Interesting Applications

Among all the activities at the mBillionth  the 1st Ever  South Asian Mobile Content conference, hSenid launched its cloud enabled developer platform with Etisalat. It was a very important thing for us, as we had been doing this outside and not at the place where we call it home. I find that alot of people cannot still figure out how and why the apps we are talking about are different. Unlike other mobile application stores which rely entirely on the device capabilities this application developer platform that we launched focuses on utlizing the operator network capabilities like SMS, MMS, LBS, etc. Let me come back to a description of this on a separate blog on a later date( hopefully). 

On the day of the mBillionth I was actually living in parallel worlds, where I had to attend the Developer event and also the Jury of the mBillionth. Thanks to the good hearted people at the mBillionth they gave me an hour time to attend the developer event and play whatever little part I could. So I attended the appzone launch for an hour and then I did the vanishing act from the event to make it in time for the Jury Proceedings.

Then commenced the Jury proceedings which was a battle in its own right. 14 Members of the grand jury from four countries, putting all their heads together and going into the wee hours at Taj Samudra category by category debating, discussing, voting and of course selecting winners.

There were some non - commercial mobile applications that caught my attention and of course at most times, the attention of the other Jurors too.

Suruk http://suruk.com/

Its a J2ME application for a cause. Its an innovation which is capable of converting the mobile into a Simple yet effective instrument to fight auto driver scams. The idea itself of boldly using the mobile to fight a common mans daily war is commendable. The icing on the cake of the solution is that it provides a feature to lodge a police compliant via an SMS.

SMS Based Automated Registration of Admission Test http://www.sust.edu/~admission/

Shahjalal University of Science & Technology Bangladesh has launched its SMS based registration for admission test. It is a solution which takes out the entire hassle of the admission test registration flow and includes the following steps.

1. Registration for the admission test
2. Verification of the SMS request with the exam board
3. Confirmation of eligibility
4. The payment for the admission test deducted from the mobile account
5. Confirmation of the registration process

Who wouldn't want their universities to also take out the entire hassle of the registration process and of  if possible the hassle of the exams too ;) What next? Mobile SMS exams?

Nepal Wireless http://www.nepalwireless.net/

Started as a project to provide wireless access to the remote Nepal and now seems to be converting it into a project for building a broadband information highway across Nepal . A project I guess started about 8 to 10 years back and today has covered and connected many villages, communities and schools, which otherwise would have been totally disconnected from the rest of the world.

I personally has had a fascination for the geographies of Nepal and hearing about the project has just added fuel to my curiosity. Don't be surprised if I decide to get lost in the wilderness of Nepal for a few days any time soon. :D

I wrote this post a few weeks back and it has been in my drafts for a long time. I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag about the winners of the mBillionth. Anyhow I guess its safe to publish it now since the award ceremony was during the course of this week and I hear that it was a resounding success.