Bo­bie-lee Dixon

For many busy peo­ple, mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tions or apps have made life a lot eas­i­er. Apps have made it pos­si­ble to use de­vices like smart­phones and tablets to do things on the move, like In­ter­net bank­ing, up­dat­ing so­cial me­dia ac­counts, get­ting news and weath­er in re­al time and ac­cess­ing mu­sic.

From com­pil­ing gro­cery lists, to track­ing health and fit­ness, apps have been de­vel­oped for Ap­ple's iOS and the An­droid op­er­at­ing sys­tems. There is even a re­la­tion­ship app–the Ro­man­ti­mat­ic app, which re­minds you to say nice things to your sig­nif­i­cant oth­er.

Ap­ple's re­lease of the iPhone in 2007 was the cat­a­lyst for the de­vel­op­ment of ap­pli­ca­tions. Ac­cord­ing to Amer­i­can tech­nol­o­gy an­a­lysts Gart­ner, 102 bil­lion apps were down­loaded glob­al­ly in 2013 from the Ap­ple and Google Play stores.

Lead­ing ICT con­sul­tant Bevil Wood­ing has de­signed, de­vel­oped, and im­ple­ment­ed in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) so­lu­tions for gov­ern­ments, pri­vate sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions and NGOs around the world.

Rather than look at the num­ber of apps that are be­ing cre­at­ed, Wood­ing is more con­cerned about the ubiq­ui­ty of mo­bile de­vices and whether they're be­ing lever­aged to im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and add val­ue to so­ci­eties and em­pow­er com­mu­ni­ties. His big ques­tion is "how is the Caribbean po­si­tion­ing it­self to take ad­van­tage of this new mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion?"

In an e-mail in­ter­view, Wood­ing told the T&T Guardian the mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion pre­sent­ed a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty for the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean apps.

"Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs, gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es and or­gan­i­sa­tions can lead the way by op­ti­mis­ing their in­for­ma­tion and ser­vice de­liv­ery ca­pac­i­ty to take ad­van­tage of the pow­er in the hands of cit­i­zens and con­sumers.

"The mo­bile app mar­ket is boom­ing, with busi­ness­es of all shapes and sizes ea­ger to get their brand out in the form of an app. Nev­er be­fore has it been so easy for de­vel­op­ers and con­tent providers to reach such a large au­di­ence. By the same to­ken, tech­nol­o­gy al­so now makes it eas­i­er for gov­ern­ments and busi­ness­es to reach their tar­get au­di­ences in in­ter­est­ing new ways," said Wood­ing.

Wood­ing al­so works with the Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a lo­cal non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that con­ducts tech­nol­o­gy train­ing tar­get­ed at youth, ed­u­ca­tors and se­niors. There, Wood­ing has helped de­vel­op apps for the An­droid, iOS and Black­ber­ry plat­forms.

One of the first apps re­leased by Bright­Path was Tri­ni Lin­go, a dic­tio­nary of say­ings, proverbs and slang from T&T.

The app was so suc­cess­ful, the or­gan­i­sa­tion got re­quests to cre­ate sim­i­lar apps for Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

At Con­gress WBN, where Wood­ing is the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer, apps have been cre­at­ed for in­ter­nal use.

As an or­gan­i­sa­tion that op­er­ates in more than 90 coun­tries, the apps make com­mu­ni­ca­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of in­for­ma­tion much eas­i­er.

"We have built mo­bile apps to make it more con­ve­nient for our glob­al mem­ber­ship to find out where we op­er­ate and how to ac­cess ser­vices. Apps for Con­gress WBN in­clude a BSM School Find­er App and a Chap­ter Lo­ca­tor app," Wood­ing said.

Con­gress WBN has al­so de­vel­oped train­ing ma­te­r­i­al to each stu­dents how to build mo­bile apps. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, it has worked with the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) to in­clude the same ma­te­r­i­al in the Cape Dig­i­tal Me­dia syl­labus.

Ac­cord­ing to Wood­ing, Bright­Path has al­so con­duct­ed nu­mer­ous mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment work­shops, tar­get­ing youth and young en­tre­pre­neurs. He said it is all part of a con­cert­ed ef­fort to build re­gion­al ca­pac­i­ty in mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment.

