Are they overused in higher ed? Not so much anymore, but there was a time where the 360&deg tour was a big thing. I still get calls from vendors wanting to come shoot photography on our campus to do a “interactive virtual tour,” though I’m not sure what’s interactive about scrolling left to right, but that’s for a different post.

I saw that Occiptal’s 360 Panorama app was free in the App Store yesterday, and on a whim tried it out.

Making panoramic photos was suddenly very easy and I snapped a few in my house. When I got to work, I stood in our quad with my iPhone and took this panorama:

You can also view a full-screen version here.

So yeah, pretty standard stuff. Here’s what takes Occipital’s app to the next level. If you can view that last link on an iPhone or iPad, Safari will sense the accelerometer and let you move around the panorama, augmented reality style. It was strange yet cool to be standing in my office moving around but seeing our campus quad moving on the iPad as I went up, down and around. Very cool use of the sensors.

If you’re producing a mobile version of a site or an app, this would be a cool addition.

The challenge with setting up for Ustream is that it required a video camera, laptop and internet connection. I’ve been watching anxiously over the last year for a way to do it easily on a mobile device. I think that day has finally come – which is especially important to those of us who, thanks to lame contracts, haven’t been able to affordably upgrade to an iPhone 3GS.

You could stream on UStream for a few months now using a jailbroken iPhone, that is, an iPhone that’s used software to get into your phone to allow applications unapproved by Apple to run. I didn’t really want to do that, so I waited and waited.

Click for a full-size screenshot

Today, UStream launched its new app, Ustream Live Broadaster, which allows both iPhone 3G and 3GS devices to stream live video over wifi and 3G networks (sorry, Edge users.)

Once I saw the announcement go up, I installed the app and got streaming in just a few minutes.

First impressions: the app is really nice. It’s easy to use and the quality coming from my 3G phone is really nice. I walked around our offices (using wifi) and when holding the camera still, video and audio was crisp and clear.

There are optional settings to have UStream post a tweet on your behalf when you start a new live stream. That’s nice – there’s no sense in doing a live stream if no one is going to watch it.

During your stream, you can follow along with the chat stream, initiate polls and mute the audio if needed. At the end of your stream, you can save your stream to be kept at Ustream. I did one 20 minute stream and one 30 minute stream and no issues at all.

One interesting feature is that you can record videos in the app off-line and save them in Ustream, in both private and public modes. This could be a cool feature – I can imagine taking my iPhone out for a quick interview, recording it in offline mode, saving it to Ustream and have users view it when they want.

So far, I’m very impressed with this app. I think it’s something we’ll be using more and more of. Now, all we need are a few iPod touches with cameras and this could be a pretty decent streaming arsenal on campus.

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.

I’ve also been thinking about how this will impact us as higher education technology and web professionals.

Après moi le déluge
With the price of iPhone now dropping to $199 for the 8GB model, I would be prepared for a large number of students arriving on campus this fall with iPhones. They will expect wifi access as well as websites optimized for browsing on iPhone. There are authentication issues and other wireless security options we’ll have to review.

Now’s the time to also create an iPhone icon for your school.

Automatic Geotagging of Photos
The new iPhone will allow users to automatically, via the internal GPS, to record the exact location a photograph was taken. While this is a neat, potentially useful feature, we’re going to have to be extra-vigilant in keeping an eye on what photos are attributed to our schools or taken on our campuses. Not that we can take them down, but as GI Joe says, knowing is half the battle.

Strain in server resources
If you’ve got an email setup using Exchange, you probably won’t see a huge bump but if a large number of new iPhone users are POP’ing their email every few minutes, we may see an increased load on email servers. If you outsource your email to Gmail, for example, you won’t see this.

Power Users
Many public spaces at our college, such as the library and one of our dining halls, offer power and network connections at many tables and booths. I’ve used the power a ton of times, but it would be really cool if we started to offer other connection options at these stations. The iPhone specific example is a powered USB port, so that we can keep our phones powered on and charging while we study, do research, eat, etc. Are anyone’s schools doing this?

What am I missing?

I’ve been thinking the last few days about how developers in higher education might use the iPhone and what kind of apps we could build. As the iPhone market share increases, more and more students will have them on campus and expect them to work with campus resources, like wireless and portal services.

I initially thought about Facebook application style apps that recycle existing content, but since the iPhone has a full featured web browser, it’d be a waste of time and $99 to have you app vetted by Apple and included in the AppStore.

I assume the major campus ERP solutions like Datatel and Banner will develop apps that will allow users to tap right into school’s back-end systems. If Datatel, for example, develops an application to allow access to campus services, there will be issues for schools, such as will each school need to further customize the app to meet their needs? Will it need to be branded by the school? Will there be a run on server and bandwidth resources if everyone starts connecting with their phones instead of web-based platforms like WebAdvisor or Banner?

I also thought about housing providers like CBORD and their potential offerings. I would imagine it would be convenient for RA’s and other housing officials to do their end of year inspections and carry an iPhone with them. They could punch in the room number, see all relevant information about the room including past damage, current occupants, service requests during the year, etc. They would mark new damage that was done, and could use the iPhone’s camera to take a picture of damage for proof (you know, to avoid the ‘yes you broke this, no i didn’t’ type fights that I’m sure arise every year). All that could be uploaded by wifi to a central server and repair bills could be run for students.

What other sorts of applications would make sense? What would be needed to be developed in the SDK and as a stand-alone app that can’t already be solved by a web-based version of any application? Will the $99 fee to get into the program dissuade schools to join and develop?