iPhone Atlas recently reported that DataViz, publisher of the venerable Palm OS application Documents to Go, has announced plans to bring a version of the application to the iPhone. The software allows users to view and edit Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Excel Spreadsheets and offers many other features, including the ability to display graphic files.

DataViz is projecting delivery of Documents to Go for the iPhone in 2009. The company asks that anyone interested in news or information about the software sign up for a mailing list here.

The iPhone has built-in support for viewing some Microsoft Office documents and Adobe PDF files, but the functionality is not as robust as Documents to Go for Palm.

For more information, be sure to check out iPhone Atlas’ full article.

Today, TUAW posted an article about LogMeIn’s acceptance of applications for the private beta of LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone/iPod touch, the mobile client version of the remote control platform. With a final release planned for the end of the year, the client will allow full remote control of any computer in your list, including screen blanking and zoom/pan options.

TUAW suggests that while there are great IT admin tools for other mobile platforms (and some promising but never-completed iPhone tools), the iPhone admin explosion hasn’t quite arrived yet. LogMeIn is definitely an industrial-strength player and the presence of the client will help to legitimize the iPhone and iPod touch as an enterprise device.

For more, be sure to check out TUAW .

Good news for those of us who can’t confidently construct a message without the luxury of squiggly red lines: TouchType has updated to include an aggregate spell check on emails before they are sent. Mike Schneider has released a new update to TouchType, an application that allows Mail.app to use the keyboard in landscape (vs. portrait) mode.

Schneider writes: “I am really proud of the spell check feature. The results are very accurate and it works in 86 languages. I was planning to make spell check its own application, but when TouchType was unexpectedly approved by Apple two weeks ago, I decided to merge the two programs.”

The updated TouchType is still $0.99 and is a free update for existing users. Other improvements include: support for all international characters and symbols, save functionality, enabling users to reuse text in email messages and create multiple email signatures, and general increased stability and bug fixes.

For more visit iPhone Atlas.

Much has changed since I first wrote about using the iPhone as a tool for reviewing Greek flash cards (Fall 2007).  The App Store makes available a number of flash card programs and specialized card sets, downloadable straight to the iPhone. I have been using iFlipr recently.  It has a simple, online interface that lets you create flash card decks, edit cards, and—if you like—share them with the world. iFlipr boasts over 1,000,000 user-created cards already available. Although the decks are stored online at iFlipr.com, the phone app keeps them synced with your device so that you can easily practice anywhere offline. The program is fairly simple but does have some smart features to aid learning. Also, cards can have graphic (jpg, gif, pdf, png) or audio content (mp3, wav), instead of just text content.

Back to Greek. Since the iPhone has no trouble displaying Greek text properly and consistently, creating Greek flash cards is a snap. Simply log into the iFlipr site and set up a free user account, create a deck, and begin typing the card information into the editor.  I have been creating decks of cards classified according to the words’ frequency of occurrence in the Greek New Testament, to help students of Koine Greek drill vocabulary anywhere they happen to be. They can practice using the iPhone, or they may do so on their computers through the online interface.  The cards display very nicely on the iPhone.  Students are able to control card order and to drill both Greek-to-English and English-to-Greek by changing the flip order. As they practice, they can track mastery levels by indicating whether their answers are correct. (more…)

TUAW reports that the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, is now available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Webster’s dictionary, converted to Apple’s handheld platforms by Paragon Technologie GmbH, now gives teachers, writers, and students a fully searchable reference at their fingertips.

This is a pocket version of the best-selling dictionary in the US, featuring over 225,000 defined words. Since it is a self-contained application and not a web front-end to an online dictionary, it can be used in situations where your device is in airplane mode.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary sells for US$24.99 in the App Store. But of course carrying this app on your iPhone is a lot lighter than lugging around the US$23.95, 3.6 lb. printed version.

The other major competition to this application, Webster’s New World Dictionary (click opens iTunes) from AcroDesign, is a bit less expensive at US$14.99, but is less complete with only 163,000 entries.

TUAW reports today that Evernote, a versatile note-taking application for Mac and iPhone, has recently opened up a Service API. This comes as an extension to the basic AppleScript support found in the 1.1.5 release, and opens up the possibility of creating homegrown interfaces ranging from simple calendar/todo managers to “thick” clients that can manipulate the entire collection of Evernote data.

