Mobile Computing | News
Blackboard Mobile Central Comes to webOS
Blackboard has released a version of its Mobile Central app for webOS, the mobile operating system that powers HP's smart phones and tablets.
Blackboard Mobile Central is a campus portal app for mobile devices currently in use by more than 100 institutions. Mobile Central includes features like campus maps, news, and sports schedules and offers access to course catalogs and event calendars, along with a campus directory that allows users to call or e-mail professors and classmates directly from the app. It's custom-built for each institution then made available to the campus community for free. The native webOS version of Mobile Central adds support for videos and the webOS back gesture, as well as UI elements tailored for webOS-powered devices.
webOS is the mobile operating system developed by Palm and acquired by HP when it bought out Palm last July. It's being used in Palm-branded smart phones and in the forthcoming HP TouchPad, the first line of tablets to run webOS. Mobile Central has previously been released for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry.
Blackboard has also released an enhanced version of Mobile Central for mobile Web that supports WebKit- and Gecko-based browsers on most mobile platforms. According to Blackboard, enhancements in the latest version include support for institutional branding and a new UI designed to be similar to native, platform-specific versions of the software. (The mobile Web version automatically redirects users to a version best suited for their devices.)
The new webOS and mobile Web versions of Mobile Central are available now. Further information can be found here.