MU to debut iPhone app
Provost Brian Foster approved funding through the IT fee.
Published Feb. 23, 2010
The push for an MU iPhone application that started with the Missouri Students Association is now in the hands of the Division of Information Technology.
Provost Brian Foster approved funding for the MU smart phone application through the Application Services budget in January. Students pay for this funding through their IT fee, said Kevin Bailey, Division of Information Technology director of customer service and support.
"Last summer we tried to develop strategic plans on how to invest the IT fee in support of learning and teaching," Bailey said. "Everything is going mobile these days and mobile devices are where a lot of growth is."
Missouri Students Association President Tim Noce proposed the idea for an MU iPhone application in April 2009, but until last month, there was no definite funding plan.
The application would possibly include a map of campus, a calendar of events and access to myZou, Noce said. Other options for the application are a live feed for KCOU/88.1 FM, an RSS feed for the athletics department and local news updates. The application would likely be available for free.
"The application is a really good resource," Noce said. "You can get all the information about stuff to do at Mizzou in the palm of your hand. In the past, students would have to go to Jesse Hall and wait in line to sign up for classes, but now that could be done from your phone."
Noce said funding the application is a step toward making MU a more mobile campus.
"Everything has become more on-the-go and more mobile," Noce said. "Every day there is a new way to receive information on your phone. That is the direction I feel a lot of stuff is going. In the future, anything will be able to be done from your phone."
Application Services, a division of DoIT, is working on the production of the application, principle database programmer Ali Merayyan said.
DoIT is expanding the application and creating a platform compatible with major mobile devices. The MU mobile application will not only be compatible with iPhones, but also Blackberrys, Nokias and Windows smart phones.
"The main goal is to give students access to more information," Merayyan said. "Mobile devices are catching up as the device to use to access data."
Noce got ideas for the MU mobile application from other universities with existing mobile applications. The University of Texas, Duke University and Stanford University are among the colleges with iPhone applications.
"Another thing that pushed me to work on the application was I learned there was an iPhone application class here at Mizzou," Noce said.
DoIT is aiming to have the first version of the mobile application available by next fall, Merayyan said.
Comments (7)
6:32 p.m., Feb. 23, 2010
Bobby said:
I want to know why this app needs funding. There are developers in our Computer Science program who can create iPhone apps, easily. All it takes is purchasing the iPhone App Developer Program (a $99 investment) and whatever courses/books it takes to learn the language ($100-200) or you can check them out for free from the public library http://dbrl.bibliocommons.com/search?t=keyword&q=iphone+app&x=0&y=0. The cost to develop this application literally isn't even pennies considering how much we pay to go to school here. The university tricks students into volunteering free labor in return for glory all the time, why don't we do that here? Or even pay student developers which will be a million times less expensive than outsourcing to a development company. Then we can use that IT money that's obviously sitting around doing nothing to do something we actually need to spend money on.
11:10 p.m., Feb. 23, 2010
Chris said:
@Bobby: Development of an iPhone app isn't the only thing DoIT has to work on. Figure in server space, bandwidth, a KCOU/88.1 FM stream, etc. Not to mention paying people to keep it up and running 24/7. This isn't "iBeer" we're talking about (you can check that out on your own in the App Store). Costs add up.
9:04 a.m., Feb. 24, 2010
Bobby said:
That's beside the point. Even if it takes a ton of manpower and time every day just to keep our servers running and bandwidth (how does this take time?), it would not take very much to set up some kind of contest or something saying "Hey, five computer science kids, help us develop an MU iPhone app, we'll pay you $50 to the bookstore" or what have you. Then build a CMS to update it. It's not hard. Children do this stuff by themselves. We can get it done easy. You can't just say "costs add up" and expect people to go "Oh, yeah." Especially if "costs add up" supports the opposing argument - mine - which is that we shouldn't spend money on this, and instead develop this app "in house" if you will. It's very possible that I'm wrong, as campus has much larger server needs than anywhere I've ever worked, but even if it takes all the IT guys to do it (doubtful), we can hire or even just ask our own students to build our app for us for way cheaper.
11:09 a.m., Feb. 24, 2010
Andy said:
From Bobby: "Figure in server space, bandwidth, a KCOU/88.1 FM stream, etc. Not to mention paying people to keep it up and running 24/7." Yeah, but things like the live stream of KCOU online and RSS feeds already exist- they only need to be utilized correctly or minorly tweaked to work with the iPhone app. Considering this, most of what it takes to support the app is being done automaticaly. As for storage, most of this information for the app is either pushed into the cloud or doesn't take up that much space anyway. DoIT has plenty of server space. Hell, think of what they have reclaimed because of the new mail system! In other words, this isn't a UNIVAC that fills a room and needs a staff to run it 24/7- it's an iPhone app, like iBeer, that is relativly simple to administer and push data to. It will cost and require next to nothing to support. The only real cost is in developing it; and even that is minimal.
2:22 p.m., Feb. 24, 2010
Bobby said:
@Andy Exactly! The primary cost of the servers and broadcasting equipment here at MU are simply the initial costs of purchasing the equipment and configuring it. Beyond that, the only cost is upkeep, which generally should be pretty low. The system is vast because of what it has to accommodate, so the amount of time precisely is difficult to predict, but considering the size of the network, they should still be pretty low. An extremely large portion of the cost to build an iPhone app should, again, only be the cost of the App Developer Program ($99) and the books you need to learn the language (objective c, I believe it is)/standards/best practices (not much either.) Beyond that it is labor cost, which will be quite a lot, but if we get students to do it, even at $10 - $15 / hour (a godsend in the eyes of a college student) we'd still save a massive amount of money! iPhone app developers can cost anywhere from $50 - $100 / hour and that's optimistic! Once the application was released, there would probably be two to three months time where users would discover bugs in the application and we'd have to fix those, but after this, costs become virtually zero, as all that needs to be done is the patched version of the app needs to be uploaded to iTunes. That's it. Data pushing can be done easily in very little time. The data would take up an extremely small space on our servers (like Andy said, think of all the space released by switching the mail system.) I want to clarify that it's very possible that I'm be wrong, but the IT department hasn't given enough detail about why this is going to cost us money - and by us I mean EVERY STUDENT AT MU regardless if you have a device that supports the software.
1:42 p.m., Feb. 23, 2010
Casey said:
Look into Texas's iPhone app. It's really good in terms of a campus app. But we can do better.