4 Axis - How it all Began !!

It was February or March on 2012 when myself and Kapilan Karunananthan were discussing about a small mobile application that had to be done for a local company and even though we made some preparations we couldn't get the project from the company for some reason. However we two decided to talk to few people we knew at the university to join with us to go forward in creating a company. I remember one major discussion we had at Wellawatta beach sitting on rocks talking about the idea of creating a company with Minsara Madhawa and Anuruddha de Alwis. Then we four decided to go with the dream of creating a company of our own.

At the end of June 2012 our internship was over and we were planning to build on our dream and create our own company. It was all tragic for me at that period as my loving father passed away just at that time period.

At that period I have been working on AXLO Sri Lanka and it was almost at the finishing line in development. We were able to release the app through Google Play and at the end of June 2012 we were trying to market the application throughout the island. We went for some telcos in SL and presented the application but we couldn't get any deal done. We went on and made leaflets and pasted on buses and gave by hand to people to market our app. We reached some milestones doing that. There were few applications that were popular among Sri Lankans at the Google Play at that time and we could make AXLO one of them.

At July and August we four were busy developing Drawing Desk and some other applications to local companies. We four had to work hard balancing the work load from university to keep the company work going smoothly. However we always focussed on developing a good output even it is our own product or a project done to another party. At the september 2012 we registered our company as 4 Axis Solutions (Pvt) Ltd and we four became Directors and co-founders of the company from then onwards. :) But it was just the begining. I think anyone can talk about creating a company and get together some people and register a company but going forward and creating a sustainable company is the hard part.

We had no initial investment from anyone  or even from our parents to our company. The money earned by doing projects collectively was put back as investment and up until now as i'm writing this article we four have not taken any salary from the company. Our first salary paying month will be January 2014 and it will not only for us but for 10 employees collectively. :) I will write more about how we achieved that goal later or in a another post. Sorry for putting this suddenly. :)

This is just the begining and I will wrap up the first post after ages for now. I will surely write further about the pathway we came as the 4 Axis team.

AXLO - 4Axis Solutions

Perfect place to find business places, public services, deals, events, etc… provides with ample opportunity to explore.

AXLO will get the current user location and search nearby places/businesses according to user chosen category. There is a “Direct me” functionality which AXLO will suggest a suitable path for the user to get to that destination.
There are 36 categories which we have listed out to publish in the first release of the app. Some of them as follow.

Public services

Attractions
Hospitals
Railway stations
Banks and ATMs
Police stations

Business profile categories

Hotels
Restaurants
Bookshops
Computer shops

The application gives every business a chance to showcase their products and services to the customers through their own mobile portals. All registered businesses will have a web interface to update their information (Products, business description, contact info etc). Via AXLO businesses will have the ability to showcase any promotional deals also.

There are two types of business profiles namely, Platinum and Gold. Platinum members will get a dashboard like mobile portal which they can show case their products, a gallery, deals etc ). Gold members will get a mobile portal which they will be able to show case their basic business information.
We will be listing all most all the public places before the release of the app in Sri Lanka. Then it will be great for Sri Lankans and tourists as a social service to find all public service locations within the country.

Features included
-Near Me services.
-Finding Locations
-Showing deals
-Show directions to deals, Places, events
-Customize icons for each type of destinations / Places with customizable callouts.
-Giving customizable profiles to sellers ( gold , platinum)
-Multiple Platform support – (Android, iOS, Windows Mobile )
-Change the radius of the search.

Android for the future

It has been months since i updated my blog..However i have started to think that i should keep on writing articles even from here on..

Its about Android which i lately studied and love studying it in the future.In Sri Lanka most of the people did not know what a smart phone is, even if they knew they didn't know how powerful that device is..As android is an open source platform many hardware device manufacturers focus on using Android to equip their devices..Now i'm using a very low cost, around $100 Android phone for my use and also to test some applications i develop..Even though its less powerful i hope many people in Sri Lanka will tend to buy Android and get used to using smart phone applications in the future.

I have some experience in developing J2ME applications using LWUIT..As i think LWUIT also has some great potential to have some effect in mobile world..You can read posts with this link here.

However i will upload some of the updates about my experiences in developing android applications and also LWUIT in the future.Still i'm an amateur in mobile applications development, so if you find anything stupid, please put a comment..:D

BTW this Text to Speech application which i have developed can be download here.

Thanks.

Stepping into Mobile Application development

With all the rapid development in science and technology if we point out a major sector that has been develop in leaps and bounds over the past few years is "Mobile technology". It has given the technology a new turn and a world of opportunities as well. If we state that mobile communication is the most popular communication method prevailing in nowadays society , it will be 100% true. So now the developers of mobile applications have great opportunities.

I'm involved in developing a Task management system as my level 2 project. There, my major concern is to synchronize the Desktop application with a Mobile application. Up to now I have developed a basic system using J2ME with the feature of authenticating the user's credentials with a web service. A simple task and due date can be set.

Me and my colleagues are still searching for a better technique to build the mobile application. We have found that developing a mobile page in php is another alternative. Developing an Android application is another one.