Monday, November 14, 2011

<<<<< CHAMPIONS 2012 >>>>>

Hey all >>> Its time to get your eyes open and start thinking for the greatest idea and build that mind blowing app, to ENTER the CHAMPIONS 2012.... for more details log on to www.appzone.lk>>> get ready to experience the creation of another page in history along with Etisalat and hSenid mobile !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Etisalat’s AppZone receives International Award





The AppZone, the mobile application development platform, introduced by Etisalat, has won an m-billion award at the ceremony held on  July 23 ,in New Delhi. The m-billion, awards who look to honour the achievements of those who drive to take mobile technology forward in the South Asian region, have selected the AppZone as the best mobile infrastructure solution to be presented this year.
 The m-billion Awards are dedicated to exploring and bringing recognition to the latest technological innovations and latent potential within the mobile and telecommunication sector. Etisalat who have long been supporters of the efforts of the South Asian Mobile Conference, both through their sponsorship and through their cutting edge solutions which drive the sector forward has been awarded the honour in the category of mobile infrastructure. A category that looks to recognize mobile and telecommunication technology, and platforms that allow for easy, cost effective solutions, content and applications to be delivered to the masses, as well as technology and platforms that assist application developers and content providers in reaching said masses.
 Etisalat CEO,  Dumindra Ratnayaka, said Etisalat is honoured to win this award, “We started this initiative with the customers in mind; we wanted them to get more out of their phone, more than just voice communication services but complete lifestyle solutions, and we are so honoured that organizations such as m-billion are recognizing our efforts through  such awards “
 Ratnayaka also elaborated on the increasing divergence of services and platforms in mobile telecommunications, “ We also wanted to see the platform itself grow; as our role as Mobile Telecommunications Provider continues to expand, we have to consider the establishment and development of more value adding platforms such as the AppZone and develop the skills of those who will become the content providers on these platforms. This is why we are pleased with the way AppZone has also helped to develop the skills of young technocrats in Sri Lanka by becoming a vehicle through which they have been able to get their first taste of the business, as developers and entrepreneurs. We also have to thank hSenid through whose  platform, which has been invaluable, we have been able to realize our intention.”  Dinesh Saparamadu, the CEO of hSenid Software International, who provided the platform through which Etisalat developed the award winning mobile application ecosystem, commented on the award, “We are delighted to acknowledge the industry’s recognition of the Telco App Store as an emerging platform for Mobile Operators to harness a developer community with vibrant software developers to bring out their cutting edge applications based on mobile network capabilities - so that these apps and  the AppStore experience can be provided to the entire subscriber base of an operator irrespective of the phone models in use”
 AppZone was the first independent, third  party application development platform to be introduced in Sri Lanka by a Telco. Developed and introduced by Etisalat in conjunction with hSenid Mobile; the platform allows innovative tech savvy individuals to use the platform to develop mobile phone applications by providing all the necessary tools. It also acts as an avenue through which these tech talented entrepreneurs can upload their applications for sale to the public, and Etisalat even offers them 70% of the revenue earned through their Apps. This in turn has made AppZone double as a one-stop-shop in Sri Lanka for consumers to log onto and satisfy their mobile application needs.
So successful has it been, that three app developers who used the AppZone platform,  Tharindu Dassanayaka, developer of ‘Word Puzzle’,  Haneez Haroon, developer of ‘Tech News’ and Roshan Gunathilake, developer of ‘mscup’ were finalists nominated for m-billiont awards themselves. If you want to see the AppZone for yourself, you can log onto www.appzone.lk.
 As one of the most powerful players in Sri Lanka’s telecommunications industry, Etisalat continues to discover new horizons and explore new possibilities in the domain. Etisalat further offers Sri Lanka’s most cutting edge Internet solutions with the launch of it’s 3.75G technology. Offering a variety of Value Added Services, Sales Offerings, Affinity Packages and other service, they stand atop of the ladder in innovation, quality and customer service. Having passed an impressive 3.5 million subscribers in a record time since its launch, Etisalat remains dedicated to increasing its subscriber base and taking the company into greater heights.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Congratulations to all the winners of the Inter and the Intra University Competition!!!


hSenid Software International Chairman and CEO Dinesh Saparamadu and Etisalat Lanka (Pvt) Ltd Director and CEO Dumindra Ratnayaka with the winners.














It was yet another significant day in the calendar of Etisalat as the AppZone Award Ceremony recognized and rewarded the best developers of the AppZone islandwide Intra-University and Inter-University competitions.

