Not myBama

Let’s imagine a gateway program through which you will access everything on a university campus from sensitive class grades to the final exam schedule. One of the services is your university e-mail account.

Now imagine that gateway runs on Java and requires pop-ups in order to get to anything. How useful is that internet mail interface going to be when you find yourself in some cyber-cafe that has done their durndest to stop all pop-ups. Perhaps you are on your 80 year old parents pentium one with dial up. How likely/easy is it going to be to deal with getting Java d/led and running on their machine.

But suppose that you’d be willing to overlook these problems. What if the gateway went down on the first day of class. No access to e-mail, class lists, ability to add classes. All gone.

If you can’t imagine try myBama at The University of Alabama. We have completed the first day of classes at the University without computer services.

This would be surprising except the university has a history of buying crappy software.