Do your teachers/staff need to make their own website? Install OpenScholar from Harvard and you're off and running, no HTML knowledge needed. Very slick. And open source.
The App Store is for Suckers
by Jonathan Stark
Submitting (pun intended) to the App Store is for suckers.
Do you really want to:
- Give up 30% of your profit?
- Learn Objective-C?
- Endure approval delays, rejections, and yanks?
- Navigate labyrinthian code signing issues?
- etc…The cheapest, easiest, fastest way for folks to get in on the mobile gold rush is to build killer web apps. Web apps can access location data, utilize client-side SQL databases, and even run offline.
In addition to side-stepping the App Store minefield, web apps run on more than 100 mobile handsets with zero modification.
And on desktops.
And on the iPad.
And on anything else that has a reasonably modern web browser; which will likely include everything from sewing machines to cereal boxes in the next few years.
The App Store paradigm (Apple and others) is an out-dated business model based on scarcity, middlemen, and control. It is newspapers. It is travel agents. It is used car salesmen.
The world has moved on. Don’t get suckered.
I love this commentary by Jonathan Stark on developing iPhone apps. I've sort of known that I wanted a web app for our school for a while. Athletics schedules, blog posts, access to our Moodle server, etc. But then I couldn't figure out if we should develop for BlackBerry or iPhones (and what about the Palm Pre!), but then this post just made it all clear.
Closed models = bad. Didn't the Internet teach us anything?
I, along with some of my distinguished peers, will be speaking on a panel at the Creative Commons Salon NYC on March 3, 2010. The theme is "Opening Education" and there will be folks from Flat World Knowledge, Peer 2 Peer University, and finally the educators panel (including me!). It will be in lower Manhattan, from 7-10pm. RSVP info is here.
Hope you can join!