Happy Holidays

As an exciting 2012 comes to an end, the entire Mobicip crew takes this opportunity to thank you for helping spread the word about Mobicip over the last four years.

As your family's iPads (or other internet devices) make an appearance over the holidays, make sure to create a safe internet environment for your kids.

Here's wishing you happy holidays and a wonderful 2013 to look forward to. Your continued support is much appreciated!

The Mobicip crew

We are thrilled to announce that Mobicip's Safe Browser for iPod touch and iPad has won the coveted Tech & Learning Award of Excellence for 2012.

Winning product: Safe Browser for iPod Touch and iPad

All winning products will be showcased in the December Awards Issue of Tech & Learning and will be featured online at www.techlearning.com. Thank you Tech & Learning team!

The Mobicip crew has believed this for long, even before the iPad came into existence. Over the last 3 years, we have been seeing anecdotal evidence of the benefits of true mobile learning. Now there are studies beginnning to emerge on the impact of mobile learning on student achievement and engagement. According to this article on Time Techland,

a new study shows that students who use iPads in the classroom score better in literacy tests than those who don’t. As previously reported, educators in Auburn, Maine began instructing 266 kindergarteners using the iPad 2 this fall, and those who used the tablet scored higher on literacy tests and were more enthused about learning.

Read the original article here and the study cited in the article here.

This question has come up a lot lately, especially in schools. Teachers would like to provide QR codes for students to scan in order to visit websites, or perform specific searches, or provide clues for a virtual treasure hunt (yes, this is true). Of course you can use Mobicip with QR codes. Read on to learn how.

1. When you generate the QR code, make sure to prepend "mobicip://" to the URL. For instance, to generate a QR code for google.com, you would use mobicip://http://www.google.com. See the example below.

You can then save the QR code image and print or embed it on your website or blog to share with your students.

2. Make sure to download and install Scan - one of the most popular free QR code reader apps - on the students' iPad or iPod touch.

3. Launch Scan. Point the camera on the QR code provided. Scan will launch Mobicip and open the URL pointed to by the QR code.

4. Scan also stores the history of previously scanned QR codes. The student could open the history and re-launch the QR code at any time.

Thats it. Happy QR coding with Mobicip and Scan!

If you have setup the Time Limits feature in your Mobicip account, please take a minute to login at http://www.mobicip.com, select Settings > Time Limits, and setup your time zone.

This will ensure your time limits settings are based on the time zone you select and more importantly, account for daylight savings if applicable.

If you do not select the time zone at this time, the time limits you had setup will continue to be applied, but potentially with a 1-hour offset due to the daylight savings time change.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please follow the steps above, and review your time limits settings one more time to make sure you are all set.

We are happy to announce that Mobicip' Safe Browser 2.8.1 is now

If you have previously downloaded Mobicip, you can download the update for free by using the same iTunes account as before. 2.8.1 is an important update as the following critical issues were resolved:

"Open in" feature

This feature has been requested mainly by students and schools. Apparently, students want to open PDF files in their favorite application like iBooks or GoodReader, some of which allow the PDF to be edited. In version 2.8.1, opening a PDF (or DOC, DOCX, XLS, PPT, etc.) displays an "Open in" button at the top right of the screen, like this:

Touch the button to select the application you would like to open the file with.

You should now be able to view the file from within the selected application, like iBooks for example.

iOS 5 Compatibility Issues

As some of you had reported, certain websites were not being rendered correctly on iOS 5. This would not have affected a vast majority of users, but for those who noticed the problem, it could have been very annoying. Luckily, we were able to identify and fix the problem quickly as part of the 2.8.1 update.

Error Connecting to the Network Issue

Many thanks to the users from the UK, middle east and asia who reported a vexing "error connecting to the server" problem when they set the device time to a zone that did not correspond to their location. We did resolve the problem a while ago, but it wasn't a big enough problem to merit an update on its own. The fix finally got out during the 2.8.1. update.

Authentication Crash Issue

Some users ran into an unrecoverable crash during authentication after changing WiFi networks, mostly in school environments. Thanks to all the schools that worked with us, provided crash reports for investigation, and tested the beta version before we rolled out the update. The issue is now resolved as well.

Thanks for your patience as we resolved these issues. Please download the latest update and let us know what you think.

