Thanks for reporting on your experiences with the fetish-phone.

Andre’s question is a good one. It’s important to refuse hype’s power to cloud tech minds. Are we talking about the iPhone dominating this market, a la iPod? Or is it a marginal platform in use, influential in impact, as OSX? If it’s the latter, we’re still working in the Balkanized world, having to look into iPhone *and* Android*s* and Crackberry and Windows Mobile.

@jim, I used that conference detail to trade on our futures markets.

@Alec – I’m afraid to jailbreak, for various reasons. But will give both those apps a long look.

@D’Arcy – I know I can expect a few more of those.

@Andre – I have heard anecdotal reports that the percentage of wireless connection on UBC campus via handhelds is surprisingly high…

@Alan – I will follow up with a “my favorite apps” post, which is a huge part of the appeal. As an aside, I am deeply concerned to be called a fan boy twice in one thread. Surely I did enough Apple bashing to forestall such abuses on my own blog?

@Jon – I hope someone else can help. I switched from NNW to Google Reader in part because I now jump between five different machines – three Apple, two Linux. Google Gears means you can enjoy the benefits of RSS even when offline.

Why do I teach with Vista?

a) Actually, student projects for that course are on the open web, and we run public blogs, wikis and lots of other activities on public new media sites as part of the course. The decision to release course content is not mine because I did not author most of it (we might open it up in the future), and students in this program still prefer closed threaded course discussions (see my previous post for our efforts to develop an alternative).

b) I would prefer other approaches, but I am honestly glad to have the opportunity to teach using Vista now and than, as it informs my opinion of it with real experience. I could not have made the comparison I do above without that experience.

@Jim – your comment reminds me to explicitly state another of one of my misgivings, which is the money involved with being any kind of player in the mobile game. I am privileged to be able to play with this tool. It is a luxury even within a wealthy culture like the one I live in. And while I generally believe in going where the students are when it comes to technology, I hate to think we create a context where people feel obliged to spend stupid money before any kind of real value can be established. Yet another economic barrier to education. We need to remember that pushing this in the current environment perpetuates yet another form of digital divide. That’s a big piece of the self-loathing I am groping to articulate here.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Scott Leslie just Twittered about this iPhone music app which looks completely sick: http://rjdj.me/what/

That said, despite the fact that EDUCAUSE 2008 was and is everything I hate about a conference and edtech, I did realize that my walking around with a brand new MacBook Pro made me a dinosaur. Just about everyone I saw had a shiny iPhone or iTouch, and they seemed far happier and healthier than me. I wanted to be them, and your demonstration of what it means for WPMu and a syndication oriented framework is important and compelling for mobile learning, this device changes the game–no questions.

And I promise you that when I can afford one I will be less bitter.