<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Thanks Andrew,<div><br></div><div>Just a quick correction. Our mobile apps are called m.UW. The iPhone app and mobile web apps were launched in last week . More information is available at <a href="http://m.uw.edu">http://m.uw.edu</a>. The same address from a mobile will yield the mobile web version.</div><div><br></div><div>David</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div>David Morton<br>Director, Mobile Communications Strategies<br>University of Washington<br><a href="mailto:dmorton@u.washington.edu">dmorton@u.washington.edu</a><br>tel 206.221.7814<br> <br> <br>----------------------------------------------<br> <br>UW, There's an app for that<br> <br> m.UW.edu<br><br>----------------------------------------------</div></span>
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<br><div><div>On Sep 11, 2009, at 12:48 PM, Andrew Yu wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi Folks,<br><br>Sorry for the delay in my sending out this email. Since our last conference call, I've been swamped with working on the MIT Mobile Web 2.0 and the iPhone native app prototype development. The good news is that hopefully we should be able to share our new work in the near future.<br><br>I would like to sincerely apologize to you all for the delay, but I wanted to assure you that MIT is committed to collaborating with you to develop and improve mobile applications. I intend to spend more time on the iMobileU initiative in the near future.<br><br>Here are the minutes from the last conference call:<br><br>Participants:<br>MIT: Andrew Yu and Mike Gettes<br>University of Washington: David Morton<br>University of Minnesota: Drew Stevenson and Rajeev Cyrus<br>Penn State University: Derek Morr<br><br>0. Quick Intro:<br>University of Washington: David Morton is working on the iPhone native app. David is using TerriblyClever (now BlackBoard's MobileEdu) as a stopgap measure. David is excited about the iMoibleU initiative.<br>(note: <a href="http://m.UA">m.UA</a> app is available on the iPhone App Store)<br><br>University of Minnesota: Drew and Rajeev are working on a few different mobile web and native applications. Interested (developing?) Android apps<br><br>Penn State: Derek has reviewed the MIT Mobile Web code. Faces challenges in getting the back-end streamlined.<br><br>1. License:<br>MIT License, GPL, or ECL<br>Question (by Andrew Yu):<br>The MIT Mobile Web code is currently licensed under the MIT Open Source License. We have been discussing other options (GPL or ECL) to gently steer developers to collaborate. Does it matter?<br><br>Answers:<br>- U of Washington – does not matter<br>- U of Minnesota – does not matter<br>- Penn State University – remain with the MIT license<br>- MIT (Mike Gettes): look at Educational Community License (ECL), which is basically an Apache 2 license where patent grant section has been tweaked for the educational community.<br><br><br>2. MIT Mobile Web Update:<br>Version 2.0 is under development (expected to live on 9/15)<br>[You are welcome to check out the development version at <a href="http://mobi2.mit.edu/">http://mobi2.mit.edu</a> on your mobile device.]<br><br>a. New improvements include:<br>- improved browser detection:<br>-- before: iPhone, Smartphone, Feature Phone, Computer, Spider<br>-- after: WebKit, Generic Touch, Basic, Computer and Spider<br>[note: WebKit is further split into iPhone, Android, and webOS; Generic Touch uses a "generic" version of the WebKit that works across all touch devices that are not WebKit-based; and Basic is for every other mobile device.]<br>b. Browser detection now relies more heavily on our expression matching algorithm to detect new browsers as WURFL (and DeviceAtlas that we reviewed) fails to produce meaningful results for many of the new devices. But, WURFL is still being used in case our algorithm does not catch the device. We switched to WURFL PHP (vs. Python) to streamline the system.<br>c. Personalization of Stellar (MIT's LMS)<br>d. Libraries (minus Search: This is a long story but we could not get the cooperation of WorldCat/OLCL in time to allow us to customize the interface)<br>e. X.509 Certificate support (iPhone only) for TechCASH and Libraries<br>f. and many others...<br><br>3. MIT SMS:<br><a href="http://mobi.mit.edu/about/sms.html">http://mobi.mit.edu/about/sms.html</a><br>- added Events Calendar and Emergency News<br>Question (David Morton):<br>How does it work and how much traction has it gotten from the users?<br><br>Answer (Andrew Yu):<br>MIT reserved a "common short code": 648338 (spells MITEDU) reserved via Neustar (<a href="http://www.neustar.biz/">http://www.neustar.biz</a>).<br>An SMS aggregator (mBlox) is utilized to send and receive text messages between the mobile user and the MIT server (<a href="http://sms1.mit.edu">sms1.mit.edu</a>).<br><a href="http://sms1.mit.edu">sms1.mit.edu</a> parses the incoming query and generates content (within 160 char limit chucks). Similar interface (that the MIT Mobile Web is using) is used for obtaining the data from various sources within MIT. The server relies on MangoText server (licensed from MIT student-formed company that also helped with this project.)