When I recently returned to my roots here at GVSU, I not only had to an assimilate an amazingly altered campus from what I left behind back in 1988, but I also had to get accustomed to the fact that GVSU now sprawls across the entire W. Michigan area. In addition to the main Allendale campus there is the gorgeous Pew Campus in downtown Grand Rapids, and a second downtown campus on “medical hill”, as well as campuses in Holland, and Muskegon.

Here on the main GVSU campus a project is underway to build a new library facility. This week a fly through of the new facility was published on YouTube. It is going to be a remarkable facility indeed! I was very pleased to see that among with all of the new ultra modern library technologies (including an Apple-like “Genius Bar”), the new library will still have a “Collections Wing” with a “Browsable Books” area where its patrons can wander among shelves of very real physical books and browse for good reads. Being the gadget geek I am, you all might be surprised to learn I don’t yet own a Kindle or equivalent dedicated reader device. I don’t know exactly what it is, but for me there is nothing digital that replaces the authentic experience of reading with a real dog eared tome in hand. Don’t get me wrong, I love Google books, and a Kindle is probably a much more practical form factor if you need to lug the equivalent of a box of books with you on a trip somewhere. However, to truly experience a good read, I still prefer the old fashioned media.

I’ve embedded the youtube video above.  You can read more about the new Mary Idema Pew Library Learning and Information Commons here.

Twitter now let's you organize your favorite tweeters into lists. A very handy way to add some order to the tweet chaos.

The new “list” feature on Twitter is fantastic!  Basically, twitter follow lists lets you the user organize your twitter friends into meaningful lists to share with others.  This morning I started organizing various lists relating to mobile technology that I thought would be of interest to others.  So far, I’ve put together the following lists:

• Mobile Manufacturers:  Every manufacturer of consumer mobile devices I am aware of that has an official and active twitter presence.  This includes their main corporate twitter accounts as well as specialized twitter accounts (e.g. mobile products business units, developer communities, etc.)
• Mobile Operators: Every mobile operator/service provider I am aware of that has an active twitter account.  At the moment this list has a North American bias to it.  Eventually, I’ll get around to creating similar lists for other markets.
• Mobile Techies & Bloggers:  This is perhaps the most interesting list – everybody out there that I’ve encountered so far on twitter whom I think has something interesting to say about mobile.  I tried to be discerning here as there are a lot of people who are tweeting about mobile.  I didn’t not limit myself to folks in the USA, but I did try to limit it to those who tweet primarily in the English language. I’ll keep tweaking this as we go.  I’m sure I’ve overlooked a few obvious folks here… sorry in advance. 

This is still very much work in progress, but if you’re a mobile junkie, eavesdropping on these lists should help you very quickly tune into the tweets that matter.   I’ll be adding some addition mobile-related categories in the future.  If you find this useful, a  retweet would be greatly appreciated!

Just got that new iPhone?   Itching to flip bits on it?  How would you like to get paid to work with the latest/greatest mobile phone platforms?  The Mobile Applications and Services Lab in the GVSU School of Computing has a limited number of Graduate Assistantships open for Fall 2009 Semester.  If you are passionate about technology, creative, and have good communication skills please get in touch with us. You can check out the formal RA posting here.

Not currently enrolled at GVSU but interested in pursuing graduate studies in Computer Science here? Learn more here.

Hello GVSU School of Computing, College of Engineering, faculty, students, friends! After almost two decades of working in industry, I’ve recently joined the faculty at this wonderful institution. In some ways, I’m not very new around here. I actually graduated with my B.S. here way way back in 1987 before went off to graduate school at MSU (go Spartans!). Since 2002 I’ve occasionally served as an Adjunct Prof., teaching courses in the School of CIS graduate program. However, in other ways, I’m very new around here. GVSU is far from the tiny liberal arts college nestled in the pastures of Allendale, MI that I knew back in the mid-80s. Today it is Michigan’s fastest growing public university (~ 24k students) with a number of absolutely drop dead gorgeous new campuses spread around the various communities of West Michigan.  Along with all these new and grand facilities are of course a lot of new faces.  Most of the faculty who inspired me over two decades ago are now retired (thanks Bruce, Georgi, Ken and many others – you all were great teachers who had enormous impact on thousands of young budding computer scientists!) and replaced with yet more young, bright, and able faculty members from all over the globe.  I look forward to meeting and collaborating with my many new colleagues here in the School of CIS and across the university community.

Part of my new adventure here at GVSU involves heading up the new Mobile Applications and Services Laboratory. Our goal is to provide an environment in which students and faculty in the School of CIS can explore, innovate and conduct original research in the new and exciting area of mobile technology. We view this lab as a sort of sandbox in which experimental application research can be conducted by students and faculty but also a facility which can be leveraged by our computer science curriculum moving forward.

Hello also to the rest of the world out there! In addition to this page serving as my obligatory faculty “homepage” here at GVSU, it will also serve as my blog. Moving forward, on these pages you will find fresh details on what we are doing here in our lab at the university, and we also hope to share our perspective on what’s going on out there as well.

If you are part of the GVSU community, please stop by and say hello! My office is in C2-215 Mackinac Hall.  If you are part of the mobile technology community please check in as well.  You’ll find links on the right to the various communities I engage in.  Looking forward to hearing from you all!