Subway Mobile!

The ubiquitous nature of mobile connectivity is illustrated by the availability of a Subway Express downloadable application for mobile phones for ordering subway sammies from anywhere anytime - as well as "learner generated contexts" we also now have "consumer generated eating" ;-)

Cost = 20c per order - as the application forwards your order as a txt message.

Download yours HERE

Blackberry Storm 9500

The Blackberry Storm 9500 touch-screen smartphone has been getting some good reviews, including from Mac users! e.g:
MacWorld review

The Storm has a couple of features that give it an edge over the iPhone in specifications,

• Cut and Paste


• Higher resolution camera: 3.2MP


• Video recording

However, it BIG limitation is the lack of WiFi!!! WiFi has become a BASIC feature of smartphones, and is critical in educational settings as WiFi provides cost-effective (FREE) access to the Internet on campus for students, whereas the 3G only Storm will cost $$$ for EVERYTHING the students do! :-(

Blackberry are still in a business users mode!

WOA - electronic musicians - SLOrk and "iBand"!!!

Check out this amazing 'band' - all using iPhone/iPod touch music applications to form a band! They have some great videos and audio samples on their website - awesome!

iBand

iPhone Drumming demo:





iBand performance:

SLOrk

Currently highlighted on Apples website is SLOrk - the Stanford Laptop Orchestra!

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/slork/





http://slork.stanford.edu/

Mourning the End of the Mobile Projects

Students mourn the return of their smartphones at the end of mobile learning projects at Unitec 2008!



Mourning the N95



“This is what I am left with!


It cannot…


Take Photos


Email


Check the wind


Make videos


Be my friend


Tell me where Ennismore Rd is


Or how to get there


Take more photos


Do other internet things


Film this


Be my calendar,


Reminder,


Or memory


(I have a bad memory)


The screen on this is tiny


There is no -


Sports tracker


Bouncy ball


Keyboard


VOX


Location Tag


YouTube


Plus all the rest


I miss my N95


Everything else


Doesn’t


Cut


It”

Mobile Learning Reflections

A series of student reflections on some of the Mobile Learning Trials at Unitec 2008.

Diploma Contemporary Music - iPod/iPhones

Bachelor Product Design (Year2) N95

Bachelor Product Design (Year1) iPhones

Diploma Landscape Design - Sonyericsson P1i

Txttools

Txttools is an SMS (short message service, or text messaging) solution for organizations, including education. There are two main ways to use txttools:

1. Web interface at http://www.txttools.co.uk


2. LMS plugins for Blackboard or Moodle

Features:

• Create groups


• Integration with user profiles in Moodle or Blackboard - i.e. txttools plugin recognises groups, and mobile phone numbers in user profiles.


• Database of sent and received txt messages


• Statistics monitoring - showing sent/received status of messages for each user.


• Automated actions via administrator defined keywords


• Automatic registration of users by txting a keyword to a dedicated txttools number


• Cost confidence - cost = annual license fee, not per message.

Below is the Web Management interface for Txttools:

Moodle Txttools plugins screenshots:

Fring on iPhone

Another free IM client for the iPhone/iPod touch. I've used Fring for a while on a range of Symbian based phones (they also have a Java version) - it's unique feature is the support for Skype over Wifi on the iPhone/iPod touch (Fring supports Skype over 3G in its other versions in addition to WiFi). Fring can be a bit flakey - being a bit of a memory hog, and requires a good signal to logon. However I prefer Fring's interface to that of Palringo or AIM. Previously I have used IM+ on UIQ, which I thought the interface was really nice, however IM+ seems to have logon issues with MSN servers now :-(

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iProrecorder for iPhone

Finally a decent audio recorder for the iPhone!

DipMusic iPod/iPhone Trial Overview

I've put together a 10min overview of the Diploma of Contemporary Music iPod/iPhone Trial for 2008 - makes for fun viewing!

DipContemporaryMus Mobile Trial Overview

Student Smartphone Usage

A quick survey of what students are using their N95 smartphones for (Bachelor of Product Design, Year3, 2008)

MLearn2008 Pics

Link to Picasa slideshow of MLearn2008 pics
http://picasaweb.google.com/thomcochrane/MLearn2008#slideshow

MLearn2008

MLearn 2008

MLearn 2008, the good, the bad and the ugly!

The Good:

• Meeting great people doing cool stuff in MLearning!


• Conversations


• Two great social events - Visiting Ironbridge and the RAF museum


• Getting inspiration both theoretically and practically for MLearning in education


• Experimenting with RFID and Bluetooth


• Getting great feedback on projects and presentations


• Discovering edutxt and Steve setting up an international SMS number for us poor international attendees! - still cost more than local SMS though :-(

The Bad:

• The conference venue facilities - described by someone as modelled on "Fawlty Towers"!


• RFID and Bluetooth system not working until the last day!


• lack of air-conditioning or temperature control in rooms


• Long research papers that should have been relegated to short papers, and short papers that should have been full papers! Defining good methodologies and research questions but having little practical value shouldn't qualify for full papers!



