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Minglu Wang talked about how to develop applications for iphones/mobile devices. She started out with a survey of what platforms people used. 69% of attendees were iphone/ipod users :). Who says it isn’t “all about the iphone.” It was interesting to see that 80% of people in attendance were interested primarily in developing websites for mobile devices and not in developing device specific applications.
She talked about Duke, Northwestern, International Children’s digital library, Van Gogh Musueum, and some prototypes (UNLV digtial library, Europeana). Several of the applications focused on delivering digital material (images, metadata, copyright info, locations) via an app. Of note, the ICDL focused on delivering ebook content (she mentioned another app called StoryKit that looked very neat). One of Wang’s assertions was that a valuable feature of the ICDL apps were that they could be used without network access.
Her summary of ‘killer features’ from her survey of apps included
- Image sharing
- Ebooks
- Audio and video
- Search – keyword & location
- Insights: added value
- User contributed data – tags, comments, sharing, creating
Wang talked about the growing trend to create web applications as opposed to ‘native iphone apps’ & mentioned a number of frameworks including iUI, iWebkit, JQTouch, and Dashcode.
Kevin had recently shown me JQtouch, a framework for writing iphone centric web applications using safari as a primary platform & it simplifies the process of developing apps that benefit from the iphone hardware & interface features.
Wang quickly demoed Dashcode & PhoneGap (which includes development platforms for multiple platforms & allows you to migrate a dashcode app to an objective c app) In 10 minutes she built a neat little app based off on an RSS feed. I was so excited I went home & wrote a ZSR library app off our of new-videos RSS feed (Please use your iPhone to view). . .Thanks Minglu!
4 Comments on ‘Iphone apps for libraries, Handheld Librarian, bestest 1 hour talk ever’
Well, now i REALLY want an I-phone. And, RJ wants one too!
That *does* sound like the best 1 hour talk ever!! And what an awesome app, too!! Now that we know how quickly you can put one together, you might be flooded with requests. 😉
Erik, this is such a cool app! I’ve bookmarked it on my iPhone as a link on my home screen!
I really like the way you give the pertinent metadata on the second screen and then provide links to both IMDB AND the zsr catalog. Love the cover art inclusion also! Very cool.