AHMEDABAD: The second edition of AppFestwas a win-win for developers and enthusiasts as 40 new applications were developed literally overnight.
More than 250 individuals applied their knowledge and talents to come up with new applications – while some succeeded, others went away with the prize of experience. The event organized by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) came to an end on Sunday at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) with announcement of winners in two categories – Challengathon and Hackathon.
Participants created applications for translation, photo sharing, location sharing, gaming, accounting, time management, emergency response and education.
City-based business consultant and mentor to incubation projects, Sunil Parekh, has played a pivotal role in bringing the AppFest to Ahmedabad.
Parekh told TOI that he was happy to see the results of the collective efforts. “Few know that some Gujarat-based companies are behind several popular mobile apps. When AppFest was initiated last year, there was a lot of apprehension. It is heartening to see the improvement in quality of applications, thanks to the latest tools and innovative bend of mind,” he said.
He added that the time was ripe to push Gujarat as an important player in the emerging applications market. The event was marked by the opening of the Gujarat chapter of the organization and setting up a platform for interaction on the first day of the event.
For students, it was an opportunity to rub shoulders with major players of the mobile industry.
Engineering student Japan Panchal said that for his team, the most enriching experience was to present their project to experts and get their feedback. Nilotpal Chakravarti, executive editor of portal ‘Thinking Aloud’ of IAMAI, said that the highlight of the event was Challengathon.
This event involved companies posing real life challenges to participants, who then had to come up with innovative solutions.
“The winners of the event will now contact the company to take the projects forward,” he said.
Winner | Book barter
The application developed by a team from a city-based IT firm focused on mobilizing the books in a person’s collection in the form of an exchange between two or more individuals. Tarun Patel, Amit Pataliya, Nisarg Patel, Gaurang Bhatt and Vijay Prajapati worked on the application. Geo-tagging of the users allows a person to discover the available books in the vicinity and offer his or her own books for barter. The developers added that if successful, they would extend the concept to barters of movie and gaming CDs.
Runners-up | Gujarati Lexicon Gujarati dictionary
A team of IT professionals from the city-based Gujarati Lexicon tried to address the issue of language barrier faced by online users by introducing an offline Gujarati-English dictionary, which can translate words from and into both languages. The application developed by Keyur Brahmbhatt, Hitesh Chavda and Deval Talati allows users to select a word in other applications like books, websites or SMS, and converts it into another language. It learns the new words once the user goes online.
Second runners-up | Events networking
Developed by Phani Teja, an engineering student from Hyderabad, this application takes the data of willing participants in any event and tries to identify patterns that can be helpful to the users. The data is shared on an open platform, from where the delegates can ascertain place of origin, business, skill set and other attributes of a particular user, helping in networking and establishing contacts.
Parth Shastri Archive 