The Winners of the University Competition Final Round are

Champion-  Arunoda Susiripala- University of Kelaniya, for the application "Yalu"

1st Runner up- Haneez Haroon- Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT), for the application "Tech News"

2nd Runner up- Harsha Siriwardena- Sri Lanka Informatics Institute of Technology (SLIIT), for the application "Tack Tick Took"

Congratulations to all the winners of the Inter and the Intra University Competition!!!!

  

Monday, March 28, 2011

Great Opportunity for AppZone Developers to Take Part at the mBillionth Award South Asia 2011


Etisalat is ready to select apps from the live apps on "AppZone App Store" and give a recommendation to the developers. 

Etisalat will also seek ways of how appzone applications can be given recognition.

They accept apps under the following categories,
  • M-Business and m-commerce/ Banking
  • M-culture and heritage
  • M-entertainment
  • M-News and Journalism
  • M-Inclusion
  • M-Governance
  • M-Health
  • M-Infrastructure
  • M-Travel and Tourism
  • M-Environment
  • M-Education and Learning


Those who have an app on AppZone Apply Now!! http://mbillionth.in/

Those who still don't have an app on AppZone get on board and put some apps on live!! Etisalat will help you to go forward!!

Etisalat and hSenid Mobile applauds Sri Lanka's upcoming technocrats and entrepreneurs.

24th of March 2011 is a red letter day in the Etisalat calendar as the  AppZone Award Ceremony recognized and rewarded the best players of the AppZone island-wide Intra-University and Inter-University competitions. Following the launch of Sri Lanka's pioneering Mobile Applications Eco-System by Etisalat and hSenid mobile, the AppZone mobile applications competition kicked off in September 2010, giving University students the opportunity to submit applications and compete in one of the most rewarding competitions to ever hit the Sri Lankan mobile sphere.

Since Etisalat partnered with hSenid Mobile in launching the country’s first Mobile Application platform, users were able to browse and use applications, in addition to significantly creating the opportunity for professional and non-professional Sri-Lankan mobile application developers to create, test and sell their own unique applications. As a following phase to this unique setting of the stage for all budding Sri-Lankan Mobile software developers to experience rapid development and commercialization of their Mobile applications,  teams from Etisalat and hSenid held seminars and workshops in all leading graduate institutes in Sri Lanka, including the University of Colombo School of Computing, University Moratuwa, University of Kelaniya, University of Peradeniya, SLIIT and APIIT. The sessions focused on explaining the procedures, prospect and potential in terms of opportunity and revenue saw impressive response with a better than expected turn out. It was indeed a unique business proposal which opened up a new breed of entrepreneurs amongst local application developers enhancing their presence in the region while enabling them to earn substantial revenues off their applications.

Supplementing these 'Developer Community' initiatives, a project, targeting IT students as well as the IT savvy general public, to bring out the very best of their creativity. The University level contests held Internal Competitions in the respective universities where the top three performers won cash prizes, t-shirts and certificates. The internal winners were then eligible for the all island inter-university competition for a sensational grand prize of an Apple i-pad. In addition to trophies and certificates, the top three application designers took home to their respective universities a significant library fund, courtesy Etisalat and hSenid mobile.

Meanwhile, encouraged by the success of the intra-university and inter-university competitions, Etisalat & hSenid mobile has opened this competition to the technology savvy general public as well. Application developers can visit the Etisalat Mobile App Forum (www.appzone.lk) , use the development kits provided to develop application, test it with the simulators provided and submit it for approval and commercialization. So register today, if you have the potential to bring out the entrepreneur and technocrat in you. This initiative is aimed at getting the non-professional applications developer on board and will see five content winners walking away with a victorious trophy, certificate and a Blackberry device.

Etisalat CEO, Dumindra Ratnayaka applauded the winners as upcoming technocrats and entrepreneurs full of talent and prospect, “ The Etisalat App- Revolution was groundbreaking in its entry to Sri Lanka's mobile sphere and we are excited to have discovered such talent and skill within our up coming App developers and are happy at being able to pave the way for taking creations from one’s home to the global platform. This competition was a motivator for developers to be a part this trailblazer applications revolution.  ” 

CEO of hSenid mobile Dinesh Saparamadu said, “  this Eco-system was one which provided incredible revenue prospects for University students as well as anyone who was interested in application development and we are on our way to creating the first Mobile Applications Millionaire!  ” He added, “  We were very impressed by the innovation and invention came about as a result of this platform.  

