BOIMELA

Rating: 4.7/5

Smartphones promise us so much, especially with the growing number of smartphone users in our country. However, all we ever do is make phone calls, text and listen to music. We play the occasional Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja, and even use WhatsApp or Viber, but really, the capabilities of these devices have not been realised effectively in our country.
The Ekushey Boi Mela is being held at Bangla Academy like every year, as we observe the month that witnessed a supreme sacrifice for our mother-language. It's the biggest book fair in the country and people from all over Dhaka and even from outside visit the mela to get new books by their favourite authors, explore new writers or just look around and have a good time.
Have you ever been to the book fair, looking for a particular book and couldn't find it? Or wondering what's new at the fair? Perhaps a list would make things easier. Maybe you want to know which books by a particular publisher or author are available but you want to do that at home and make a shortlist before going to the mela.
The Android app 'Boimela' aims to do all that and more. This app was developed by three students: Iftekhar Ahmed, Rayhan Hossain and Sharifur Rahman from the Institute of Information Technology (IIT), University of Dhaka, under the supervision of Sheikh Muhammad Sarwar, a lecturer at IIT. The trio developed the app under the banner of IIT Apps Club.

The app is supported by all devices above Android 2.2, but works best with Jellybeans. Providing a rich user interface, the app uses Bangla fonts throughout. There is a search option at the top, where you can search in English and the corresponding Bangla results would show up. One can search by book title, author or publisher. Other than that, the application menu has buttons to link to the authors' tab and the publishers' tab, making for some easy browsing.
Moreover, while browsing, you can add a book to your Favourites list. This list can be viewed or modified from the Favourites window. A nifty feature that's added here: if you have your GPS turned on while you are at the book fair, whenever you would be near a stall that has one of the books listed as your 'favourites', your phone would give you a notification.