Universities Across the Globe Utilize Open Source Mobile Development Platform to Rapidly Bring Campus Resources to iPads, iPhones and Android Smartphones
Modo Labs™, a leading provider of open source content delivery solutions for mobile platforms and devices, today announced rapid adoption of its Kurogo™ Mobile Framework. Respected universities around the world, including the University of Vermont, Rochester Institute of Technology and the UK-based University of Sunderland, are using Kurogo to easily create rich mobile websites. Available as a free download, Kurogo is an open source project based on the highly regarded MIT Mobile Framework.
"Mobile apps for universities are evolving rapidly and there's a great opportunity for everyone at the university to contribute, from students to IT professionals. That makes open source mobile frameworks especially important for rapid development mobile learning," said Professor Hal Abelson, Ph.D., MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. A founding director of Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation, Professor Abelson added, "Kurogo's open source platform comes straight out of the MIT experience and the MIT innovative tradition."
"Since Kurogo is standards-based and easy to configure, we were able to create a full-featured mobile website without any assistance or consulting services. One of our student programmers easily modified a module to our needs and even contributed the code back to the community," said Tatjana Salcedo, web strategist at the University of Vermont. "Kurogo provided major building blocks for tying into iCal, RSS and KML data from Google Maps, cutting our development time. I am very confident the site will benefit our students, prospects, faculty and staff, who will see efficiencies by accessing various info on their mobile devices."
At the EDUCAUSE 2011 Annual Conference, Modo Labs will provide Test Drive demos, showing how users can set up their own mobile website on the spot. They'll also demo native apps created with Kurogo for Harvard and MIT. The show takes place in Philadelphia from October 18-21, 2011, and Modo Labs will exhibit in booth # 1761.
"Kurogo enabled RIT to meet our goals and quickly deploy a robust mobile website. Now, everyone from students and faculty to alumni and visitors can access dining menus, RSS feeds and more from a wide array of mobile devices," said Kim Sowers, director of applications development at Rochester Institute of Technology. "Kurogo's standardized framework makes it easy for our non-developers to add content and pull data from a variety of different resources on campus. Next, we're using Kurogo to build native apps for iPhone and Android users, and Kurogo will play a major role in displaying course scheduling information on mobile devices."
The community of Kurogo users contribute code and new developments through iMobileU, a collective of higher education institutions collaborating online to share innovations in mobile development. Kurogo has evolved through open source code collaborations from iMobileU members across the globe. Universities are welcome to join the iMobileU community by visiting www.imobileu.org.
"With Kurogo's highly intuitive interface and excellent documentation, we were able to deploy our mobile website ourselves in just a matter of days," said Dean Hale, web development manager at the University of Sunderland. "Kurogo enables us to easily pull information from a variety of sources, including our LDAP directory and content management system, and deliver it on any smartphone. Through Kurogo, Sunderland's mobile website helps students and faculty get the very best from their campus experience."
"Universities are the lifeblood of Kurogo. From its inception at MIT to the 150 schools using it today, Kurogo has proven itself as the fastest, easiest and most sophisticated mobile development platform for higher education," said Andrew Yu, CEO of Modo Labs. "Modo Labs is committed to supporting the universities and open source community using Kurogo worldwide to build advanced mobile websites and native apps."
The Kurogo Mobile Framework is offered under the MIT license and is available for download, free of charge, at http://kurogo.org. Institutions wishing training or support can contact info@modolabs.com and join the Kurogo Google group at http://groups.google.com/group/kurogo-dev.
About Modo Labs
Modo Labs, Inc. is a leading provider of content delivery solutions for mobile platforms and devices. Founded as a group of colleagues from MIT, Modo Labs has grown into a team of experts in mobile design, development and user experience. The company's core offering, the Kurogo Framework, is an open source development foundation designed for clean integration, exceptional platform-specific user experience and a high degree of customizability. Additional information about Modo Labs is available at http://www.modolabs.com.
© 2011 Kurogo, Modo Labs and the Modo Labs logo are trademarks of Modo Labs, Inc. and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other brand names are trademarks of their respective partners.
Contacts:
Schwartz MSL
Joe Palladino, 781-684-0770
modolabs@schwartzmsl.com
