Daily Tech and Gadget

Following trailblazer Oregon , two more U.S. states are adopting Google Apps in their educational systems statewide. Colorado and Iowa join Oregon in Google Apps for Education , which offers Gmail, Docs, Sites, Video and Groups to elementary school, junior high and high school students across both states. Sponsor Part of the motivation for states adopting Google Apps is financial

For teams who use Facebook and Twitter for business or organizations purposes, HootSuite has rolled out a slew of new features for assigning and sharing tasks. HootSuite’s Assignment function lets managers assign a Twitter update to any team member, along with annotations if needed. The team member can mark the message resolved, and the manager can monitor progress and keep records of campaigns. Shared columns allow teams to simultaneously view data commonly used for social media marketing.

Gaming A job posting on a Japanese developer’s site has hinted that Square Enix will be releasing a brand new RPG on the iPhone sometime later this year. Media.Vision has posted that they’re seeking to fill a number of positions related to building an RPG on Apple’s platform in conjunction with Square Enix. The Final Fantasy Ring fansite says that the game will be called Chaos Ring , and will by produced by the same team that made the popular Wild Arms console series . FFRing also says (via Japanese translation) that the game will be a 3D title, and it will feature a storyline concerning five pairs of warriors who fight to the death for the right to eternal youth.

Here are the finalists for our latest round in the Cool Capture Giveaway , where one of our lucky readers will have his or her photo turned into a CanvasPop print ! Every two weeks we’ll be rounding up 10 of our favorite photo entries and polling you to see which one you like the best – so it’s time to get votin’ and uploadin’ as this round closes on Mar. 14! Need more details on how to enter? Keep reading! To get started, create a PopSugar account or log in to your account . Then join the Cool Capture group and share your image, the model of camera used to take the photo, and a little about the image – let us know why you decided to take that specific shot! Here’s a detailed guide to posting questions or posts to groups if you are new to the PopSugar Community. Remember, you must be logged in to your PopSugar Community account to be entered.

As more and more of our friends and favorite organizations start publishing updates online, being able to organize them well is becoming even more important. Niche-popular desktop social media stream-reader Tweetdeck issued a software update this morning and the most striking change is in its handling of user groups. It’s beautiful. The new Tweetdeck is faster, more flexible and easier to navigate. Groups, we have argued, are the secret weapon of the social web .

Google Apps is adding Google Groups to its enterprise suite of applications, another example of Google’s commitment to developing an online application environment that is compelling enough for users to move off the Windows platform. Google Groups has to this point been a consumer service. As part of Google Apps, it now integrates with Google Docs, Google Calendar, GMail, Google Sites and Google Video. Sponsor Adding Google Groups is another shot across Microsoft’s bow. Striking is the speed in which companies like Google can innovate with web-based applications, compared to Microsoft’s long development cycles.

On Facebook, anyone can start a group.