With a week of semi-final matches ahead, cricket fever is at its peak. From novelty
cupcakes to paraphernalia of pins and key tags, much to do about the cricketers and even Stumpy the mascot, is available at every turn. Taking the cricket high to a different level, Appwolf— a software development firm that specialises in mobile applications, has come up with ‘Cricket Booth’. Cricket Booth is a quirky iPhone application that allows you to indulge as a cricket fan, and superimpose the distinctive hairstyles of popular cricketers over a picture of yourself or friends.
Mirror Magazine spoke to the CEO of Appwolf, Gehan Dias, about developing Cricket Booth.
- Creating a cricket related application during the ICC World Cup tournaments is an apt idea, but why did your firm decide to go with superimposing notable cricketers’ hairstyles?
[GD] Well, we came up with a couple of cricket-related ideas but this one was the most fun
- Who are the cricketers selected for the application and why did you pick them in particular?
[GD] The cricketers in the current app are Lasith Malinga, Hashim Amla, Harbhajan Singh, Andrew Symonds, Kevin Pietersen, Ryan Sidebottom, Shane Warne and Merv Hughes.
We picked cricketers who are known for having interesting hairstyles so that the resulting photos would be fun. We actually had a much longer list of cricketers with suitably wacky hair but we weren’t able to get high-quality images of all of them - the ones of whom we could get good photos are the ones in the app.
- How was the application
developed?
[GD] The app is written for the iPhone and so was built using Apple’s tools and software development kit (Xcode and the iOS SDK). In terms of process, I put together a high-level sketch of what we would like and then one of my developers (Amila) and graphic designers (Nisal) worked together to build the app with Amila writing the code and Nisal generating all the images.
- Can you tell us a bit about the people who were involved in developing Cricket Booth? Are they huge Cricket Fans?
[GD] I think everyone who works here is a strong cricket fan (that has more to do with being Sri Lankan than any hiring policy). There is a lot of cricket chatter at work and we are all keeping an eye on the games via Cricinfo. That aside, I can tell you that Amila, the guy who developed Cricket Booth, is a young but ultra-talented developer - he joined us last year but has been developing iPhone apps at home for years. Nisal, the graphic designer, is slightly older and he’s very talented indeed
- What are the general
applications you develop?
[GD] Well, we are primarily a services firm in that we build apps for clients rather than for ourselves (though we have built various apps for ourselves when we have time and a good idea). There isn’t really a particular type of app that we’ve built, we do all sorts (whatever our clients need) - the last project we did was to build a location-based social network app for a client in the UK.
- Can you tell us a bit about your firm?
[GD] We are a software development that specialises in mobile applications, specifically those for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The firm was started about two years ago by myself and two partners and all three of us had previously worked together at MillenniumIT.
iPhone development is a bit of a niche area in Sri Lanka but it is huge in the US and Europe and we are trying to tap into those markets. In the long term though, its pretty clear that the whole world will move into smartphones (i.e. iPhones, Android devices etc) so to some extent, we are making a first move for the local market too. There are already a few local firms who are talking to us about getting iPhone/ iPad apps built and I’m sure that number will increase going forward.
- What are your hopes in general
for the ICC World Cup? Rooting
for Sri Lanka?
[GD] For sure. It’s been a fantastic World Cup so far. We are all rooting for Sri Lanka but being seasoned cricket fans, we aren’t blindly optimistic; I just did a straw poll around the office and while everyone would love Sri Lanka to win, the majority of the crowd doesn’t think we have the batting strength to make it all the way. Still, we are going to keep our fingers crossed and hope things work out. |
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