http://stanford.terriblyclever.com/

I think NC State needs to follow suit. Of course, I wonder if there are enough students/faculty with iPhones to make this feasible.

Thoughts?

3/5/2009 7:57:02 AM

3/5/2009 8:55:47 AM

It's almost as though webpages don't exist anymore.

3/5/2009 9:07:21 AM

i would say that a significant portion of our students/faculty have either an iphone or an ipod touch.

a more important question is, however... how useful is an app like this?

personally, this would be one of those apps i'd download, use once or twice, and then most likely never use again.

i mean seriously, who is realistically going to pay their tuition bill from their iphone?

3/5/2009 9:37:46 AM

wouldn't hurt to have the ability to change your course schedule and lookup ppl in the directory at the click of a few buttons. I agree I doubt people would use it to pay their tuition bills

3/5/2009 9:40:27 AM

but why do you need this when there is already a fully functional web browser

3/5/2009 9:46:05 AM

Quote :

"but why do you need this when there is already a fully functional web browser"

3/5/2009 9:46:52 AM

^^ same could be said then for a number of the apps - like the facebook one....

3/5/2009 9:46:56 AM

i admit, it would be sorta cool to be able to change/look up my schedule from my phone. but again, i'd probably use it the first week of classes and then not again until the next semester, heh.

^yeah, but the facebook app makes it much easier to use facebook on the iphone. it's still quite usable in safari, but it's much faster if you have an interface that is tailored to the platform. granted, you can do this with webkit, but still... thick client gives you other advantages too, like integrated photo upload/contact syncinc/etc.

3/5/2009 10:03:15 AM

^ that was my point - how can you comment on how useful an unwritten app that just replaces functions available through the web would be

3/5/2009 10:21:49 AM

Quote :

"wouldn't hurt to have the ability to change your course schedule and lookup ppl in the directory at the click of a few buttons. I agree I doubt people would use it to pay their tuition bills"

Uh... MyPack barely works with Firefox on a full computer. Hell, some of the features don't even work properly on IE.

I can only imagine the brick it would shit if someone tried to get it working for mobile devices.

3/5/2009 11:00:35 AM

Quote :

"i admit, it would be sorta cool to be able to change/look up my schedule from my phone."

havent had a problem doing this on my WinMo phone.

3/5/2009 11:38:23 AM

you want to see the potential of this, visit http://mobi.mit.edu/home/ on your iphone

of course, that's mit, whose online presence is cutting edge and not so much a jumbled charlie foxtrot of half-working tools

3/5/2009 12:00:44 PM

I have heard that DH Hill does have a group working on building iFone apps.

3/5/2009 12:59:34 PM

^^that's pretty sweet

[Edited on March 5, 2009 at 1:04 PM. Reason : esp the bus routes imo]

3/5/2009 1:04:51 PM

Quote :

"you want to see the potential of this, visit http://mobi.mit.edu/home/ on your iphone of course, that's mit, whose online presence is cutting edge and not so much a jumbled charlie foxtrot of half-working tools"

I mean, there's a difference between a really nice mobile site and a dedicated iPhone app.

NC State could be well served by the former, but there's not really much of a need for the latter.

Quote :

"esp the bus routes imo"

If Flash worked on the iPhone, the new Transloc bus tracker would be great on a mobile device.

3/5/2009 2:16:13 PM

i'm actually developing a wolfline iphone app

routes/realtime locations/integrated with GPS so it knows what stop you're at/can tell you what buses you need to get on to go to a certain stop/etc

i'm not sure how picky transloc is about people accessing their data, though. they left it open, so i see no problems.

Quote :

"you want to see the potential of this, visit http://mobi.mit.edu/home/ on your iphone of course, that's mit, whose online presence is cutting edge and not so much a jumbled charlie foxtrot of half-working tools"

there's nothing really that special on there
if i had the motivation to do so, i think i could crank out a webkit app with all of that functionality for ncsu. the systems are already in place, you just have to parse the data.

3/5/2009 3:52:18 PM

I remember transloc, my old suitemate founded that.

that would be a cool app to have.

3/6/2009 2:56:18 AM

NC State iPhone App--;
evan transloc iPhone App++;
exit;

3/6/2009 7:05:38 AM

people at the university have brought this up before and it didn't really go anywhere

3/6/2009 8:11:20 AM

that doesn't surprise me in the least

3/6/2009 12:00:08 PM

Well, I actually use the Stanford iPhone app. It's really handy. And for the critics who stated "why, we have a web browser", I'd argue that the current campus map offered by NC State would be rather impractical for viewing on a mobile web.

http://www.ncsu.edu/campus_map/

Even Stanford's 'official' campus map is very very poor (like MapQuest before ajax).
http://campus-map.stanford.edu/

Someone took an official campus map, scanned it in, then overlaid it using Google Map's API and scaled it properly. The difference is immense.
http://ucomm.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/map/

This is what the Stanford iPhone app uses. And it's very handy, even to help the visitors that come to campus. Of course I don't pay tuition on it. But a mapping feature, a dining hall feature where I can get direct access to menus or dining hall locations on it, an events feed to show me what's going on, Stanford sports section, etc. Hours that bookstore, library, convenience stores are open, those are all pretty useful things to put on an app.

The point about what % of the student body at NC State uses an iPhone is a valid point.

3/6/2009 10:27:28 PM

you kids are spoiled

3/7/2009 12:37:47 AM

3/7/2009 12:39:48 AM

Quote :

"And for the critics who stated "why, we have a web browser", I'd argue that the current campus map offered by NC State would be rather impractical for viewing on a mobile web."

Yes, which is why you need a better mobile webpage, not an iPhone app.

3/7/2009 2:09:47 AM