"A ma­jor ben­e­fit of this ap­proach is the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal apps that pro­vide use­ful lo­cal ser­vices, while at the same time, cre­at­ing new busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties."

LOVE, MAR­RIAGE

Trinidad Wed­dings.com is the pre­mier wed­ding plan­ning Web site in T&T and the num­ber one re­source for find­ing wed­ding ven­dors in the coun­try. Ap­ple and An­droid users can down­load the Trinidad Wed­dings app for free.

Founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad­wed­dings.com, Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran, said the app was de­vel­oped to make T&T wed­ding in­for­ma­tion glob­al­ly ac­ces­si­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly for for­eign­ers who want to make T&T their wed­ding des­ti­na­tion.

The app pro­vides fea­tures like ven­dor list­ings, an in­spi­ra­tion sec­tion where brides can view im­ages, in­ter­ac­tion with its Face­book page, up-to date ar­ti­cles and an Ask the Ed­i­tor tab.

NEWS

Ap­ple and An­droid users can now al­so get the lat­est news from the Dig­i­tal Guardian app, which they can down­load for free. The app is a repli­ca of the ac­tu­al news­pa­per with added fea­tures like hy­per­links or hot links, videos and pho­to slide shows. Users can al­so search the Guardian's on­line archives from 2009 to the present day.

SO­CIAL RE­SPON­SI­BILTY

Nicole Phillip-Greene de­vel­oped T&T's first mo­bile app for moms called Mom's The Word. The app is an ex­ten­sion of the IT spe­cial­ist's blog; when­didibecomeamom.com, and pro­vides a fo­rum for par­ents to share ed­u­ca­tion­al, craft, and cook­ing ideas as well as gen­er­al par­ent­ing thoughts.

"It pulls to­geth­er my writ­ings, as well as shared Pin­ter­est boards, In­sta­gram and Twit­ter feeds. I al­so share lo­cal ac­tiv­i­ties for par­ents in an event cal­en­dar, kids lit­er­a­ture ideas and iOS/an­droid app rec­om­men­da­tions," Phillip-Greene said.

She said all moth­ers should have the app be­cause it lists emer­gency con­tact in­fo for every po­lice, fire and pub­lic med­ical in­sti­tu­tion in T&T, as well as re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion and ODPM num­bers. The in­for­ma­tion is avail­able even if one is of­fline.

Phillip-Greene who de­vel­oped the app from scratch on pa­per, and used some on­line ser­vices to build it up, said the app is not cur­rent­ly mak­ing any mon­ey as she be­lieves it's a so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ef­fort on her part–her way of try­ing to sup­port fam­i­lies and fam­i­ly val­ues in so­ci­ety.

Lo­cal apps

Lo­cal­ly, there are sev­er­al pop­u­lar apps like F1rst Me­dia Ltd's app called F1rst, which was launched in Feb­ru­ary by broth­ers Nico­las and Kyle Mal­oney. They de­vel­oped a Caribbean-spe­cif­ic app that would bridge the gap be­tween busi­ness­es and cus­tomers.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Nicholas Mal­oney ex­plained how the F1rst app works.

"Let's say you are go­ing to a restau­rant for the first time. Some of the things a cus­tomer would want to know are if the restau­rant is good; the kind of food they serve; have any of their friends been there be­fore; the pay­ment meth­ods ac­cept­ed; and open­ing and clos­ing times.

"Some might ask why not just use Google? Google can tell me where the restau­rant is lo­cat­ed but it can­not give me spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion like I just men­tioned and that's where the app comes in," ex­plained Mal­oney.

He said for busi­ness­es the F1rst app can be­come a com­mu­ni­ca­tion por­tal.

"If I'm sell­ing clothes and I get new stock, I can use F1rst to ad­ver­tise my new stock by tak­ing pic­tures and up­load­ing them to my busi­ness pro­file on F1rst and cos­tumers can see that in­for­ma­tion," said Mal­oney.

Busi­ness­es will know their cus­tomers' shop­ping habits and this can help them to put on spe­cial of­fers for reg­u­lar cos­tumers. Mal­oney said 30,000 have al­ready down­loaded the app in T&T. F1rst al­so has users in Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos.

