Ok, I’ve had my iPhone a bit now, and some things are very useful, some things are cool, some are way fun, and some things are still irritating.   Note that most of the apps I download are free; I’m cheap and there are great free apps (and games).   I regularly go off to the iTunes store and check out what’s new (particularly the top free apps list).

Let’s get the negative stuff out of the way quickly.   Naturally, my pet peeves haven’t changed (because they haven’t fixed them, ahem): no cut/copy/paste drives me nuts.   For example, I put an address in my calendar, and then can’t cut and paste it into Google Maps to look it up when I’m on the go.   It’s there, but I can’t just carry it across!?!   Frustrating.   Similar with notes and todos.   As I’ve mentioned, if I promise something and it doesn’t get into my phone, we never had the conversation.   However, that’s much harder to do on the iPhone, because I have to email a message to myself!   Frustrating.   Similarly with memos. There already have been times I wanted to put things into a memo to take with me (e.g. a meeting agenda), and I can’t.   Sure, I could use EverNote, but then I’d have to have connectivity, and thanks to ATT’s coverage and hotel policies on wireless, that’s not always the case.

OK, the useful: Google Maps, Yelp, and now UrbanSpoon (finally covers Walnut Creek, my corporate headquarters) are very useful when I’m out and about and need to find some location, or a restaurant, or store, or…   I use them quite a lot, actually.   UrbanSpoon’s interface method of choosing at random is fun enought that it’s almost a ‘cool’.   Weather has been useful when travelling, as is Clock (not least for timing my tea :). Also, I’m all over references. I use the Wikipanion and the Google App.   Occasionally, the various unit converters, calculators, and the like are handy.   I expect to use the translator on occasion as well.   Hey, that’s why we have digital devices, to offload those things our brain’s aren’t great at, like remembering arbitrary data, and leave us to do the strategic and pattern-matching stuff.   The camera’s handy as well.   I haven’t used the voice recorder, though I’m ready.   And a secure password storage app, SplashID. And I got a first-aid reference, a Bart schedule, even the constitution (relevant in several ways).

The fun are the games I’m playing.   I used to play a lot of Risk in college, and then Lux on the computer.   Now there’s a somewhat abbreviated version of Lux on the iPhone.   That, along with Solitaire and Mahjonng are fun.   And of course, the LightSaber app.   Great for entertaining the kids when we’ve got to wait.   I play games for research reasons, er yeah, that’s it…. Oh, and books.   I’ve read a couple including James Fenimore Cooper’s “Pathfinder”, Edgar Rice Burrough’s “Tarzan” (I read as a kid, was re-reading to see if my lad’s ready), and Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle Book” (hadn’t ever read, amazingly). Lots of free classics available and worth reading.

Finally, the cool.   I just got Google Earth, and that’s way cool.   Just amazing to have it running in the palm of your hand!   Went over and looked at our old house in Australia; they’ve put a tree in the front yard, it appears.   Twittelator lets me tweet and keep up with others’.   I have LinkedIn and FaceBook, though I haven’t used them much.   Midomi will let me hear a song, capture 10 seconds of it, and tell me what it is. Amazing.

By the way, many of these were available on the Palm, and some version of the above may be available on Windows Mobile, RIM’s Blackberry, or forthcoming on Android.   Anyway, it’s about extending your brain, and these apps do it in various ways.   So, what are you finding useful, and what am I missing?

I found out that where I’m going this week didn’t have coverage by Sprint. We’d be in the mountains (‘rustic’ cabins) but there is power, and I didn’t want to be completely out of touch as I was a couple of weeks ago.

I’d been waiting a year and half since my two year contract had expired, but wasn’t completely happy with any new mobile phone solutions.   At first I hoped the iPhone was the solution, but it wasn’t quite ready for primetime.   As a Palm fan (simplicity, solidity, great story about it’s design), the Centro was appealing, having full PIM (notes & ToDos as well as contacts and calendar), cut/copy/paste, a real keyboard, lots of apps, etc, but the browser’s weak, and no GPS or wi-fi is kind of a bummer.   The Treo 800W is mighty appealing, except for Windows Mobile.   I just *can’t* go there.   It’s got to be dead reliable.   Blackberry‘s just too closed for me, and Symbian‘s too odd (these are mobile OSs).

So, the iPhone 3G appealed (ok, maybe I’m an Apple fanboy, but I was a grad student in an interface design group when the Mac came out, and you had to love the leadership in user experience which has stayed market leading from then ’til this day), and the fact that ATT does claim to have coverage in the area was the kicker that got me to go wait in line Friday morning.   And, yes, I know that the iPhone 3G does not have full syncing PIM yet, nor copy/paste.   But it’s software upgradeable, and all the hooks are there. So, we’ll see.

