Mobile developer selected, app technology booms at UH

The new mobile app announced by the Student Government Association to be developed for Fall 2012 now has a designer.

The Pentagram was selected out of seven different bids received, said SGA Vice President Turner Harris. The announcement was made Oct. 10 during the last SGA Senate meeting.

“We were extremely impressed with their work in the past and their bid price was mid-range and within our budget. Currently, the contract is with UH Legal,” Harris said in an email. “It’s hard to say when it will be released, that depends entirely on when the contract is finalized by UH’s legal team. We hope to launch next semester.”

Mobile applications are increasingly popular amongst UH students because Dining Services has an application through its catering service, Aramark.

“The new CampusDish app makes it easy for students to search for meals meeting specific nutrition requirements, further promoting healthy eating habits,” said Marketing Manager for UH Dining Services Amber Arguijo in an email.

The increasing popularity of mobile applications is in part because of hype, but more largely to the ease and mobility of the technology, said computer science professor Ioannis Pavlidis.

“It is, in essence, the new generation of software technology that is taking over the desktop and laptop domain. They are apps that run on smart phones like the iPhone or Android,” Pavlidis said. “Almost every desktop application that you know of today, at this point, has a mobile interface. Software is moving outside the office and inside our pockets.”

The efficiency of mobile technology such as SGA-sponsored and dining service applications is that students will no longer need to go to their laptops to check things like grades or online menus.

“There are some real advantages, because you have something available on the go,” Pavlidis said. “It’s a tremendous technology that is transforming life in ways that we could not have imagined.”

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