Just posted a reply (reproduced below for your reading convenience) to this article by ZDNet's Christopher Dawson.

Chris:

Your article is very informative and highlights a key oversight by Zeeland. However, your assertion that:

"Most CIPA-compliant systems can filter off-campus devices through a simply proxy setup which can be pushed to iPads through the MDM system mentioned above."

is not correct. MDM systems will allow you to setup a proxy only when the device is on WiFi networks that you manage. Off-network proxy setting is possible if you setup a VPN, but turning off VPN is as easy as selecting Settings > VPN > OFF.

Companies like Mobicip and Lightspeed offer an alternate browser on iOS devices. By setting up this alternate browser and turning off Safari, you can ensure that the kids are offered safe browsing on any network. This is a limitation of the iOS platform and SDK, and Apple has its own justifiable reasons to keep it that way.

The alternate safe browser is a "good enough" solution to the problem, but it does mean turning off Safari and losing some of the conveniences (like weblinks on the home screen, links from emails opening in Safari etc.). So schools end up weighing the pros and cons and some decide to go one way or another. Zeeland obviously took the risky option and ended up being burned by it.

I would fault the school administration for not communicating the hazards and possible workarounds (many schools simply recommend that parents install Mobicip, which is available as a retail product through the App Store), but I think the administration would have been smart enough to setup a proxy through the MDM if at all that was possible. If only the options were that simple...

Thanks for bringing attention to this issue, though.

In other words, the butterfly effect. That is what Dennis Ritchie's work in creating the Unix operating system and the C programming language did to the world. Most people don't know this; it set in motion a whole new industry around computing.

Count me among the legions of programmers who learned their ropes by implementing the recursive quicksort after being challenged by the bible for coders of my generation - "K&R", the popular moniker for The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie. Mobicip's co-founder, Pradeep, one of the best hackers I know, says, "I think this guy affected the lives of software engineers like us more than any other individual. His book was an inspiration to me and redefined the way I saw programming." And that is an understatement.

Rupert Goodwin writes on ZDNet, "Unix and C's direct and spiritual descendants cannot be counted, but include Linux, Android, Mac OS, iOS, JavaScript, C++, the genius of the internet and a world full of developers."  You can add your microwave, printer, TV, set-top box, smartphone, car and anything that has any firmware to the list. Enough said.

RIP Dennis.

I was told Steve Jobs was ill. I noticed his frail appearance at WWDC 2011 but dismissed the hoopla around his health. I never doubted for a second that Steve would be back in the pink of his health soon. As always I fell hook, line and sinker for his "one more thing" preamble. An icon of my lifetime has passed away, and every person in the Mobicip team feels the loss deeply in their hearts.

I'm sure Steve has influenced and changed many lives, in ways more significantly than he did mine. But that is what is remarkable about this man, and I'm compelled to share this story nevertheless. June 09, 2008. This was the day Steve announced the App Store for the first time. I followed the engadget liveblog franctically, reloading and refreshing to catch the latest morsels thrown at us by the live-bloggers. I watched Steve's presentation after the session ended. I decided to quit my job that very day and Mobicip was born.

Steve Jobs has many remarkable achievements to his credit. One among those is the amazing transition of power from wireless carriers - the likes of AT&T and Verizon - to independent app developers. In the days before iOS, app developers were at the mercy of large carriers and their bureaucratic ways. If the carrier blessed you, and the app made it to the handsets, you had a shot at success. If they decided not to bless you, that would be it. With the announcement of the iOS SDK and the developer program, Apple opened the floodgates in one fell swoop. No more dealing with carriers. Pay $99 to Apple, download the SDK, develop the app, get it reviewed and published to the world. Every self-respecting app developer's life had changed, most certainly mine.

I had been, at the time, working with K-12 schools learning about the need for anytime anywhere learning using a handheld mobile device. When the iPod touch was launched - not the iPhone mind it, but the iPod touch - I felt it was going to satisfy the demand in education for a convenient learning device. When the SDK was announced, it was a no-brainer.

The message was delivered by Steve Jobs with his trademark flourish. And I knew at that instant that this was it. This man was going to change how our children learn. The iPod touch sowed the seeds. The iPad will transform education.

Steve, your legacy lives on. Among the people who use Apple products, among your fans, among your employees, and most importantly for me, among app developers like me whose lives you touched.

RIP Steve.