Create Web Apps for you Favorite Sites

Too much information out there to keep up with…

What about creating your own Web Apps (browser-based applications) for your most visited websites?

On Windows, use Mozilla’s Prism. Click “download Prism for Windows on the following page and follow the instructions.

For Mac OSX, use Fluid, which works in a similar fashion to Prism but is made to be compatible and integrated with Mac OSX.

iPhone Educational Apps

A while back I thought of creating a blog to review only educational apps for the iPhone.
Suddenly I noticed that not only did just a few developers try to create educational apps but also the quality of those that are there isn’t what you’d expect…

So, I’m still considering reviewing a few iPhone apps for learning, but if educational developers don’t learn to create good apps it will be a tough job…

The state of the so-called “Education” apps on the iPhone is hazy. So many applications for the iPhone utilize the revolutionary technologies available for that platform (such as the Shazam app that recognizes which music is playing at an environment and populates the app’s screen with metadata on that song, or the Aurora Feint series that utilizes the accelerometer to control the blocks on the screen), etc.

The educational apps are still on the “flash card” side of things… let’s see what INNOVATIVE ed apps will appear in the upcoming months, years, decades…

The 3G iPhone as a More Versatile Mobile Platform

The new iPhone 3G is bound to take an incredible new step toward more freedom for the user. While the first versions of the mobile device (I’m hesitant to call it a phone) were pre-loaded with applications and wouldn’t let the users add more unless were willing to risk their device’s “health” to jail-break it and install third party apps, the only official but “crippled” option was to download a link to a Web App (Web Apps are self-explanatory: applications that run on the Web and not on your local machine/phone).

Besides the 3G Wi-Fi speed, the new iPhone will offer the ability to actually download and install new applications. Apple already has a website up explaining that and they have some examples of applications on their website. The release of their Software Development Kit (SDK) is promising to the educational world also for the freedom it gives developers to create learning applications that work natively on the iPhone.

Some examples of applications they highlight on the Apps Store website include Microsoft Exchange capabilities (push mail)

Loops, an application that lets you find your friends on a Google map mash-up.

And the innovative Super Monkey Ball, which responds to your movements by means of the Accelerometer (movement detector on the iPhone) to create a more “interactive” experience. This has a lot of potential for serious games…

Zembly – Facebook App Creator

[still a draft]

As time goes by, things always become easier to create and use, especially in social media things happen fast.

No coding, WYSISWYG is the future of things, making it easier for user-generated content to be, yes, generated.

We see a vast array of WYSIWYG applications out there and many of them are migrating to the Webtop side of things. 

We can now easily build applications for Facebook with Zembly, for example. What impact does this have in learning? This means we are able to deliver learning just-in-time, where the learners are: social media websites. Zembly is a great example of that.

iPhone official downloadable apps?

So many rumors around the new iPhone and the new iPhone software that are coming up soon.
One of those interests me the most: the feature of downloading official applications to run natively on the iPhone. I am not talking about Web Apps which are basically web-based applications to which you link from your home screen. I am not talking about jail-breaking the iPhone and installing applications.
I am talking about the possibility for every iPhone user to be able to install applications on their iPhone with the approval of Apple, running less risks of losing AppleCare coverage for installing apps illegally.

This means mobile learning in general can go even further with official development of iPhone applications that will be used for learning or sharing content.

If not now, this will happen anytime anyway. Apple can’t go on with this closed approach to application development/installation they have right now.