I was very jazzed watching the twitter feeds during Steve Job’s iPhone SDK keynote, but was frustrated that I had to wait until I got home at the end of the day to watch the video (then ran into some weird stream mojo on my mac-mini). Ack. Not being there frustrations aside, the third-party apps that are going to come out of this SDK are going to make Leo Laporte ditch his blackberry and ask for his iPhone back that he gave to his editor. Seriously.

As a former Palm Treo user, I am looking to all the cool games and tools that are going to come. On my treo I used to be able to walk around my classroom and make notes on how my students were doing on their project and have those notes come up in my grade-book application on my computer. Sci-Fi writer, Jerry Pournelle, said on TWIT that if a good e-book reader client came out on the iPhone then that would be the end of the paperback book market. Forget paperbacks, how’d you like to get rid of all those $90 10-pound textbooks?

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My buddy, Greg Thompson, has been writing about moving textbooks to portable devices since the introduction of the Kindle. Imagine how much a school district could save in storage, shipping, and maintenance if they just purchased a license agreement from the textbook vendor and downloaded their texts instead of moving mountains of paper-products. Done deal. Want to cut back on waste in the education market, let’s switch to electronic media that’s viewable on everything from a video-Nano or PSP to an iPhone or Kindle. Duh. I’m guessing that it’s going to take most school districts about 20 years to catch on to the possible savings because the educational culture is stuck in the way things have always been, thinking that letting teachers do occasional podcasts is enough. For the rest of us, this coming June when third party apps are released for the iPhone, everyone from Nintendo to textbook publishers will have to respond. Four months and counting… JBB

Jobs unveils iPhone Apps Store

Apple iPhone SDK twitters:

  • apple needs better streaming, i can’t pull down the SDK keynote, i get start/stop audio & no video. put the damn thing on YouTube. ack # 2008-03-07
  • highlight of the day: one of my students gave me a peep. Pure sugar delight. It was all downhill from there (except seeing iPhone sdk video) # 2008-03-07
  • Finally saw the iPhone SDK last night, keynote vid wouldn’t run on my macmini but did on the mbp, ack. really looking 4ward 2 iphone games # 2008-03-07

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Recommended Book: “The Areas of My Expertise” by John Hodgman