The AppleScript library itself is quite useful, albeit slightly limiting. You can retrieve lists of notes based on searches, create new notebooks and notes from a variety of sources, and obtain properties for the various elements of Evernote. The most interesting feature of the AppleScript library is the import/export automation capability. You can export (in well-formed XML) entire notebooks, or notes from a list (such as one generated by a search). These can be transported automatically by whatever means work best for your purposes, and then imported on the other end. This allows for “local” synchronization of large libraries without using up online quotas. It’s also ideal for automatic backup of your notes, among other potential applications.

It’s great to see such a useful application continuing to expand itself and allow for third-party interaction. If you’re interested in developing around Evernote, or just playing with the possibilities, stop by the developer page and take a look around and be sure to check out TUAW’s full article.

Here is a cool iPhone-in-education idea from OllieBray.com. Ollie discusses a number of features that make the iPhone a handy tool to help aid learning and data collection in fieldwork. The screenshots below show some of the iPhone Apps that Ollie identifies as useful for fieldwork.

He writes, “The Notes feature that comes with the iPhone is a fantastic free application that I have been using a lot since getting my phone. It could be used out in the field for students to record data and when you have finished typing a note, you can send it directly to an email address.

However, there are also a number of good free applications for the iPhone that allow you to up-load straight to a blog. I currently use both the Typepad and Wordpress Application. This means that students could set up a fieldwork blog before they leave the classroom and up-load their data from their iPhone straight onto their on-line space. One back in class the blog could be further edited and tidied up.”

He goes on to suggest that the camera that is built into the iPhone is a useful application for students to take photographs in the field. Photographs can be emailed back to the class or they attached to Wordpress or Typepad posts and up-loaded to a fieldwork blog.

AirMe is an application that allows you to up-load photographs directly to Flickr. You can also choose to geo-tag your photographs and add current weather data if you want to. This is useful because the geo-tagged photographs appear on a Yahoo map, which can be included as part of the fieldwork enquiry or embedded into your fieldwork blog.

Ollie also discusses how maps, GPS and Track Me, interviews and voice recording functionality, data gathering tools like the stopwatch and timer are all invaluable to fieldwork.

For more, be sure to check out OllieBray.com

Today, Egnyte announced version 2.0 of their secure storage, collaboration and backup solution with support for iPhone access through a web application. The iPhone interface, m Drive, allows users to log in to their accounts and work with their files. Access permissions can be set and changed on-the-go, and files can be shared by emailing them as attachments, or by emailing an access link to the file on the Egnyte server. Links to files can be set to expire at a given time and don’t require an Egnyte login. m Drive also allows users to view previous versions and comments on files.

According to TUAW the interface is simple, easy to navigate and not bad looking. It currently lacks the search features present in the full version. Such features may be present in a dedicated iPhone app, which is coming. Egnyte offers a 15-day free trial, and plans are configurable based on your needs, starting at $15USD/month for 1 “Power user” and unlimited standard users.

iPhone Atlas reports that with the abolishment of Apple’s iPhone developer NDA, the floodgates are open for documentation regarding the innards of the SDK. The first development instruction book to debut is Erica Sadun’s The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK.

Sadun begins the book by exploring the iPhone delivery platform and SDK, helping you set up your development environment, and showing how iPhone applications are constructed. Next, she offers single-task recipes for the full spectrum of iPhone/iPod touch programming jobs single-task recipes for the full spectrum of iPhone/iPod touch programming jobs:

• Utilize views and tables
• Organize interface elements
• Alert and respond to users
• Access the Address Book (people), Core Location (places), and Sensors (things)
• Connect to the Internet and Web services
• Display media content
• Create secure Keychain entries
• And much more

Promotional material asserts that the book is organized for fast access: related tasks are grouped together, and you can jump directly to the right solution, even if you don’t know which class or framework to use. All code is based on Apple’s publicly released iPhone SDK, not a beta. The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook is currently only available as a PDF, and is priced at $29.

If you’re planning on making your way to EDUCAUSE 2008 later this month in Orlando make sure to join Apple for three, ten minute sessions: The iPhone in Higher Education, Managing Your Macs and Podcast Producer and iTunes U. Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices are driving rapid mobile adoption and initiatives throughout education.

The sessions will cover MIT’s facilitation of innovation, creativity, communication, and collaboration to support iPhone deployments across its campus. The second session will detail how Apple customers leverage the power of Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, and other tools to provide network-based policy management, remote client assistance, and more. The third session will demo Podcast Producer, an institution-wide, end-to-end solution for encoding, publishing, and distributing high-quality digital media content that is being used to automate and simplify content capture and distribution for the University of Arizona’s iTunes U site.