<br>The service is currently an "interactive" service and does not include a subscription/push model. There are various MIT groups (Commencement, Emergency -- for family and friends of students, faculty, staff, and Campus Tours for sending out schedule changes to student tour guides who do not check their email frequently) interested in the subscription/push model and we are looking into this for future.<br><br>4. iPhone native app<br>Question: Why build an iPhone native app when the Mobile Web delivers already delivers great content to the iPhone users?<br><br>Answer (David Morton):<br>Reputation and Marketing: Opportunity to share with the university community an actual app that people can download from the iPhone App store to promote the brand of the university. Will be developing native apps for 2 or 3 platforms<br>Answer (Andrew Yu):<br>MIT Mobile (an iPhone native app prototype):<br>Marketing and reputation as well as pressure from the senior MIT officers. But, also the additional features and capabilities of the native app that presents a better user experience to the end-user. In particular, faster loading time (especially when AT&T coverage is behaving "normally" in Boston area), the ability to access local database (no need for network connection, when AT&T's network coverage is not reliable), location based services, accelerometer, push notification, background process (except for the iPhone), etc.<br>(note: the Mobile web browsers for many smartphones are increasingly getting better to support some of the features that only native apps used to support. And, we will see parallel improvements in both.)<br><br>MIT been working with student developers to create MIT Mobile, a prototype iPhone native app that includes MIT Innovations (shake and see), Campus Map (6 zoom levels of map tiles, partial storage of map tile images on the device, ability to layer path dynamically for other applications such as shuttle track), Shuttle Track (with push notification), Stellar (personalized and with push notification), People Directory, and Emergency (with push notification). The app will likely be ready to be published by the end of 2009 unless we can find additional resources (both from within MIT and outside of MIT) to collaborate on the project. ;-)<br><br>Question (Derek):<br>Penn State is concerned about exposing campus map on mobile devices. What are other schools doing?<br><br>Answer (Andrew):<br>We have had concerns from the MIT Facilities for exposing floor plans, but the external building maps are already publicly available, so it was not a big deal. MIT intends to make the floor plans for some public buildings available for mobile applications in the future so that in complex buildings (like the MIT Stata Building), people can find rooms/offices located inside the building more easily.<br><br>5. Other Topics:<br>AT&T and the pricing of "Exchange" (Enterprise) data plan:<br>In the past, there were discussions with AT&T and Apple about the requirement for Exchange users to pay $45/month for the Enterprise Data plan on the iPhone. Since MIT is now providing Exchange service to students, this requirement/stance is not acceptable, especially since MIT people cannot use the AT&T data service that much to begin with (yes, the coverage situation is still not fixed). MIT would have to inform students to pay extra $15/month just to get their email, calendar, contacts, etc. on their iPhone. What we need is AT&T to say that $30/month standard data plan can connect to the Exchange server for students, faculty, and staff at MIT. What do others think about that?<br>(By the way, there is no technical limitation placed by AT&T to block out Exchange ActiveSync usage from the iPhone that has $30/month data plan. But, their official stance is that the users who do this could be penalized in the future at AT&T's discretion.)<br><br>Answer/Comments:<br>None of the other schools participating in the call have Exchange for students, but they would back MIT (and other schools) for trying to get this situation fixed.<br><br>6. Next Steps:<br>Monthly Conference Call<br><br>I will send out an invite to this list to arrange to schedule a time.<br><br>Have a great weekend!<br><br>Andrew<br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>________________________________</div><div>Andrew Yu<br>Mobile Platform Manager and Architect<br>Information Services & Technology<br>Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>Phone: 617-324-8985<br>Email: <a href="mailto:andrewyu@mit.edu">andrewyu@mit.edu</a><br><br>*** MIT Mobile Web and MIT SMS (beta) ***<br>Visit <a href="http://m.mit.edu/">http://m.mit.edu</a> from your mobile device, or</div><div>Text "help" to 648338</div></div></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span></div></span> </div><br></div><span><ATT00001.c></span></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>