Webaccess Works

It was actually really easy to use the Blogs at PSU toolset from the iPhone. Typing is proving to be a little easier than I imagined as well! I am noticing that every time you leave the browser and return, you need to authenticate via webaccess — I guess that is a good thing for a lot of reasons, but what a pain.

I used the Safari browser to go to cal.psu.edu and my calendar looks great … I double tap the screen and I can see all the detail I need. I am worried that the lack of true calendar integration will be hard on me … using the web view is an option, but it feels way too slow and way too many clicks. I am going to work at the export to iCal and sync with the iPhone deal next. Getting data in and out of Oracle quickly and into iCal is my overall goal.

Posting from my iPhone

Typing is a little slow, but not too bad. I was able to just log into webaccess and make this post via the iPhone … Nothing short of amazing!

iPhone Fever

So I’ve been out of the blog limelight (if that’s what you can call it) for over a week now … I have been writing, just not much and not here at all. Work has been crazy, travel has been crazy, and the iPhone hype has been crazy. On the work front we are running as fast as we can to launch the first five Digital Commons Studios, hire new staff for projects, and finalize plans for what will be an outrageously busy and exciting year. The Digital Commons project itself has moved faster than anything I have been a part of since the start-up days — really spinning the whole project up over the last few weeks … who says we move slow in higher education?

On the travel side, we’ve been back and forth to Bloomsburg, PA the last couple of weekends for lead up events to my sister’s wedding. While there last weekend I got to play a little golf — actually 36 holes — with my Dad and some friends. I can’t tell you how much I needed that. Last Friday I had a very bad day professionally … one that really took the winds out of my sails … crazy thing is it started with a call I got as I was getting on my bike to ride to work from one of my best friends in the world. He and his wife had their first child, a little girl. Wonderful news! The wonder of that news was instantly crushed by the reality that his Mother is close to the end of her fight with cancer. I stopped in to see her while out on a walk with my 9 month old son … every time we go to Bloomsburg I try to find the time to stop in and see her … it is heart wrenching knowing that my friend of 25 or so years is trying to resolve feelings that I can’t even imagine — the birth of a little girl who shares his dying Mother’s name.

I feel like an idiot even mentioning the fact that the iPhone comes out today and I will be lining up somewhere to see if I can get one. I mentioned I have been writing elsewhere, well I started an iPhone blog to share my thoughts on the device for a research project I am a part of here at PSU. Several of us are investigating the way the iPhone plays in our enterprise and how we can see its value in education. Hard part is just getting one — I’m a little too busy (and perhaps, normal) to feel good about standing in line for days or even hours. I’ll see what I can do, but I am obviously thinking about it as I have had dreams about the damn thing the past two nights. If I get one, I will share thoughts here and over at my iPhone PSU Blog.

Sorry for the mad recap, but that’s what has been up.

iPhone and Accessibility

I received an email from a colleague today asking about the accessibility — or perceived lack thereof — of the iPhone. Sparked some thinking and thought I’d share it here:

I thought I ask the following question I posted on the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) Accessibility list:

Can anyone point me to any discussion on the accessibility of the Apple iPhone? Inevitably, the iPhone might make it into teaching and learning activities, and I cannot imagine how it could be used by vision-impaired individuals, for example.

I may be a bit harsh on Apple, but it seems to me that Apple is not interested in making some of its latest technology available to people with disabilities.

Is iPhone (in)accessibility being discussed anywhere? I think, we should discuss it.

Interesting and important stuff. We need to understand how this thing will play in our environments. Many users have distinct disabilities that a device like this may ignore. Still many more questions than answers.

VPN

I visited Apple back in March and got a tour of the iPhone. One of the big questions I had revolved around VPN. I was told the iPhone did have a native VPN and managed the hand off between wifi, cell, and protected wifi very well. This morning I saw on a Mac rumors site information that the iPhone does indeed have the OSX native version of VPN. Have we ever tested OSX’s VPN software? We will need to do that and look at what the settings should be.

