Sun Microsystems, best know for its creation of Java, recently announced its intention to make a Java Virtual Machine (VM) for the iPhone. Of course, the appeal of Java is that programmers can apparently write an application once and run it on any machine or device that has a Java VM (a virtual environment that runs on a computer which includes the Java runtime, so that the Java code can run).

Unfortunately, as TUAW suggests, Java Virtual Machines on different platforms often require special code (which kind of defeats the purpose). And even more problematic for Mac users is the fact that Java has its own library of UI elements.

Despite these complications, Sun wants to make Java development possible on the iPhone. After the launch of the iPhone SDK, Sun began investigating the possibility of running Java ME (that’s the version of Java optimized for mobile devices) on the iPhone. Of course, this news will please many Java developers and will certainly broaden the horizon for the development of applications created to enhance the educational potentiality of the device.

Museum On The Go, a multimedia museum portal that enables users to download images, audio and video from renowned museums, collections and archives to their mobile phones, recently dedicated a new section of its website to the leading collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The V&A digital gallery comprises more than 100 images from a variety of periods and topics and is available for download to mobile devices in more than 50 countries worldwide. For the first time, 30 animated videos have been especially adapted to the small screens of mobile phones to show objects and fashion from the last century.

Utilizing new mediums of mobile communication, the collaboration between the V&A and Museum On The Go allows media savvy users to explore objects from one of the greatest museums of Art and Design from the palms of their hands. V&A asserts, “All our efforts are focused upon a central purpose - the increased use of our displays, collections and expertise as resources for learning, creativity and enjoyment by audiences within and beyond the United Kingdom.”

This portal could obviously be a nifty educational resource in classrooms laden with converged mobile devices—appealing not only to classes in the visual arts, but also to any course material that could benefit from some multimedia contextualization.

For more info. check out MobileChoice’s article on the recent collaboration.

Rumors of Apple’s iPhone SDK launch are finally confirmed! Apple asserts, “The iPhone Developer Program provides a complete and integrated process for developing, debugging, and distributing your free, commercial, or in-house applications for iPhone and iPod touch. Complete with development resources, real-world testing on iPhone, and distribution on the App Store, you have everything you need to go from code to customer.”

Click here for details and downloads.

Engadget recently posted an interesting article about Vodafone’s new Otello search engine, which uses images rather than text to track down information. Showcased at CeBIT, the search engine simply uses images as input, allowing users to capture a picture of anything—a landmark, library book, DVD case, professor, etc.—and Otello “returns information relevant to the picture to the mobile phone.”

Engadget reports that Vodafone is expected to conduct a trial with German paper Bild in which readers can “find out more about specially-marked articles by photographing them with their mobile’s camera and sending the image to [the aforementioned paper].” Unfortunately, the carrier is being tight-lipped with its plans for Otello beyond the trial, but if this stuff functions as advertised, Engadget suggest that it won’t remain a secret for long.

A visual search engine of this sort could have a multitude of educational uses. For example, what if it was combined with optical character recognition (ORC) to scan printed text directly into word processing software for editing? Of course speculation concerning the educational potentiality of this search engine could go on forever. Any other interesting ideas?

In anticipation of Apple’s upcoming press release, which is expected to unveil a new Software Development Kit (SDK) that will grant developers the opportunity to build native applications for the iPhone, our friends at Macworld posted an extensive “top 25” native iPhone apps wish-list.

To preserve the device’s security and stability, Apple has consistently refused requests to open the iPhone up to third-party development. However, at the Worldwide Developer Conference last summer, Apple announced a compromise, allowing developers to create Web-based applications that iPhone users would access through the device’s built-in Safari browser. Of course, for many this offer was not enough, so developers built native iPhone apps that could only be installed on jailbroken iPhones. In October, Apple signaled an end to this struggle by promising to deliver an iPhone SDK in February.

Because no one knows the specifics of Apple’s new SDK, Macworld convened a panel of iPhone users to dream up some third-party development miracles. The panel came up with 25 applications and ranked them in ascending order of urgency.

