UVic Events Mobile! is a free Android app that lets you do just as its name suggests — keep track of pretty much everything happening at UVic via your Android phone.
The app is simple and straightforward. The title screen, which displays the current date, starts with a What’s Happening Today link, followed by six categories below: Movies, Music, Seminars, Sports, Tweets and Other.
Upon pressing any of the categories, the app retrieves all the data from the event calendar on UVic’s website or, in the case of the sports or Tweets feeds, the Vikes’ mobile or UVic Twitter sites. The events are placed in chronological order (starting with the current date) with simple, easy-to-read text. The listings also contain links that take you to the original source for more information.
I like the plain presentation of the UVic Events Mobile! app. When I first downloaded it, the app had some serious usability issues, but these have all been addressed with the latest update. If you have the earlier version on your phone, I recommend you update it, as it is now a much more useable app than it was before.
Even though UVic Events Mobile! has seen some considerable improvements, there are a few more tweaks I’d recommend to make it just that much better. There’s a banner that reads “Mobile!” on the main screen that partially obscures the current day’s event, so my suggestion is to simply remove it or place it instead as a background graphic. My other suggestion is to incorporate a calendar feature, perhaps something that says “this week’s events” or “this month’s events,” so users can choose which week or month to view for any of the categories.
UVic Events Mobile! is a solid concept. I have to give the latest version a definite thumbs up and appreciate the changes that have been made since the earlier version. The ease of access to information about what’s happening at UVic makes it something I, or anyone who spends a lot of time on campus, could easily use all the time, and to me there’s no better app than one that makes a permanent, positive difference in my daily life.
