A Million 3G iPhones
Since the iPhone 3G went on sale this past Friday, a million phones have been purchased around the world. That’s three days, folks. Crazy. 10 million applications have also been downloaded.
The addition of the AppStore has completely and totally transformed the iPhone from a great internet device to an amazing one overnight. I spent the weekend playing with all sorts of apps. I’ll be blogging about a few this week, but I can say with certainly my kids’ favorite was the PhoneSaber app. It was enough enticement to get my 2-year-old to run around the house yelling “iPhone! iPhone! Blue!” as a sign it was his turn to play with it.
I continue to think about what the effects the influx of iPhone users will have on our campuses this fall. I wrote about it a few weeks ago, but all the applications have got my brain going in a million different directions. There’s the mobile social networking, location-based services and so much more.
I also had a nice conversation with Ben Reisling at Duke about issues and gotchas we as web developers need to think about when developing new sites for mobile devices, including the iPhone.
Is the iPhone’s price, availability and ease-of-use the tipping point for finally ushering the mobile revolution on our campuses? Cell phones have been ubiquitous for a few years now, but will the mobile data and browsing finally see its day in the sun?
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Here comes the App Store
iTunes 7.7 is out, and the major add is the AppStore, which will let you download applications for your iPhone or iPod Touch.
The official launch should be sometime today, but if you’re in the iTunes music store and search for Twitterific, for example, you can get into the AppStore itself. You can browse, buy and download, but until Apple releases the iPhone/iPod Touch 2.0 software update, you’re kind of stuck.
I grabbed a few apps I know that I’ll use right away - Twitterific, AIM, NetNewsWire, Facebook and EverNote.
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Career Paths and Goals for Higher Ed Web People
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my career in higher education and what I’d like to do over the next five years.
For the last 10 years, I’ve managed the websites at two great schools and spent some time in the private sector side in between my jobs at those schools.
I think that private sector side experience gave me two things. First, it gave me a good business understanding. I learned about RFPs, contracts, managing developers and the business side of things. The other thing I found out is that I didn’t get the thrill of the deal or the big contract. I enjoyed getting paid, to be sure, but making sales calls was a chore and I enjoyed focusing on the code side of things.
While there’s less pressure to track billable hours and be chasing new deals in higher ed, there are sometimes even bigger pressures when it comes to technology, enrollment, and so on. There’s opportunity to explore new ways of communicating and delivering information, which is fulfilling.
If you’re in the private sector side, one nice thing is that you have a somewhat clear career path. Worker -> middle management -> upper management. That is, if you want to ascend up the career ladder. In higher ed, that path is a little less clear, especially for web folks. The way it stands today*, it seems like you can go one of two routes, the IT route or the marketing route.
For example, a larger and larger part of the communications oversight of a college or university involves the web and electronic communication. This position, for example, requires experience and understanding of the web as well as video. What is the endgame of this path? Vice President of Marketing and Communications?
On the IT side, you could leverage your technical, programming and project management experience. This position requires those skills as well as budgeting and experience managing teams. The endgame here may be CIO or VP of IT.
* = I think a trend we’re going to see a lot more of are hybrid positions. These would include positions like this open Director of Web Communications at the College of Wooster. In a position like that, it looks like you’ll need to be a jack of all trades when it comes to the technical side of things as well as the marketing and communications side. When you take that job, send me a sweatshirt. Thanks, Kyle, for the tip about this type of position.
I don’t intend this to be the end-all-be-all guide to higher ed web careers. I’m just trying to figure out if there are clearly drawn lines any more. It will be interesting to see what sorts of positions are posted on Karine’s HigherEdExperts.com job board. There’s nothing yet, but it may be a good look into the trends of what jobs and job descriptions are developing into.
What’s your career goal or dream job?
Me, I’d love to be a CIO at a small school like the one I’m at. I think it would give you the opportunity to not only use my knowledge and full-blown geek-fu, but I think it would also allow me to be involved with many, if not all, of the departments across a college. This would allow me to give them the tools, software, connectively and so on they need to succeed.
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