Duke University is launching a suite of new mobile applications that will enable students, faculty and staff to browse the campus events calendar, access the campus map, check live sports scores and view top videos from iTunes U and YouTube, all from their mobile devices.
The new applications -- dubbed DukeMobile -- are being developed specifically to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile campus, said Tracy Futhey, Duke's vice president for information technology and chief information officer.
"The first step was to deliver existing information platforms and applications that were good candidates for mobile use," Futhey said. "But our users want more than applications on the go; they want information that's relevant to their location. That's why our focus is on developing applications that use the location-tracking capabilities of these devices."
Michael Schoenfeld, Duke's vice president for public affairs and government relations, agrees.
"GPS and mapping have a lot of untapped potential, whether it's for a campus tour, or tracking your way to the nearest campus printing station, or locating your friends on campus to connect up," Schoenfeld said. "We also have a great and growing university events calendar, and to be able to connect to your personal account on your mobile device will be a tremendous asset."
This first iteration of DukeMobile allows users of iPhones and iPod Touch devices to:
-- Search for buildings by name and then to zoom and pan across a map of the campus using the device's touch interface;
-- Search Duke's Web directory, and e-mail or call contacts directly from the results;
-- Review Duke's course catalog and bookmark classes for future reference;
-- Search the Events@Duke and Buzz calendars for events, which can be sorted by day, week or month, and then pinpoint the location of the event on the interactive map;
-- Follow Duke sports with news and schedules from GoDuke.com, and with updated scores delivered as they change;
-- View the most popular content from Duke sections of iTunes U and YouTube when in a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Similar functionality will be available for other multi-touch devices, such as the newer Blackberrys, by March 30.
The university wants to mine the creativity of users, too. Students are being encouraged to participate in a competition to develop additional Duke-specific mobile applications, with prizes for the most innovative and most Duke-centric apps, Schoenfeld said.
DukeMobile was developed in partnership with TerriblyClever Design, a California-based Web services company that also worked on iStanford, a similar set of applications for Stanford University.
Duke is always exploring new ways to distribute mobile content, Futhey said. In fall 2004, the university distributed about 1,600 iPods to freshmen as a way to encourage creative uses of technology in education and campus life. In fall 2005, Duke collaborated with Apple as one of the first providers of higher education content on iTunes U, which enables students to access digital course materials, set up course podcasts and exchange multimedia content.
Last fall, the university unveiled a mobile-accessible Web site (http://m.duke.edu) that gives users of any mobile device with a Web browser the ability to pick up campus and athletics news, search Duke's Web sites, pull up admissions information, and receive emergency and IT-outage updates. The eventual goal is to merge these related capabilities into a bundle of mobile applications available on all devices.
For additional information, go to http://oit.duke.edu/web-multimedia/web/mobile.html.