How the mobile app is evolving

InfoWorld has posted the "best of iPhone" apps for business and for personal productivity.  It's a handy way to get a sense of how the mobile environment is beginning to evolve.  Many of the apps are baby versions of the desktop ones, as you'd expect, such as Evernote, iGoogle and NetNewsWire.

Some represent evolutionary steps.  There's Griffin's iTalk Recorder.  "iTalk Recorder lets you choose quality levels, provides a one-button recording interface, and makes it easy to add on to existing recordings. With the free, companion iTalk Sync program, you can drag recordings as high-quality AIFF files to your computer over a Wi-Fi connection."

Then there's Jott: "Record for up to 15 seconds; the software then transcribes this speech into text and places the results on your list. After you complete a task, just swipe your finger to cross it off your to-do list. Further, all your lists are saved to Jott.com, where you can access and manage them from your computer."

For alternative text input: "ShapeWriter's free WritingPad text input technology offers a different take on a soft keyboard. Instead of typing, you trace word shapes with your finger. In practice, this application is more efficient than handwriting recognition."

Finally Mocha VNC: "permits you to connect to a Windows or Mac OS X computer and see resources as if you were sitting at your desktop. The full version provides a Ctrl-Alt-Del key, supports right-clicks, includes macros, and handles 20 different host configurations."

So much of it, right now, are mini-versions of desktop apps or are portals into some kind of online service or resource.  But still it represents ways of taking those "larger" resources on the road and to where no one has gone before.

Comments

[Joshua Kim]

So when is the Blackboard App for the iPhone coming out?

This really could be a game changer for us.

Did some quick googling after reading your post - found nothing much but 2 youtube videos.

One is a professor talking about how he "runs" his course through his iPhone (through the Safari browser)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SoIr_jFmo

The next shows a student doing a Blackboard assessment through an iPhone (or Touch)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8tc0aECars

How great will be it be when we are able to use the alternative inputs that InfoWorld mentions to get content and dialogue/discussion into Blackboard from a mobile device.