Here are a few of Macworld’s dream apps that would be especially appealing for mLearning:

• #25—Amazon Kindle client/e-book reader. This app would combine Kindle’s Internet and payment services with the iPhone’s brilliant hardware design to boost the readership of e-books, magazines and newspapers.

• #20—Unit converter. Converting yards to meters, ounces to teaspoons, and Fahrenheit to Celsius is cake with Dashboard’s Unit Converter widget. A similar converter on your iPhone would let you handle the same tasks in the classroom.

• #16—A better calculator. TLA Systems’ PCalc is a snazzy $19 calculator that blows the iPhone calculator away.

• #15—Dictionary/thesaurus. There’s plenty of space on the iPhone for an extensive dictionary, and it would certainly be faster than having to fool around with the Web.

• #7—VNC client. This would let you control other computers remotely. Since the iPhone is a portable computer, it would be great if you could use it to control your home server from class or when traveling.

• #6—Voice notes. The ideal application would automatically time- and date-stamp each voice note recording and offer a method of synching them back to your Mac. Perhaps the voice-note application could use the Maps’ new position estimation feature to stamp a location on your voice note recording—so later on, you could not only listen to what you said, but know where your were when you said it.

• #4—Text macro tool. Define your often-used words and phrases as shortcuts, then just type those shortcuts wherever you need them.

• #2—Document editor. The iPhone needs a built-in document editor, one that lets you create documents as well as modify those sent to you by others.

Like so many others educators, we’ve been keeping our own wish-list of educational apps, a list you may remember from our Pre-MacWorld post in January. In addition to essentials like voice recording and document editing, we think that iTunes U Wi-Fi with PDF support is the one killer app worth waiting for.

Now that I’ve loaded up my iPod to half its capacity with songs and videos, I really thought my three-hour flight to Salt Lake City would go by in a flash. My every personal need for entertainment would be completely satiated by watching the plot twists of National Treasure (for the third time) or picking out the reverse recapitulation in the final movement of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony (though my ear buds didn’t mask the engine noise well enough to hear the clarinet melody). So I sat on the plane thinking, I should have downloaded an audio book, or maybe an eBook. Really, what I should have done was to download those two JSTOR articles and finished up the lit-review for my article. But alas, my new iPod will not allow me to save a PDF file on any of its sixteen gigs of available space.

A quick trip to www.propeller.com shows me how to convert a PDF to *.txt format and upload them to the “notes” folder on the iPod. Of course, the text files obliterate the original page flow and layout of the PDF, and each text file can only be 4 KB in size. This does not seem to be the best solution since any kind of graphic (table, picture, musical example) will not be accounted for in the conversion.

So as of December 2007, my options for uploading information to the iPod touch are:

• Audio (www.textspeechpro.com would allow me to hear a computer-generated voice “read” the PDF file – I imagine Stephen Hawking waxing eloquently about French opera);

• Video (http://www.processtext.com/ allows you to convert PDF into AVI file, but then you’ll need something like Total Video Converter (http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter/) to switch that AVI into an MP4 to watch it on your iPod;

• Photos (now this may prove promising).

If I could convert a PDF into a JPG, I could preserve the “look” of the original PDF and easily transfer the files into a dedicated folder in the photos directory. Several options are available for this (including the above Process Text). I chose Digitzone’s simple PDFtoJPG program (http://www.digitzone.com/ pdftojpg.html). With its ability to batch process 100 PDF pages at once and its very simple user interface (as evident in this screenshot), PDFtoJPG does this one task very well. (more…)

The lowly press release. Public relations students have been learning basically the same press release writing technique since the 1950s. Dissemination of the release has changed a little—from hand delivery and postal service delivery to fax and electronic delivery. The past 15 years has taken delivery of the information from an all “push” dissemination system to a combination of push and pull dissemination with the advent of PR Newswire and other wire services. And it has worked. The symbiotic, if strained, relationship between traditional journalists and PR professionals has worked.

