This past week, ITS released Oxy Mobile, an application for smartphones. The app lets you do some interesting and useful tasks from your phone, such as contact professors or renew your library books, all through one simple interface. Thanks to its useful features, the app has potential to become an invaluable aid for students, faculty, staff and visitors.
The features that Oxy Mobile already has to offer are impressive and well-implemented. One of the application's most handy features is a staff and faculty directory, which conveniently narrows down its list of people as you search. This function replicates the way a Facebook friend search works, or the way an address is entered on a GPS unit, so you don't have to waste time typing out long, complicated names on the small keyboards most smartphones have. When you do find the person you're looking for, it only takes one click to call or email them right from the app.
Another important feature of Oxy Mobile is that it allows you to access library services from your phone. The app lets you search the entire library catalog, using the same intuitive search as the campus directory. You can log in to your library account from within the app, which will enable you to reserve and renew books on the go.
Oxy Mobile also has links to Oxy's Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter pages, as well as ITS Helpdesk information, allowing you to call or e-mail the Helpdesk with one click.
The last major component of Oxy Mobile is the campus locator. The app has a compass arrow and provides a distance readout, so you can see how far and in which direction each building is, respective to your current location. Click on any of the buildings, and the app gives you the option to pull up a map that shows the building's precise location on campus. I should note that on the Blackberry I tested, the directional arrows didn't work, but the app still pulled up the maps of the buildings. Although the campus locator features are obviously most useful to those who are still getting accustomed to Oxy, and to visitors who have the knowledge and foresight to install the app, it's always nice to know you'll have the ability to find whatever you're looking for on campus.
As of right now, Oxy Mobile is available for most major smartphone platforms - iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, Java, S60 and Palm OS. Only recent Palm devices running WebOS seem to be left out. To install, just open your phone's browser and go to my.oxy.edu.
The site should automatically detect your type of phone, and offer you a link to download and install the app. It worked flawlessly and installed quickly on both the iPhone and Blackberry I tried, but didn't work on a Palm Pre due to the aforementioned operating system clash.
Android users and iPhone users can also install the app from the iPhone App Store or the Android Marketplace.
Performance was solid on both the iPhone and Blackberry, though my iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster at processing the application than my friend's Blackberry 8310, especially when it came to loading images. Besides this, there weren't major differences between the look and functionality of the iPhone and Blackberry versions of the app. However, this is only the first version of the app, and I expect it to get faster on all the various types of smartphoneas it is updated and streamlined.
What I really want from an Occidental smartphone app is the ability to quickly find out information that would be convenient for me to have immediate access to. This includes information like upcoming events, the marketplace menu and up-to-date campus news. Unfortunately, a lot of these features are either unavailable or will be added to the application soon.
If Oxy Mobile can create an app like this that can cater to my needs, I expect every smartphone on campus to have the app loaded on it. While it might not be there yet, Oxy Mobile is off to a good start, and there's no reason for students and faculty not to give it a try.
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