It was the best of times, it was the worst of …. Apologies to all the Dickens fans out there, but the beginning to the classic tale has a number of parallels to some people experience with configuring the iPhone to connect to UW services. It is the best of times in that it is easy to connect to the UW wifi, email (Exchange, Deskmail/IMAP, Gmail, etc) and the m.UW or OneBusAway apps. It is the worst (ok, not best) of times in that you need to configure all of this manually. Each one isn’t difficult, but you need to find the documentation and navigate through a lot of choices.

Enter the Configuration Profile

We recognize this challenge and for those of you with a sense of adventure I submit an unsupported mobile provisioning profile that will configure you for the UW Wifi and setup the common UW Exchange configuration on your iPhone or iPod touch. It also configures the UW People Directory service.

To install this on your phone, simply visit www.freshlymobile.com on your iPhone/touch (you get to see our newish iPhone optimized design) can tap here. Once installed it should ask you for your email address, Exchange username and password. The username is ‘netid/’ (without quotes) and your UW NetID. For example, if my UW NetID was davidm3, then I would enter: netid/davidm3 for the username. Once it is installed tap done and you are good to go. If you want to change any of the Exchange settings (by default it will sync your calendar, contacts and mail). You will need to visit the setting app on your iPhone, choose Mail, Contacts, Calendars adn then the UW Exchange account. I recommend you back up your iPhone BEFORE installing, so you don’t lose any data.

Let me know if this works for you and whether there are any problems. If people find this helpful, we will work to bring an official, supported version into the mix. We can also look at creating additional profiles for others uses.

The University of Washington’s iPhone app, m.UW has been available from the Apple store for about 10 days now.

In those 10 days, we have seen it installed (or at least downloaded) on about 3,500 iPhones or iPod touches.

This includes downloads from 25 countries, including:

• USA
• Canada
• Australia
• China
• Colombia
• Germany
• France
• Great Britain
• Hong Kong*
• Indonesia
• Israel
• Italy
• Japan
• South Korea
• New ZealandTurkey
• Pakistan
• Portugal
• Russian Federation
• Saudi Araba
• Singapore
• Turkey
• Taiwan
• South Africa
• United Arab Emirates

Economic Sympathies

After seemingly never-ending growth new devices on the UW WiFi network came to a screeching halt last month. As the chart to the left illustrates a receipt staggering month over month increases in the unique WiFi devices on the network.

March marks the first month in recent memory with a number of devices actually decreased (although just slightly).

iPhones, Android and Blackberry are up

While usage most devices was flat in March, the iPhone, T-Mobile’s G1 and Blackberries were all up slightly. Briefly looking at the data it isn’t clear what it’s leading to the decline, though I suspect that the weak economy and general slowing consumer spending play a big role.

You can see all the details on my UW Stats page.

Strictly by the Numbers

No matter how you look it, the data from our web and network logs is compelling and even a bit alarming.

Consider the following about our Wi-Fi network last month:

• Total devices grew by more than 7%.
• Smart Mobile devices (think iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc) increased by 16%.
• 1 in 8 devices is a Smart Mobile device.
• We’ve seen nearly 90,000 unique devices on Wi-Fi since October, 2007.
• iPhone/iPod Touch use grew by over 22%.
• 1 in 12 devices is an iPhone or iPod Touch.
• Macs now account for 23% of Wi-Fi devices.

In any month these numbers would be extraordinary, but this was a summer month. A month when many students, faculty and staff are away. School starts again in a week, I wonder what the next couple of months will bring.

Let me know what you think.

In the mean time, I’ve updated the UW Mobile Usage Stats for your viewing pleasure.

OK, I’m sold. How do I configure the thing?

Before proceeding much further you need two things: an iPhone/iPod Touch with 2.0 software and an UW Exchange account. If you haven’t yet upgraded to 2.0 we’ll wait while you do so now…..Don’t forget to upgrade to iTunes 7.7 as part of the process. There is a freshlymobile.com article to help you find latest iTunes and the 2.0 software if you don’t already have it.

Let’s get started

The first step is to tap the Settings icon from the iPhone home screen.

Tap the Mail, Contacts, Calendars button

Choose Microsoft Exchange at the top of the screen.

Now we enter the meat of the configuration. The smudged text in this screen shot generally illustrates where personal information is entered, while the clear text is likely the same for everyone.

Email: enter your @u.washington (or other) email address.

Username: enter netid\ (yes, that’s a backslash) followed by your UW NetID.

Password: enter your, ehh, password.

Description: enter UW Exchange or any other name you’d like to give this service on your iPhone.

Tap Done or Next.

Mostly likely you will see a message asking you to accept the certificate. Tap Accept.

Almost done. You will now need to tell the iPhone the name of our Exchange server. Enter exchange.washington.edu in the Server field.

Finally choose which services you want to automatically sync with Exchange. You can always changes these choices later by visiting the Mail, Contacts, Calendar preferences in the Settings area.

I hope this helps get you going. Please let me know if you have any corrections or suggestions.

I’ve posted the updated mobile usage statics from the University of Washington Wi-Fi network. We gather these stats by looking at the information that the web browser presents when accessing the UW Wi-Fi network.

This month we’ve seen increases in all mobile platforms. As you can see from the chart the right, the iPhone and iPod Touch make up around 69% of mobile (non-laptop) devices using our Wi-Fi network.

Overall mobile platforms make up nearly 9% of all Wi-Fi devices on the network with the iPhone accounting for nearly 6% of the total.

Overall Mobile Usage on the Rise

Wi-Fi usage (including laptops) was up overall for the month. We’ve seen total of nearly 5,000 new devices on the Wi-Fi network since the end of May. This represents a 6.5% increase over last month and accounts for over 75,000 unique Wi-Fi devices on the network since we began tracking usage in October 07.

Windows devices still have make up a majority and account for 64% of all Wi-Fi devices on the network. Mac OS follows strongly with a 24% share with the Apple mobile platforms next at 6%. Combining desktop and mobile platforms (and interesting but potentially pointless exercise) finds Windows/Windows Mobile (all versions including) making up 2/3s of all Wi-Fi devices and Apple (OS X, iPhone and iPod Touch) with a 30% share.

Feel free to check out more graphs at the UW mobile stats page.