Thursday 13 May 2010

iTunes U – iTunes Dirty Little Secret

I don’t care what your opinions of Apple or iTunes are, one thing you can’t deny is that there is some pretty good content on iTunes. Whether that is music, podcasts,movies or iPhone/iPad apps. But one thing that gets so often over looked by iTunes users and others is the little promoted iTunes U.

iTunes U is a section on iTunes where education establishments from all over the world put up course materials that can be accessed by anyone. This content whether it is audio or video can be downloaded to a PC/Mac or iPod,iPhone,iPad, well you get the idea.

Apple describes it as “a powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours — is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students.”

Sounds pretty good doesn’t it?

I’m currently using iTunes U myself to do an iPhone development course by Stanford University in the US of A. In iTunes U Stanford have put up video of the lectures, and pdf files of the lecture slides. Then over on the course website at Stanford I can download the course assignments and any related source code.

I can then work through the course at my own pace, doing the assignments and at the end of it hopefully able to demonstrate my new knowledge to a prospective employer.

One draw back is that there is no or very little support for when you get stuck. However you might be able to find that online in a forum or website somewhere. You really do have to be self reliant with studying this way. Plus you are self marking your assignments (if you do them).

Another draw back is that once you have worked your way through the course there is no qualification to put on your c.v.. But for self improvement, or in a world where the Government is not interested in helping the unemployed update their skills to increase their chances of getting a job, at least mentioning that you have done a course will give a good impression to any prospective employer.

So how does this compare with say a paid for online training course? Well apart from the support side and maybe a bit of paper at the end (some just say that you have done the course), I think that they compare very well indeed. The quality of this Stanford iPhone course is really really good, especially compared to an online Java course my previous employer was using to train staff with.

But you don’t have to do that one, there are loads of different courses on there. Go into iTunes U and browse around to see what is on offer. There are even courses from our very own Open University on there.

Now you may you may not be an iTunes fan, and think that the software is a pile of poo (this is not my opinion I like iTunes, it’s not perfect I admit that, but then what software is?) Anyway I would argue that iTunes U is reason enough to install and put up with the iTunes software if you fall in to the iTunes Hater camp. If you already use and like iTunes then make that little side trip into the iTunes U world and have a look around.

Here have a browse online to see what they have. Click HERE

Saturday 8 May 2010

UK iPad Pricing And 3G Pricing

Last week Apple released the prices of the immently arriving iPad in the UK (I'm not going to reproduce them here, they can be found easily enough online).
I don't think anyone is really surprised at the prices, we knew they wouldn't be cheaper than the US. The ripping off of the UK public over the cost of electronic goods from the US is something that has been going on for decades. And frankly it's hard to muster up any anger over the issue. After decades of being mugged, and nothing done by our politicians or Government departments about it (there was an investigation a few years back, but it was a whitewash, and lacked any teeth) I've become numb about the issue.
However there is one issue related to the iPad I haven't become numb to.
Last week Orange became the first of the UK mobile carriers to announce the costs of using an iPad 3G on their data network.
None of their tarriffs offer unlimited 3G data, although they include "free" wifi access, which on some tarriffs is also capped. Go over your capped allowance on what ever plan you choose and it's 5p/MB. Which doesn't seem too bad compared to an O2 international data roaming charge of 13p/MB. But where is the unlimited dataplan like the one I have on my iPhone? The top Orange tarriff will be £25 for 10GB. My iPhone data plan that I have to have with O2 is less than a tenner, and is billed as unlimited (it probably isn't and may have somewhere in the small print a cap).
But the point is look at the difference in what is on offer and the cost.
I'm just hoping that when O2 and Vodaphone release their iPad 3G data plans we will see something more in line with the current iPhone data plan in lines of pricing. I'm not holding my breath, I'm used to being constantly disappointed by these cartels, and the false promise of competition we are sold.



-- Could be remote blogging or just too lazy to fire up laptop/Macbook/netbook. But still this has been posted from my iPhone 3G.