Campus cuisine hits the iPhone at Bowdoin

What's for eats at the dining hall? Indeed, there's an app for that.
For certain there's almost an iPhone application for anything you need these days and a Bowdoin College student is doing his part to make college life a little bit easier through technology.

According to the Bowdoin Orient, computer science major Ben Johnson is in the final stages of releasing an on-campus cuisine app that will offer menus, hours and the ability to send in food orders for Bowdoin's dining facilities.

Smith was able to produce the app with an alumni grant and access to the dining hall's menu database. The app is currently under review by Apple and could be available in the app store in a few weeks.

This is not the first time Maine college students have toyed around with iPhone apps. Last winter a group of University of Maine students collaborated on the creation of a mobile news iPhone app. UMaine is one of several schools in the iPhone Developer University Program, which lets colleges incorporate app creation into course work. (And cuts out the pesky $99 - 299 fee developers have to pay to make apps.)

Bowdoin and UMaine join the likes of Stanford University and other savvy colleges (as well as individual students) around the country playing around with the iPhone. Consider this - if you had a chance to learn something that has real-world (read: EMPLOYMENT) consequences and arguably got you access to the hot tech of the moment, wouldn't you jump at the opportunity?

Some universities (like my alma mater) are even requiring students to have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Does this make the iPhone the new laptop? Too early to tell. But it's clear the iPhone has potential to be a powerful tool for college, not only as a teaching device but a tool in and outside the classroom.

Or, you know, as a serious distraction.

TALK BACK: What iPhone app would you make for college? What app do you WISH you had during college?

"Bowdoin iPhone application to improve dining experience" [Bowdoin Orient]

"Mashable's Top 10 iPhone Apps for Students" [Mashable]