ALLENDALE, Mich. — Grand Valley State University has launched a new
mobile application for Android smartphones. The app — which features
news, maps, multimedia content and a directory — was built by students
and is the second product of the Mobile Applications and Services Lab
in Grand Valley's School of Computing and Information Systems. An
iPhone version of the app was released in February.
The lab is led by professor Jonathan Engelsma, a Grand Valley
alumnus who returned to his alma mater in August 2009 after 16 years
working in research for Motorola.
A group of eight undergraduate and graduate students worked on
the project. The application has five sub-sections. A news tab
features headlines from GVNow, the Lanthorn and Laker Sports. A
directory links into Grand Valley's People Finder, to help users find
faculty, staff and students — allowing users to add the results
directly to their smartphone address books. There's also a Twitter
feed that monitors traffic related to Grand Valley and a media section
that ties into multimedia content — including Grand Valley YouTube
videos. Finally, there's a GPS-enabled map function that will help
people find their way around campus.
The icons in the app were designed by a student in the Department of Art and Design under the supervision of professor Chitra Gopalakrishna.
For more information, visit the Mobile Applications and Services
Lab at http://masl.cis.gvsu.edu.
