Fall 2009 Day 1 - Mobile Technologies

Jenn demonstrated a portal instance she wrote running uPortal that displays well on a mobile device. Base uPortal detects user agent and routes you to the correct theme. Displays list for navigation instead of tabs.

In theory you could have non-mobile-friendly portlets filtered out of the layout. Or it could use a different layout.

While uPortal has had support for this but there are some bugs in that Unicon Cooperative Support has been working on fixing.

The process of developing a mobile theme is basically the same as developing another theme.

The structure is different that a traditional theme structure.

TimC says this has been a strong factor in getting buy in to deploying portlets.

The use of Fluid components is encouraged; they already have some mobile support.

texting?
native apps?
Cell devices: iPhone, smart phones, old-style phones - three basic themes

Anecdotes:

• IT management thinks we need it

• students don't want you pushing to their cell phones

• not everything is available in the portal now, so you need to address mobile strategies beyond the portal

• geo-mapping/location is a real value-add for cell phones but schools are not positioned to take advantage of it

• look at what the current teens will likely expect

• need to identify what they want

• they don't want push - they want pull

• students use mobile sites even from their regular PCs

• why can't you get your degree off of a cell phone?

• some text books publishers are making books available online

• visitors on campus may be very interested in mobile access

• events

• maps

• directory

• athletics

• transportation (parking, bus schedules)

• 3G+ available is spotty in areas

• need to look at how much you really deliver on each page

• might be interesting in writing an app that consumes a feed from a uPortal instance (I am not sure what AndrewP was getting at here); nice out of the box eye candy might be valuable marketing

• need to get vendor buy in from those providing services on campus

• need to identify low hanging fruit

• while automatically directing users to the 'right' version based on user agent, they may actually want a specific version. do we specifically ask them each time? Do we store their preference?

• Need to look at making data available to others that want to make devices

• Students are expecting APIs to their academic data

• what about security on mobile devices? SSL is now supported on modern smart phones

• are their social problems that now arise with the wide spread use of mobile devices

• there has been an increase in mobile-focused sites, but these are also becoming popular on regular PCs because they are simple and easy to use

• there is interest in both browser based solutions and native apps; perhaps we should focus on open standards that can increase integration with other apps on the phone

• http://m.rpi.edu/i (iphone, android, other smart phones)

• http://m.rpi.edu/b (blackberry)

• http://m.rpi.edu (plain jain for older cell phones)

• m.mit.edu

• mobile.usc.edu

• m.iu.edu

• support for user mobile profiles