Meanwhile,  Etisalat's ‘APPZONE,’ the first cloud enabled telco application store launched in Sri Lanka by a network operator continues to allow consumers to browse, download and utilize a wide variety of lifestyle applications, accessible to all Etisalat subscribers and compatible with all handsets. 

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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The AppZone Mobile Application Competition Award Ceremony & The Entrepreneurship Event























Date: 24th March 2011
Time: From 2.00pm onwards
Venue: Waters Edge- Edge Room
Dress Code: Smart Casual 


Be a participant of the AppZone Entrepreneurship Event and walk away with FREE Etisalat Mugs and T-shirts...!! 

Please RSVP to sajani@appzone.lk

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Use Twitter to get more customers to use your Apps - (Part 1)

If you are new to Twitter, here are some of the tips to kick start...

1. Brand From The Start - Create your account with a name that quickly identifies what you are/ your app is or what you do/your app does. The key to using Twitter effectively is to create an online brand of YOU/ YOUR APP as a unique and valuable product that everyone must follow.


2. Link To Yourself - Use the settings main menu to add a link to an outside URL on the “More Info URL” box. This is where people can learn even more about you or your business.


3. Be Sociable - Invite some of your friends, using the email finders under the Find People main menu. It will allow you to invite people from your address books within Yahoo!, AOL, Hotmail, Google, and MSN email providers.


4. Rub Elbows - Check out who is following those friends and see if there are more mutual friends you can follow. Watch out for fakes.


5. Engage People - Stay in contact with people who follow you by sending a “thank you for following” direct message and signaling how you hope to engage them in the future.


6. Chat 'Em Up – Open up and start to converse with people, catching their attention with the @ sign before their screen names in your tweet, which is the proper way to address a user or application on Twitter.


7. Be Short And Tweet – You will be limited to 140 characters “tweets,” the term for answering the status question: “What are you doing?” So, when you add an entry try to keep it short, even shorter than 140 characters will encourage people to “retweet” it.


8. Don't Be The Party Bore – Like any social networking site, you don't get kudos for spamming the airwaves and trying to hog attention. Avoid this behavior and limit your tweets or people will quickly unfollow you.


9. Focus On Value – Add value to conversations through links, retweets, engaging conversation, humor, adding interesting questions and commentary. Be authentic and genuine, and always seek to provide more value than you receive to generate interest in your twitter stream.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

AppZone is calling out for "Our Young Entrepreneurs" to come and gather more knowledge on Entrepreneurship!!


AppZone would like to offer you a complimentary invitation to attend the event “Entrepreneurship” featuring Mr. Siffan Zavahir, who is one of the most experienced Trainers at International Olympiad in Informatics Committee (Sri Lanka).

Date: 24th March 2011
From 2.00pm to 5.00pm
Venue will be informed to you soon.

Reserve your seat today for FREE and stand a chance to be a Special Invitee at this event.

Click Here to Register Now!! or mail your participation to sajani@appzone.lk

Monday, March 7, 2011

Few tips on how to make use of Facebook to promote your apps.

Entrepreneurial blogger Neil Patel has written up an article on marketing yourself with Facebook that brings up some good points, and the best one is this:

"Don't stay in your circle - You need to get away from just interacting with your high school or college friends and start interacting with people within your industry or other industries that you want to get into. An easy way to do this is to join groups that interest you as well as make friends with people that you want to get to know."


Here are few of the tips that you could get help to use Facebook to promote your applications;

Why you should prefer to have a fan page over a public profile or a group?

A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. When your fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via News Feed. As these friends interact with your Page, News Feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends.

    Updating your Page regularly with fresh photos/graphics you have made for your apps, and the latest updates means your Page won't just look like a profile, it will be a more interactive one, and that will keep users coming back. Facebook users are used to getting information sorted by what happened most recently. If you keep your Page active, which you can do through mobile integrations and applications, you'll find that your fans are more engaged and more interactive.

     Make use of Page Insights to analyze the your page visits
     
     Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page owners and Facebook Platform developers with metrics around their content. By understanding and analyzing trends within user growth and demographics, consumption of content, and creation of content, Page owners and Platform developers are better equipped to improve their business with Facebook.
     
     This feature will be available under your fan page profile picture like below;

To learn more about Insights visits: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/insights/
     
    Promoting your  your fan page

  •     Use News Feed to get the most out of my Facebook Page

     The News Feed is the first thing people see when they log in to their accounts. As a result, literally millions of people can hear about something in just a matter of days. 

