iMobileU Initiative

Common Solutions Group

The State of Mobile Devices

• Fragmented Today and Tomorrow:– iPhone (still AT&T only) in the lead followed

closely by BlackBerry (all U.S. carriers)– Android gaining momentum (T-Mobile & Sprint:

HTC, Motorola, Samsung, LG, etc.)– Palm webOS also lurking (Pre & Pixi: Sprint +

Verizon & AT&T (2010))– “Premium Touch Phones” also gaining– Users expect mobile info on their devices without

discrimination

Room for ImprovementMIT Mobile Web

• Browser Detection:– Accommodate the popularity of non-WebKit

“premium touch phone” browsers (e.g. BlackBerry Storm, Samsung Instinct, LG Dare, etc.)

– Segregation of browser detection (mobi-service)• Branching WebKit UI to accommodate Android,

webOS and others in the future• Improved UI for “premium touch phone” users• Ability to serve data to native applications (api)• More features and content type/data source

MIT Mobile 2.0

Browser Detection (mobi-service)

Web KitGeneric

Touch UINormal Computer

Content Generator (api)

People Directory

Campus Map

Shuttle Schedule

Events Calenda

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Stellar(LMS)

Student Careers

Emerg. Info

3Down

MITLDAPServer

MITIMS

ServerNextBus

MITEventsServer

MITStellarServer

CareersOffice

Emergency

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3Down.mit.edu

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iPhone Android webOS

Tech CASH

MITTech CASH

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Library

MITLibraries

Mobile Web Native App

MIT Statistics May 2008 -> Sep 2009

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iPhone Native App (MIT Prototype)

• Developed with the help of student developers (< 6 weeks)

• Advantage Native:– Local Storage (e.g. campus map images)– Accelerometer (e.g. shake to refresh)– Push Notification (e.g. shuttle bus arrival notice,

new class announcement notice)

• Open Source

iMobileU Activities

• We’ve been busy (sorry), but we want to work together on this -- not just share the work.

• Wiki, Mailing List, Conference Callhttps://spaces.internet2.edu/display/imobileu

• Potential opportunity to partner with other open source projects, e.g. FluidProject.org

• Let’s collaborate on developing application framework that can be customized for each member institution