iPhone News Updated

iPhones to monitor kids’ attendance

Hundreds of students of a top Japanese university are getting sat-nav iPhones, so that it’s easier to track them down in case they skip classes.

Usually, students fake attendance by getting friends to answer proxy roll-call or hand in signed attendance cards.

But now, Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo has found a solution to reel in students back into classes—they are giving Apple’s iPhone 3G to 550 students in its School of Social Informatics, which studies the use of internet and computer technology in society.

Not only the hi-tech gadget will work as a tool for studies, but the GPS (a satellite navigation system) present in the phone can check on its whereabouts automatically.

And thus, it could act as a convenient way to prove attendance, reports The Daily Express.

However, there is one glitch—truants could still fake attendance by giving their iPhone to a friend who goes to classes.

But the university has claimed that youngsters are unlikely to lend the hi-tech mobile phones, which are packed with personal information and email.

[Thanks: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com]

Sharing Content on the iPhone: A Plea for Universal TwitterSharing Content on the iPhone: A Plea for Universal Twitter

One of my favorite iPhone apps is Instapaper, because it let’s me put a pin in something I want to read without leaving the bomb run of surfing for things that I might want to read when I have time later (ha!). I even warily bought the pricey version ($9.99) because the free one had so much promise, and little did I know that the best feature of the upgrade was a unique feature called tilt scroll which — which every other e-reader should do, by the way, but that is a screed for another day.

Then my favorite iPhone Twitter app, Tweetie, incorporated a feature which leveraged Instapaper by storing any link in a Tweet to my account in one click — brilliant! Now I can plow through a gazzilion messages and vet the shared URLs later when I am in reading and not harvesting mode, on the iPhone or on the web.

But, there is still something wrong, I thought today, as I got my usual Saturday morning headache while reading the news on my iPhone. It has nothing to do with eye strain and everything to do with a condition you could call “filing clerk fatigue.” Content providers who have been sharp enough to bring me their news and information free and easy on the device of my choice still aren’t letting me put them in the round holes I want, by providing only square pegs.

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