For those of you who know me, then you know that I love to talk about what North Carolina is doing in the technology / social media/ mobile industry. Also you know that I’m a UNC fan but that’s another blog post. Today, while looking at my local @WayneSuttonNC twitter stream where I only follow people form NC, I saw a tweet from @Jason_austin who’s a NC State Developer about NC State new Mobile site featured in the campus bulletin. The tweet caught my attention so I clicked on the link to find more information.
The article talks about how Jason Austin, with little/zero budget along with other NC State staff members created NC State’s new mobile website along with the NC State on Twitter site and maps page. Here’s an excerpt form the article.
At a meeting last spring, staff members from the Office of Information Technology and Web Communications met with volunteer Web developers from units across campus, such as engineering and the libraries.
They all agreed that the future of the Web was tied to mobile applications and that NC State needed a mobile site. No budget, no time, no formal structure? No problem, they decided.
The price tag for Duke’s recently launched mobile site, created by an outside vendor, was clearly out of reach, says Jason Austin, senior solutions implementation engineer with OIT.
I must say that I’m very impressed with NCSU mobile site and the fact they decided to build the site internally instead of spending the money to have it built like Duke University did is smart. Those Blue Devils…., remember I’m a UNC Fan. 🙂
The NC State Twitter page is designed very simimlar to search.twitter.com and provides links to the schools official twitter accounts and hashtags. They also provide the source code so even if you’re a business or another college you can create your own branded Twitter page too.
Update:John Rees shares the link to the UNC mobile site.
A big congrats to the university on embracing technology and understanding that the future of the web is mobile and embracing the use of Twitter. It will be interesting to see if other university will provide the same service. If you know of other university that have created their own mobile or Twitter page let me know in the comments.
