Today, our friends at iPhone Atlas reported the debut of what they describe as the first “genuinely useful” native peer-to-peer application for the iPhone. The iSLsk iPhone application, which is capable of accessing the SoulSeek music sharing network, allows users to search the SoulSeek database, select files for download, and even queue transfers. The music is then automatically added to the iTunes library on the iPhone and is instantly playable.

SoulSeek was created by Nir Arbel, a former Napster programmer, and offers access to a vast peer-shared library of files, composed primarily of music. The network boasts hundreds of thousands of active users.

An application of this sort could have tremendous potential for the use of the iPhone as an educational tool. Imagine teachers and students having the ability to share instructional audio files with each other at the touch of a button both in and outside the classroom.

Installation of iSlsk requires a jailbroken iPhone. To install follow iPhone Atlas’ guide to third-party applications to jailbreak your iPhone and get it ready for applications, then make sure you have the “Big Boss” repository added to Installer.app. This source should be added automatically when you install the “Community Sources” package as described in the guide, but you can also manually add it by going to Installer.app and following these instructions: tap the “Sources,” button, then tap “Edit” in the upper-right corner, and finally “Add” in the upper-left corner. Enter the URL of the source you would like to add (thebigboss.org/repo.xml) and press “OK.” Installer.app will add the source, and you will be able to find the new application(s) in the normal “Install” menu.

Today, The Wired Campus reports that online chatting is more linguistically sophisticated than we may have suspected. The article presents the finding of two researchers from the University of Toronto, who looked at spoken and IM communications of 72 people age 15 to 20. Instant messaging represented, they said, “an expansive new linguistic renaissance.”

Sali A. Tagliamonte, a professor of linguistics, and Derek Denis, her student, found that instant messages mix up colloquial with formal language, creating a complex hybrid. Their research will appear in a future issue of American Speech, and was reported first by New Scientist.

AAR8, perhaps studies like this one will serve to further legitimize text messaging as a classroom communication tool. Then again, it could be just as effective for AWLTP.

Be sure to check out the full article in The Wired Campus. Or check out the largest list of text message shorthand at Netlingo.

iPhone and iPod Touch users should be quite pleased with Google’s recent announcement of its new, fully supported RSS reader, Google Reader, to the mobile Safari browser. The service says it is still in beta, but it seems to be working very well. While the native attempt at Google Reader actually worked quite well, there is nothing like the real thing.

The application looks to bring a desktop Google Reader experience to the mobile Safari browser. As the reader’s official blog states: “This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you’ve used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it’s a very fast way to power through your reading list.”

To access the new Google Reader, just visit http://www.google.com/reader/i/ on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Again, the service is still in beta, and you will not be redirected to that page just by visiting Reader, so bookmark it for future use. Check out iPhone Buzz’s article for more details.

Yesterday, Dian Schaffhauser of Campus Technology posted an interesting article discussing the recent findings of a new study conducted by ABI Research. According to the research the firm, next-gen WiFi is expected to be in 99% of North American campuses by 2013. Currently the wireless standard 802.11 is found in less than 3 percent of North American universities. Stan Schatt, vice president and research director of ABI states: “ABI Research believes that wi-fi access point and controller equipment revenue in the global higher education market will skyrocket from $137 million in 2007 to $837 million in 2013.”

Of course, motivations for deploying WiFi in schools and colleges vary widely. As Schaffhauser points out, greater security is in demand, especially video surveillance. K-12 schools are embracing an “anytime-anywhere learning” philosophy, and they are placing emphasis on providing networked computers to as many students as possible. Universities, clearly the leading early adopters, are finding that WiFi connectivity is a recruitment requirement for many students.

For more information, be sure to check out Schaffhauser’s full article in Campus Technology.

A new Open Access Directory wiki promises to be a valuable asset for participants in the overlapping Open Access, Open Software and Open Educational Resources movements.

The Open Access Directory (OAD) is a compendium of simple factual lists about open access (OA) to science and scholarship and is maintained by the OA community at large. By bringing many OA-related lists together in one place, OAD will make it easier for users, especially newcomers, to discover them and use them for reference. The easier resources are to maintain and discover, the more effectively they can spread useful, accurate information about OA.

The goal is for the OA community itself to enlarge and correct the lists with little intervention from the editors or editorial board. For quality control, the creators limit editing privileges to registered users. They welcome your contributions to lists, ideas for new lists, and comments to help improve OAD.

Thanks to EduResources for highlighting an extensive collection of categorized web tools created for school library media specialists by Dr. Donna Baumbach and Dr. Judy Lee, University of Central Florida. The purpose of this wiki is to provide information about some of the new web-based tools (Web 2.0) and how they can be used and are being used by school library media specialists and their students and teachers.

The wiki’s creators assert that much of the information—including identifying a need for this kind of information—is the result of a survey conducted in 2008 of over 600 school library media specialists about their knowledge and use of web-based tools in library media programs.

Because WebTools4U2Use is a wiki, you can add information to any page. The collection’s creators encourage you to add or edit anything that you think will help other library media specialists learn more about Web 2.0 tools and use them creatively and productively in their programs. They’ve also created special pages for each category of tool so you can share other tools or show others how you and your colleagues are using the tools in your programs, or you can use the “discussion” link at the top of any page.

Our friends at Mobile Learning posted an article this week that spotlights prolific developer of mobile applications Tea Vui Huang. Vui Huang provides the tools he develops, which are generally designed for educational purposes, for free via his website.

Most of Vui Huang’s applications are authored for the Symbian mobile phone platform and include graphing calculators, podcasting, photography, and document-creation tools—even a small application that allows a user to create the basic curves for generating 3D Maya models

As the folks at Mobile Learning suggest, Vui Huang’s view of m-learning is spot on; for instance, mobile phones are cheaper and often more powerful than graphing calculators, and most students already own them. Not to mention, the quality of the graphs created by this free tool is excellent. Download this tool using your mobile web browser from http://teavuihuang.com/tvh-72g/download.php, or from the project’s web page.