure.  Let's look at some advantages:

• Data Available Everywhere - When everything is stored online, there's no concept of "syncing".  You can go on any computer with a web browser and access your email, notes, calendar, whatever.  When you buy a new computer or your existing one fails, no worries.  You don't need backups and you don't even need to install programs.
• Processing - There's no reason for your computer to do all the work.  Servers are much better at performing tasks efficiently so let them take some of the workload.  For example, outlook absolutely kills my computer with it's memory footprint.  Gmail is way faster and more powerful, but my computer isn't doing any of the work.  Hooray!
• Updates - This is the biggest one that most people don't think about.  With a desktop app you have to constantly download updates, restart your computer, and then realize your updates didn't work because Adobe can't write a goddamn update application to save their lives.  Now imagine managing these updates for every computer in an office.  With Saas, the updates happen on the server.  Google can push out patches and fixes whenever they want and it doesn't disrupt the user at all.
• Collaboration - Not all Saas applications take advantage of this, but anyone and everyone can access a web app at the same time.  Trying to do something like sharing a document using a desktop office application is a huge mess.  Aside from file sharing and networking issues, very few desktop apps are built to support any kind of real time collaboration.
• Hardware - The less software you're running in house, the fewer machines you actually need.  It's a pain maintaining servers and there are other companies out there that are really good at it.  Let those guys handle the hardware.
• Security - Many people will disagree with this, but I trust google with my data a lot more than I trust myself.  Anyone could break into my house and steal my computer.  I doubt anyone will be stealing any gMail servers any time soon.
• Background Processes - There are a lot of useful things being done throughout the day that I don't have to manage myself.  Google Calendar texts me when I have an event soon.  Mint.com sends me emails if a credit card bill is almost due.  To get this functionality with desktop apps I'd have to leave each program I use running all the time.  If my computer turns off, Mint's servers are still alive and well.
• Mobility - Mobile devices are getting better. but they still can't handle full blown applications like your computer can.  With web apps, you only need to be able to view a website.  As I mentioned in the processing section, why not let a powerful server do the work for you?