Following the Social Code

Finding our way through the scores of gadgets and bean bags we came across Prabhjot Singh Bakshi bent over his wafer-thin laptop with three touch screen phones connected to it. He was working on fine tuning a little bird falling on a see-saw only to see it balance out a pig on the other end. The app is supposed to explain basic concepts of physics in a fun way to children.

“It has friction,Newton’s laws,pressure and all other concepts related to high school physics,” he said excitedly. We discover that anyone can try the app on a touchscreen tablet and watch videos related to it on YouTube. Version one of the app is already available and Bakshi said version two will also be up and running soon. Moving a little further down we bumped into freelance developer Sanket Shah from Ahmedabad,who came down for the event. He believes that developing on the concept of social good applications has a lot of scope for helping both the government and citizens.

Translating thought into action,he created an app for helping the government maintain and collate data regarding people suffering from tuberculosis. “The idea is to curb the spread of the disease. Once a patient’s data has been fed,it can be put on a cloud. The information can be accessed by hospitals DOTS centres and givers as well as the patients themselves. It will also help government track patients effectively for treatment,” he said.

What was impressive was that the technology can be used to help people at grass roots level. Shah added,“Imagine,so much good can come if governments of the various states create their own data labs and share it with the Centre as well as other states.” And we couldn’t agree any less.

Interestingly we also saw apps that have been developed earlier,showcased at the Hackathon. Debashree Choudhury,working with Quadwave Consulting in Bangalore,brought a Snakes and Ladders app. “It is a fun memory of my childhood,which I wanted others to experience on the virtual world. It wasn’t very hard to create this. It took a week and a half to finish it completely,” she said.

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