Thursday, March 6, 2008

Epocrates and AIM on the iPhone

Apple is currently in the middle of a big iPhone announcement. So far, they've already announced exchange support and push e-mail, calendar, and contacts. This may not be a huge deal to you (although push e-mail is nice), but it is a HUGE deal for businesses and was probably the major hurdle keeping business users from adopting the iPhone.

But, the bigger announcement is the availability of the software developers kit, allowing outside developers to create applications to work natively on the iPhone! So far, just in their demo, they're already shown an iPhone version of AIM, the new game Spore, and Epocrates!! The fact that epocrates is now on the iPhone is probably going to be a very big deal for healthcare people. People have been asking about it for a long time on the Epocrates website, but now it's finally here! So, if you haven't already, now's a good time to buy a new phone!

OK, time to start studying. Lots to do before the immuno quiz tomorrow and the block on Monday!!

Update: Unfortunately, they're only releasing a beta version of the SDK right now, so that "thousands" of companies can start developing today and give feedback. However, consumers won't see this until June, when it is released as software version 2.0. Still a pretty huge announcement, and implemented better than most people probably would have expected. All software will be released through iTunes or a direct application on the iPhone (like the iTunes mobile music store). Developers have a choice of making you pay for the programs or releasing them for free.

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