News Feed spreads information on Facebook through networks of friends. When people on Facebook "Like” like your page, the posts/ updates/ photos (graphics you have done for your app) or comment on those, they generate a story on their profile and in their friends’ News Feeds. News Feed is great way for people to discover and connect with the organizations, Places and apps their friends like. By leveraging the power of News Feed you can get the maximum number of people to like your business, share the discovery with their friends, and drive word of mouth.

  • Make use of Facebook ads

You will have an opportunity to incrementally increase distribution as well with paid advertising. You can create Facebook Ads to specifically drive traffic to your Facebook Page. Make sure that you allocate a small beget to start off and measure your Page Insights daily

  • Make use of the Page Badges

Page badges provide you a way to promote your Page off of our website, and help direct your customers to your presence on Facebook. This Badge can be applied on your blog or web.
Follow the link to get help on how to create page badges http://www.facebook.com/badges/

  • Make use of Social Plugins

The most important Social Plugin is the Like Button, which enables users to share your page with their friends with one click. You can add a Like button to any page with an iframe tag:
Follow the link for more information: 

The real key to success behind Facebook marketing is this: Build up lots of friends, be yourself, and periodically talk about your apps.
Reach to your market by trying out these options that are almost freely available.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Get the latest alerts of ICC cricket world cup on your Etisalat Mobile


Its the Cricket World Cup Season!!!! Get the latest ICC Cricket World Cup alters on your mobile phone by using the "Cricket World Cup application on AppZone". 

Type REG WC and send to 4490 from your Etisalat Mobile and always be in touch with what's happening with the World Cup Match Series!



By Subscribing to this service you are able to get information such as; 
  • Match schedules
  • Score updates
  • Details of the venues (grounds) in which the matches are being held
  • Matches played
  • Details of the final results such as which team won/lost, final scores, net run rate 
  • And many other information by country etc.
This application was developed by Priyanka Weerabahu who has also developed the following applications:  Postal Codes, Sweep Results, Get Any Hotline, Lucky Numbers, Dhamma Verse.


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

WINNERS of the AppZone Mobile Application Intra University Competition have been selected!!

Hey Guys,


A Big Thank You to all who participated in the the AppZone Mobile Application Competition- Intra University Round. So its time to let you all know who the winners are!!

Indeed all of you have been curiously waiting for this moment to come! Therefore we will no longer keep you waiting. We are organizing the Award Ceremony for the Intra University Competition.

Listed below are the names of the applications which have been participated in this competition;


Aya Vaya
Bank Head Office In Colombo
Best Friend Calculator
Birthday and Character
Biz News 
Cinema 
Cineups 
Cricket Live Scores
Daily Hadees 
Daily Horoscope 
Death Date
English Dictionary
English Sinhala Dictionary
Exchange Rates
FreeSMS
Fun Facts 
Greeting
Greetings
Holidays
Horoscope
How Many Babies
Islamic Prayer Time
Joke Box
Love Friend
Luck of the day
Malsara
Manamalakama
Numerology Calculator
Prayer Times
Sastare
Saththara
Slang Book
SMSDER
SMSDictionary
SMSParadise
Stock Exchange
Stock Trades
Tech News 
Todays Luck
Tuck Tick Took 
What Birthday Tells About You
Word Puzzle 
Yalu

Hope to see all the participants at this special event. The winners will be announced at the award ceremony. You will be informed about the date, time and venue prior to the event.

So be in touch!!!

Friday, January 14, 2011

Get Sri Lankan Sweep Results to your Etisalat Mobile Phone

Now you can get any Sri Lankan Sweep (Lottery) results to your Etisalat mobile phone by sending a SMS to 4499 as follows.
SWEEP<space><DrawNo><space><SweepCode_or_SweepName>




You may use any of the following Sweep Codes or Sweep Names.
Sweep CodesSweep Names
DCHANCEDouble Chance
DFORTUNEDevelopment Fortune
DKIRULADeyata Kirula
GOVISETHAGovi Setha
HLOTTERYHospital Lottery (Lotto)
JANAJAYAJanajaya
JAYAVIRUJayaviru
JAYODAJayoda
JSAMPATHAJathika Sampatha
MSAMPATHAMahajana Sampatha
SARANASarana National Lottery
SFORTUNESaturday Fortune
SUWASETHASuwa Setha
SWASANAShrama Wasana
SWSAMPATHASupiri Wasana Sampatha
VSAMPATHAVasana Sampatha
AIRPORTAirport Super


Application Developer: Priyantha Weerabadu

Visit : http://apps.appzone.lk/ for more applications