PSU iPhone Del.icio.us Tag

I am using the tag “psuiphone” at del.icio.us to tag resources. You can see all resources tagged psuiphone here:

http://del.icio.us/tag/psuiphone

iPhone Communication Channels

We’ve been tasked with evaluating Apple’s new iPhone. To help get a sense of how we should handle reports, I’ve set up this simple form. The one requirement we were given was to not report via email … that means to me we should be taking advantage of one or more of our publishing platforms. In my mind we have three very good options:

1. Wiki: The wiki would give us a protected, fully editable space for sharing insight. It is more free form than a blog, but does allow for solid collaboration. If you think we should be sharing and editing each other’s thoughts a wiki would be an outstanding option.
2. Multi-USer Blog Site: This would give us a single site that all of us could blog about the iPhone at. An example of a space like this would be the ANGEL Community Hub. We could do this in the open or behind PSU authentication. This would give us the ability to post quick thoughts that would be organized via a taxonomy (categories) all in one place.
3. PSU Blogs: We could each setup an individual PSU Blog and report in our personal webspace. I would then recommend we aggregate the content together to make it easily readable and discoverable.

3 out of 4 … A Travel Recap

Note: This is as much for me as anyone.

So if you’ve been following the blog the last three weeks you know I have been on travel — some of it business and some personal. The personal stuff served as the bookends to three weeks of insanity. Three weeks ago I packed the whole family into the Pacifica and headed to Florida so my wife and our two children could spend time with the in-laws for a couple of weeks while I flew to San Fran to meet with Apple, then back to State College for a couple of days of work, and then to Chicago for a CIC Learning Technologies group meeting … that Chicago trip got me back to Florida for a week long vacation, joining my family. I have to say the week away was wonderful, but way too short.

The drive down was a bitch … we left on a Sunday and promptly got jacked up in the DC area due to a winter storm … three days later we were in Pine Island, FL … I got to spend an evening with the family before I left for Cupertino for the Apple trip. Getting there was easy and the meetings with Apple were good. That’s when the problems started. The return trip turned into a nightmare and a day and half later I was red-eyeing back to State College. Trust me, we made the most of the extra day in SF — if you are going to get stranded in a city, make it SF … I’m just saying, it is the right place to be. Coming back to State College from the west coast almost always pushes me into quasi-depression as I just feel at home in Northern California. This time was even harder … my family was in FL and I was racing to pack a week of work into a couple of days before Chicago. The Chicago trip was good and the company was excellent as always, but the return from there to FL was a mess — strike two for the airlines. While in Chicago I got nothing but mis-information from the airline monitors, employees, and websites … it was a mess. I did finally get out of Chicago and back into FL so all was good.

A week on Marco Island cures all sorts of things — and this trip was no different. The week blew past and the drive home arrived away too quickly. We left Saturday morning under beautiful sunny skies … it was way too perfect to leave. The drive up I 75 in FL was brutal … it typically takes us 6 hours to get out FL, but 10 hours in and we had to stop. The boy (6 months old) cried most of the way as we sat in traffic like I haven’t seen in years … made it even more painful. So a night in St. Augustine allowed us to regroup for the rest of the trip … a whole day and still close to an hour from Georgia. Day two started fine, but that ended in South Carolina where we sat in pile-up traffic for an hour. Long story short it took three full days to get back and when we got to PA it was grey and a mess. As I sit here typing it is snowing outside … depression is a terrible thing.

But, with all that said I did want to mention something that cracked me up while we sat in traffic in SC. The Pacifica has integrated GPS so I was trying to find alternate routes to beat the traffic. As I was doing that, my daughter was happily looking at the in-car DVD system watching whatever movie we dropped in there for that two hour stretch. Finally my wife had pulled out my MacBook and plugged in the Verizon USB broadband modem trying to frantically find any updated traffic information. That means 3 out of the 4 of us in the car had our eyes glued to either an entertainment or information screen. A far cry from when I was my daughter’s age rolling to FL in the back of my parent’s station wagon. The other thing that jumped out at both of us was just how bad all the access to information really is. With a device like the iPhone getting ready to hit these people better get their shit together, because when people need information there better be information waiting for them. Ubiquitous access doesn’t mean shit if there aren’t people providing ubiquitous data. I’m just saying … this whole trip has shown me a lot about how bad information systems are in this country — unless of course all you want to do is watch a DVD.