• Printed Conference timetable missing two venues on Friday!


• Compare' mumbling incoherently into microphone - no presentation skills whatsoever!

The Ugly:

• Presentation facilities - almost third world! - bad or no sound, small screens


• Some presentations even had no video projector available - "sorry but it wasn't requested" - arrrrggggg! It should be default setup!


• The assumption that all presenters would use Powerpoint and Talk!


• WiFi access $45 per day!!!


• Having to resort to Roaming 3G data costs for connectivity!

Nokia Xpressmedia 5800

The Nokia touchscreen smartphone is finally official. See a Flickr slideshow of the device here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahintampa/sets/72157607671323920/show/

Overview here: http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5800_xpressmusic_hits_it_off-news-612.php

More here: http://www.nokia.co.nz/5800xpressmusic

G1 to iPhone is What Linux is to Mac OS

There's a nice quick comparison between the iPhone and the new Google Android powered G1 at Mashable:

G1 to iPhone is What Linux is to Mac OS: "

MLearning Case Studies

The MLearning trials at Unitec this year have mostly been going really well, particularly the Bachelor of Product Design trials. Here's a few resources overviewing these trials:




MLearning Slideshow:



MLearning Overview Workshop Notes:

http://ctliwiki.unitec.ac.nz/index.php/MlearningWorkshops

BDesign student presents Vox blogging to Certificate students

Well done Noel on a great presentation on the benefits of blogging for Product Design to the Certificate students - give that man a chocolate fish ;-)

Captured using N95 & uploaded to YouTube:

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A snippet captured via Flixwagon & forwarded to YouTube:

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Media Streaming on the iPhone

While the iPhone works great with YouTube, using the YouTube application, it does not play friendly with other Flash video sites (at least without 'jailbreaking' it!).

The iPhone dosen't support Flash video - which the main browser video versions of most web - based video sites, such as www.ted.com videos are formatted as, HOWEVER, the iphone happily plays and streams .mp4 video! So finding the .mp4 video link from sites such as www.ted.com videos actually do stream nicely OTA (Over The Air) directly to the iPhone. See screenshots below ;-)

To do this:
Browse to the video site on Safari on the iPhone. Select the 'RSS' feed links on the iPhone, you can then stream OTA .mp4 video or audio directly from sites like www.ted.com. The iPhone uses an online feed reader to do the conversion for it: http://reader.mac.com, which then displays a Quicktime plugin icon, selecting this icon will then stream the audio or video directly OTA to the iPhone YAY!

Be aware that streaming media does not store it on the iPhone - if you want to watch/listen more than once, it's best to use the iTunes links on your PC to download the video/audio to iTunes on your PC, then sync the downloaded files to your iPhone for offline viewing!

The "Myth" of the cost of Mobile Web2

We had an interesting interjection in our Mobile Web2 presentation at eFest - claiming SMS is cheaper and does 90% of what we can achieve via Mobile Web2!

Sadly this miss-information is rife! Lets bury that myth right now!

1. SMS is NOT a media rich, collaborative, user content creation tool! Mobile Web2 is!

2. Costing 20c($0.2NZ) per 160 character message, it is the equivalent of the minimum 3G data, which is charged per kilobyte or part thereof.

Casual 3G data now costs $1NZ for a 10MB per day 'data cap' ($1 per MB thereafter) - soooo, for the same price of 5 x SMS messages (approx 5kb) you get 10MB of rich media using casual web2!!!
OR, to get the equivalent data in SMS messages, it would cost 10000 x $0.2 = $2000NZ. HHhmmmm - who's being more cost effective now!

New iPods and 2.1 iPhone update

iPod receives speaker and headset with microphone and voice recording application - so now you can create multimedia content with the iPod. However I'm disappointed the iPod didn't get updated with a camera as well!

There's also some cool wireless MIDI controller apps available for iPod Touch & iPhone from Silicon Studios - MIDI Controller apps.

IPhone 2.1 solves looong sync times - YAY!

also discovered some NZ developed iPod/iPhone apps by ORSOME.

Check them out at the app store.

Thom

Flixwagon

Quite impressed with how easy it is to get Flixwagon video streaming going on the N95.
Flixwagon allows you to broadcast live video from your cameraphone to the Internet, and saves it for later editing and sharing. WHY? you may ask - particularly as the N95 takes such great video on the device itself, that can then be uploaded in a multitude of ways to the Internet later?
Reasons I see are:

1. Save memory space on your memory card - video is streamed directly to the Internet, and not permanently stored on your memory card (This is also a downside if you want the higher quality original version later!).

2. Flixwagon provides a direct upload link to YouTube - so you don't need to send your video to YouTube later - it will go there automatically (note - this only works for 'public' video streams).

3. If you have a 'jailbroken' iPhone you can record and save/share video!!!

My first example:

Live mobile broadcasting by Flixwagon. First try using Flixwagon on N95 and 3G streaming, with direct upload to YouTube as well. Obviously some practice needed - including turning camera on first!



YouTube Version