These days as news media adapt to the sea-change the Internet continues to bring, the PR industry is taking some steps to embrace social media too. Web 2.0 technologies bring even more possibilities to disseminating an organization’s information in a usable way. Now PR pros have even more ways to tell their stories, while the information expectations of the consumer-creators online continue to grow. Now a whole new team of bloggers and podcasters have a news hole to fill, and they do not have the patience to wade through a traditional press release.

One such blogger Tom Foremski wrote a scathing indictment of traditional press releases along with some suggestions for creating a 21st Century press release. Enter Todd Defren, a principal at SHIFT Communications, a midsize PR agency with offices in San Francisco and Boston. He created the first Social Media Release template and through the evangelism of several in the PR field, the idea has gathered steam. The template is designed to format and tag the elements of information so they are easily digested by aggregators and thus more accessible to certain audiences. (more…)

By now you’ve probably heard about Okalahoma Christian University’s plans to launch a new mobile learning strategy for the fall ‘08 term. OCU’s new initiative will build upon the mature mobile computing program they’ve had in place since 2001.

The first leg of this initiative will provide all faculty and new students with an Apple MacBook, while current students will be given the opportunity to trade in their PC laptops for MacBooks. In addition to the MacBook, the University will be offering students an option of either an Apple iPhone or iPod touch.

OCU asserts that they are providing this option with the understanding that some students will not want to activate the iPhone with the associated service contract and costs, while others will prefer the iPhone and the added capabilities. The student will be responsible for the activation of the iPhone with the service provider. The University suggests that the incorporation of instructional technology tools into teaching and learning is critical to the success of the school and its graduates.

In my theater classes this past semester, I tested a variety of applications for the iPhone. Here’s my top-10 list of cool uses, plus 5 things I’d love to see as new software and new versions of the iPhone emerge.

Ten Great Academic Uses:

1. Texting

• During performances of Aida, our homecoming musical, I was able to discreetly text my student handling the body microphones when there was a problem onstage. I often texted about volume issues, but one night we had a microphone go out. I texted back to say the microphone was not working and noted that there was a blackout coming up so the tech could go onstage and fix it. Which she did. Easy!

• Students check their texts far more often than their e-mail. When we were coming up on a deadline for a unified audition in Mississippi, I was able to text each of the students to make sure they had completed an online step that had a brief window of time. It worked.

2. Photos

• We produce an electronic weekly newsletter for our theatre majors and staff called “Theatre This Week.” I take photos throughout the week of various events and include them in the newsletter. We also have an alumni section. When alumni visit or I go to see a production out of town with an alum, I get a picture of them afterwards with the iPhone and include that in the newsletter. Though it’s not particularly high-resolution, it’s handy having a camera with me wherever I go so I can snap a quick shot.

3. Conference Calls

• I’ve used the conference call feature to call two alums during our weekly Theatre chapel. I connect the iPhone to an amplifier, and voila. The alums are able to discuss various problems and solutions they have faced as artists, and the students are able to benefit from their experience. It takes the learning experience to a whole new level.
• It’s also been handy to have such easy access to conference calling when we need to make decisions while the theatre staff are in different locations. Now, we can all discuss issues in real time, even though one of us is in the scene shop, another in the costume shop, and another back-stage. (more…)

Recently one of our esteemed iThinkEd contributors stumbled upon a serendipitous discovery as he downloaded ACU’s “behind the scenes” of the “Connected” video from iTunesU. After the download was complete, a folder containing the video appeared in the nave bar of iTunes called “ACU”.

This most recent update of iTunes U seems a perfect fit for university podcasts and the use of iTunes U in the classroom, as it appears to allow teachers and students to navigate quickly and conveniently through course material and resources stored in school-specific, easy access, automatically generated playlists. Best of all, it appears to allow various kinds of media formats to live together in one folder so users don’t have to dig through multiple playlists for their course materials. Cool!