Unless you've been living on a boat in the middle of the Pacific with a broken radio, you're most likely aware of Apple's new iPad, which—as of last Saturday (April 3)—is now available to the public. One first-day-adopter, a new customer of ours, told us this morning that "Populi (like everything else) is GORGEOUS on the iPad."

Since we're not in this business to plug Apple products (though it's worth noting that most everyone here uses—and loves—Macs), here's the Populi plug: Populi looks good on the iPad because it's built according to web standards. Web standards are standardized technologies that make browsers and websites work better, look better, and stay more secure (among other things). As the web becomes a bigger part of our day-to-day lives, standards-compliance becomes more necessary—especially for critical software that handles information-intensive things like college management. We saw this early on, and from the get-go, Populi was built to be standards-compliant.

As a result, Populi runs beautifully on standards-compliant browsers* like Chrome and Firefox... and, of course, Apple's own Safari—the built-in browser on the iPad. So our customer's report makes perfect sense. We're actually pretty excited about the iPad's potential in the classroom, and since Populi won't require any jerry-rigging to work on it (it doesn't even require an app), the device could give students and faculty access to everything they need from the program.** We'll see what happens.

*It'll run on Internet Explorer, too... but since IE is not standards-compliant (less secure, more buggy, and slower) we don't recommend it.

**Populi will also work on the iPhone and iPod Touch. They have Safari built-in as well (though the viewing experience is tiny), and there's also the Populi iPhone app (get it here).