Bhubaneswar, August 21 (Odisha.in) “Make your wish …mobile!” – this is a catch-line from MobileWish, reported as the world’s first mobile e-greetings solution and the breaking part of the news is it was developed by an Oriya!
Samir K. Dash, who works as a Systems Consultant at Enterprise System solutions Private limited (ESSPL), a private IT company based at Infocity, Bhubaneswar, is the one who has developed this award winning application.
MobileWish started as a personal pet project by him just a year ago, during August last year.
The purpose was centered round the idea about building world’s first complete mobile greetings messenger with Adobe Flash Lite® technology where the users can send, receive and manage their Flash greetings cards on their mobile handsets.
The first beta version of MobileWish was released to public on 25th December 2006 which was a Christmas day.
Three months later in March, the very first production version was available online with the proposed Desktop version.
The current version 2 was available on 25th of last July, which has some added features and the web version of the client, so that even the users can send receive e-cards right from the web site.
“With in the first year of its birth, Samir explains “we got near about 2000 plus unique users base and that’s a significant number for a (General Packet Radio Service) GPRS based mobile application. Most of the users of MobileWish are from Europe and United States, he told Odisha.in.
The application I am offering for free and any body can download it from the mobilewish website, he said.
E-greetings, apart from being a means to let the users free from hurdles of sending and receiving a physical greetings cards via postal or courier service, is also meant to be an opportunity for the people to be free from being bound to any particular physical location.
“PCs & Internet did allow some degree of freedom as one can check the account from anywhere using PC but one is still tied to the computer and cannot use it effectively while on go” he said.
A user can now send and receive a card on his/her mobile. Apart from this an email link will also be send to the recipient’s email so that so that he can also view it through internet browsers on a PC.
In addition to this, there is a Desktop version which is similar to the mobile client, which can be used to get in touch with the mobile wish cards on the desktop. Apart from this the recipient receives an email link in his/her email using which also he can view the card.
“The genesis behind the birth of MobileWish client, is a common life experience …” Samir says — “few months back before development of the application, one of my friend sent me a e-card on my birthday”
The card I opened a week later, as I was out of town during that time and was in my village home, where there was no internet connection, though near about all major cellular operators were providing their service. This gave me an idea to an existing problem: though we stick to e-cards because it can be reached quickly, and can be accessed from anywhere still the freedom is limited.” He said.
Even if, unlike a paper greetings card, an e-card is not bound directly to any physical location, still it is limited to the place where we have a PC with an internet connection.
This made me to wonder if “it is possible to send and receive e-cards in any other media, where it would not be mandatory to have a PC connected to internet in order to access the greetings?”
Samir says “I realized that mobile handsets can be better alternatives to common PCs for this purpose as there are small and easily carried inside out pockets and day by day these are also getting cheap. So I decided to build a better application which would be world’s complete solution for mobile greetings system.”
He choose the latest technology from Adobe — the Flash Lite technology, as it was one of the most recent mobile technologies that was cross platform and can run over mobiles as well as on desktops consistently.
MobileWish is one of today’s best GPRS enabled mobile applications available today. It is also one of the best examples of Rich Internet application which is gaining popularity with the birth of Web2.0 concept.
“Looking at the growing popularity of new cross platform technology Flash Lite” Samir says “I thought it would be great to use it as it will allow me to create this application that can run on almost any platform.”
WapWish, a sister project based on MobileWish, which was world’s first website Samir developed in Adobe Flash Lite 1.1 technology for WAP enabled micro browsers and pushed MobileWish concept to success by winning the international contest in 2006.
The contest was Flash Lite Application Contest, sponsored by Adobe, Moket, and Mobile and Devices User Groups of Boston, Brazil, Australia.
Later in June 1st this year, Samir was invited by Adobe’s Mobile and Devices User Group India, to present MobileWish on a live e-seminar to the developers and Mobile content and application producers round the globe.
Samir believes “We Indians have proved a lot on the front of science, yet we need to move on to prove ourselves.”
Remembering how his teachers had encouraged him during his postgraduation days from Ravenshaw College (Now Ravenshaw University) of Cuttack, Samir says “In Ravenshaw, we had the great tradition – there your teacher makes your environment very open and encourage you to ask questions.
My teacher Bijay Kumar Das used to say if you don’t have question…you don’t have solution. Now I realized this as true while developing MobileWish. It all started with the common question on possibility and now we know that this is possible”
Odisha.in
More details about MobileWish can be accessed at www.mobilewish.com