So far, my experience is mixed.   The screen is simply awesome, and the interface is quite cool. It does sometimes take a lot of work to get to various things. It’s got a non-standard jack, so suddenly all my hands-free wires are worthless (grumble mumble); I may be forced to get a bluetooth headset for driving!   Typing’s OK.   I’ve got music loaded, and photos (but dual copies of the folder I want, and can’t figure how to delete one).   It gets email, but I managed to tap-dance over the push account I’d set up, and one of my accounts keeps complaining about connection ( I got one message only on the phone, not on my computer, and can’t forward it #$%^&!)

So, something (else) to keep me busy in the mountains. Besides prepping.   In a week, I fly off to Chicago for the Guild’s summer seminar series on Collaborative Learning, and the one on Immersive Learning Simulations.   I expect to learn heaps in the former, and think we’ve managed to design a great experience for the latter.     I do believe it will be good value, good learning, and good fun.

BTW, my brother and family stopped thru on their way back from the mountains.   Their boys have matured well of late, and it was great to see them and have them here.   Pool, wildlife museum (live fox, owls, raptors, snakes, coyote, all wounded and saved), ultimate frisbee in the park, eating, drinking.   Family is important to us.   I reckon it’s something that’s wired-in, and to be nurtured.   As well as having fun!   Hope your summer is turning out fun too.

A colleague asked me for 5 paragraphs on mobile:

Let‘s get that straight right from the beginning: mobile learning is not about courses on a phone. mLearning is where we really bring home the message: “It‘s not about learning…it‘s about doing”, because while there are learning implications for mobile devices, it‘s really about performance support. Yes, one of the applications of mobile devices is learning augmentation, extending the learning experience over time through distributed presentations, examples, and practice, but the real opportunities are providing context-sensitive support for the mobile workforce. Increasingly, the workforce is mobile, whether directly for work or indirectly, e.g. commuting, and they have the devices (“Have you already purchased a mobile learning device” “Let me rephrase the question: do you have a cell phone” “Hello…”). Not taking advantage of it is just leaving money on the table.

The variety of mobile devices is vast, spanning media players, handheld gaming platforms, PDAs, cell phones (though that name is no longer apt; cellular technology is long gone), and, increasingly, smartphones. There are convergences, however, where many mobile devices are now phones, media players, PIM (Personal Information Management, read: contacts, calendars, memos, and ToDos), GPS, and more. If you‘re having trouble with any of these TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) BTW, you can do a search on them to get them defined.

The issues are in how to develop content and resources for these devices, and the answers stack up like a pyramid. The bottom is the proverbial “low hanging fruit”, the content you already have that can be made available “as is” or converting the files to mobile formats. So, your PDFs, your audio recordings of presentations, any videos, and of course your web pages/HTML. The next level is taking all the content you will continue to produce, and proactively capture it (if you‘re not) and ensure that it‘s an automatic feature of your process to produce mobile ready versions. The top is to develop specific mobile resources, and that‘s where we‘re reaching the tipping point: instead of custom tools, we‘re seeing the major tool providers now providing mobile output options. The mobile web is another increasing option, as more and more mobile devices include browsers. As I say, “480 x 320 is the new 1024 x 768”. Mobile is hitting the mainstream.
And, it is hitting it in many ways. There have been instances of successful courses on mobile devices, but that‘s not the sweet spot. One of the more useful options is in augmenting online or face-to-face courses.

We know learning retention fades fast unless reactivated, and mobile gives us a great way to do that. We can send out different ways of thinking about it, more examples, and even new forms of practice. In fact, we should start rethinking the course, moving to blending including mobile as part of the extended experience! The second major big win is in making accessible support for the mobile workforce. We can provide manuals, trouble-shooting, even remote part ordering, to the field engineer. We can bring customer refreshers and updates, cross-selling recommendations, and purchasing capabilities to our mobile field force. And more.

Organizationally, the workforce is more distributed, more mobile, and needing to be more opportunistic and contextually optimal. Mobile is an enabler of increased individual and organizational performance. You need to treat it like any other initiative, managing the change process, but it also leverages other changes that might be happening. Knowledge or content management, mobile device deployment, webinars, many are the initiatives that, with a marginal extra effort, make mobile an additional delivery channel and opportunity. Take advantage of this new direction!
Further resources include:

• The eLearning Guild‘s July 2007 360 Research Report on Mobile Learning.
• Judy Brown and friends‘ mLearnopedia.
• My other blog posts on mobile.
• The Mobile Gadgeteer blog.
• The Mobile Development Site.