Asked whether the app has been prof­itable, Mal­oney did not give any fig­ures but did in­di­cate the prof­it is made through busi­ness­es who pay a month­ly sub­scrip­tion to have F1rst pro­mote their busi­ness­es and ser­vices.

APP BUILD­ING ON THE CHEAP

The T&T Guardian al­so want­ed to find out how much it costs to build an app and how dif­fi­cult or not it is to cre­ate it. Mal­oney said the cost will vary de­pend­ing on the type of app one is build­ing and the func­tions one wants it to per­form.

Wired868, a satir­i­cal on­line news­pa­per, had its app de­vel­oped by pho­tog­ra­ph­er and T&T Guardian colum­nist us­ing a free on­line app builder ser­vice. The app, which is was de­vel­oped for the An­droid plat­form, en­ables users to ac­cess con­tent from the Wired868 web­site. Lyn­der­say said the app serves a sim­ple pur­pose: To tap an ex­ist­ing da­ta feed and present it us­ing an app in­ter­face.

"It's eas­i­er for peo­ple look­ing for in­for­ma­tion than us­ing more so­phis­ti­cat­ed tools and of­fers Wired868 a brand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty on the de­vice desk­top," Lyn­der­say said.

The on­ly mon­ey Lyn­der­say spent to cre­ate the app, was the US$25 de­vel­op­er fee.

Some free lo­cal apps for An­droid avail­able on the Google Play Store

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�2Tri­ni Cars For Sale

�2Birdie Pirdie (Tri­ni Tap2Fly)

�2Tri­ni Malls

�2Tri­ni.com eMar­ket

�2Tri­ni 2.0

�2Tri­ni Shop­pers

�2My Tri­ni Lime 2.0

�2Tri­ni Restau­rant Bill Calc

�2 Do-It-Tri­ni

�2 Trinidad News & Ra­dio

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go Cin­e­ma

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go Yel­low Pages

�2Tri­ni Tuner

�2Eat Ah Dou­bles Ven­dor Di­rec­to­ry

�2STAG Trinidad Car­ni­val 2014

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go Fer­ry

�2Ra­dio 90.5FM Bol­ly­wood Mu­sic

�2Trinidad To­ba­go Ra­dio

�2Flap­py Yard Fowl (TriniEdi­tion)

�2TnT ha­lal guide

�2Hott Foot! Events

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go

�2D Mark

�2Pow­er 102FM

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go Ra­dio

�23D map Trinidad and To­ba­go

�2The Gold­en Boy

�2Cin­e­maTT

�2TNT Movie Guide

�2Out­In­Tri­ni

�2Trinidad and To­ba­go by Tri­poso

�2Trinidad To­ba­go GPS Map

�2Mar­ios Piz­za

�2Trinidad and To­ba­go Map

�2Trinidad & To­ba­go Of­fline Map

�2Heart­light iRa­dio

�2NAV­Fone Trinidad and To­ba­go

�2New­sTT

�2Fron­tish

�2Psalm Project In­ter­na­tion­al

�2Wine :: Trinidad

�2Bess­Fx

�2TNTFIND­ER

�2Whitemax app

�2Uk Trinidad Roti Shop Lo­ca­tor

�2Trinidad and To­ba­go flag clock

�2House­hold MD & Im­porter

�2TnT Ha­lal Guide app

�2Heart­line In­spi­ra­tional

�2Trini­PEDIA

�2Trinidad Pock­et Di­rec­to­ry

�2Woods Hit Ra­dio The Mix

�2TTEITI Re­ports

�2TTMA

�2Tic Tac Dough: Mario vs Capo

�2Mar­tin's Pi­ano Bar

�2Wa­ter Ser­vices TT (Be­ta)

�2Triniscene

�2D Coal Pot

�2Trinidad Of­fline Map Guide

�2Trinidad and To­ba­go GPS

�2KPSS Matem­atik

�2Ra­di­al - Re­de­fine Ra­dio

�2HTC Droid 4G

�2Chris­t­ian Trin­i­ty Sym­bol LWP

�2Far­ma­cia Masarone Biel­la

�23D D20 Dice LWP

�2Wa­ter­fall Live Wall­pa­per