The University of Iowa ITS department has recently released two iOS apps that will bring great features to students, faculty, and employees of the university. The first of these is eBongo (iTunes link). This is a native application offering the same features as the mobile web version, but the app is faster, more responsive, and has more features. It is easier to find your stop or route and the user is able to save “Favorites” as most of us take the same buses each day. The feature that will be beneficial to most users is the estimated time of arrival for each bus. This is especially important on those extremely cold and windy winter days here in Iowa.

The second app released by Iowa’s ITS department is simply called University of Iowa (iTunes link). This app is a native version of the web-app that has been in beta for several years now. The native app does not have as many features as the mobile web site, but it does have several features that users will find useful: news, campus maps, a function to find available laundry machines for those that live on campus, one can manage their library account, manage your printing queue, and (using Apple’s web-view API) open mobile ICON.