iPhone Goes to College, Mobile Computing Anyone?
Posted by Matt Williamson on April 15th, 2008 technology Add comments
There are already a lot of iPhones on campuses nationwide, but this time they are being given free to incoming freshmen at Abilene Christian University, in Abilene Texas. Faculty will be given the iPhone and the school will pay for the data plan, while the students will have to pay for data themselves, or they can opt for an iPod touch and have the same functionality without the phone and data plan.
Last year ACU CIO Kevin Roberts picked Google Apps Education Edition for their platform when the school email adminstrator announced he was leaving. They had been running Sun’s Java System Messaging and Calendar servers, along with some random Microsoft Exchange servers. Tapping Google offered a hosted application that his team could manage without the install base on school hardware. Granted, Sun and Microsoft both offer better support, but Google will have to improve this part of their vision soon, otherwise Google simply cannot mount a real charge into traditional enterprise IT.
ACU held a G-Day last April, to get the students, faulty and staff educated and into the spirit. The school offered online videos, as well as demonstrations and open labs to help ease the transition from the in-house email platform. Since then the school has seen quick adoption of all of the Google offerings with Google Talk becoming the chat application of choice among students and staff.
According to the program page on ACU’s site they plan to use the iPhone to offer homework alerts, answer in-class surveys and quizzes, get directions to professors’ offices, and check their meal and account balances - among more than 15 other applications already developed by ACU. Moving information like this from the laptop to the palm of your hands expands the relationship information has to you in your daily life.
I have spent a lot of time lately writing about mobile computing, news like this only servers to reinforce that we are rapidly moving towards a new paradigm in computing and communications. With new tools in the hands of the generation in college now we will only speed this curve. Consumers expect
As a side note, today we saw the announcement that Fring has released its app on the iPhone. If your iPhone is jailbroken, already cracked and able to install non-Apple software, you can install the Fring app and utilize VoIP directly on it. So now you can talk on your iPhone with out burning minutes on your AT&T voice plan. Fring already works with Skype®, MSN® Messenger, Google Talk™, ICQ, SIP, Twitter, Yahoo!™ and AIM®; I wouldn’t be surprised to hear more.
In a few minutes we had it installed and chatting from my laptop to Tim’s iPhone. He placed a call and then suddenly we were using voice chat, no more typing. The power here is amazing; from sitting in the local coffee shop and voice chatting with your coworkers, to being in overseas on business and using voice chat instead of international minutes on your cell phone. If the iPhone had a video camera this would surely change the landscape of live-blogging. How long until someone offers a service that simply records everything happening around you and lets you publish that, or index those conversations and search them?
That same generation I mentioned earlier, the kids in college who will be moving into the workplace over the next few years, they expect innovation like this, they demand it, they foster and support it. Mobile computing is only going to grow over the next couple of development cycles, are you and your company ready?
Matt
Tags: AIM, Fring, Google, Google Talk, ICQ, iPhone, IT, Java, Microsoft, MSN Messenger, SIP, Skype, Twitter, Yahoo
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