35% off Dell's Most Popular Laptops
iPhones Staged to Take Over US Congress
The Hill reports that iPhones are beginning to be at the top of the "must-have" list for members of the US Congressional House of Representatives.
The Chief Adminstrative Office (CAO), which overseas the communictions systems of the House is reported to have started testing iPhones within Congress to see if they will meet the needs of lawmakers and their staff. Accordingly the site reports that,
"'The reason we're trying them out is because we heard a lot of people wanted the option to have them,' said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the CAO."
Currently, the congressional communications device of choice is RIM Blackberry handhelds of which nearly 8,200 are in service after being introduced in 2001. They are used to deliver email to representatives using RIMs proprietary server interface to Microsoft Exchange which is not compatible with the iPhone.
not=now
http://www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/
Plus I have done it although the office exchange server is not that reliable for all users we still use it... and that is not the Iphone that is FAULTLESS.
The iPhone 2.1 Software does work with exchange
I had a 20-minute conversation with Jeff Ventura yesterday and The Hill's headline overstates the breadth to which Congress is testing (or interested) in supporting the iPhone. Mr. Ventura was misquoted and the poor guy is fielding a lot more requests than he anticipated. To this point, it's possible he's underestimated demand. His shop is testing the iPhone with a small group but does not anticipate it being as widespread as the Blackberry.
Our interest is that we provide Congress In Your Pocket, a directory of members, staff, legislation, and political information in the App Store now. We were interested in letting some of their folks use it and see if they might help us keep the data updated. We're waiting on a response from them but Mr. Ventrua was very helpful in connecting us to the right office.
Again, Mr. Ventura was not saying that there is a tremendous demand for the iPhone on Capitol Hill as most folks who work there use Blackberries. But he is trying to be helpful in supporting the people who want to use the iPhone instead, whom might be more than he even anticipated.
FYI, there are issues with the iPhone that are specific to DC. For example, the underground Metro stations only support Verizon. There is also the issue that offices would likely have to support both, which could annoy some system admins. But, on balance, there are many people who work on and around the Hill who have purchased our software so we believe there is a market for it.
Michael D. Cohen, Ph.D.
Congress In Your Pocket
mcohen [at] congressinyourpocket [dot] com
- by jarofclay73 October 24, 2008 3:30 PM PDT
- I think the key word here is "proprietary."
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(5 Comments)