He may be too young to vote or get behind the wheel of a car yet. But, at the age of 13, Chennai-born Sivan Sundar has already developed a couple of free mobile apps for Google's Android market that are being downloaded and installed by mobile phone users across the world.
The Class VIII student of Cathedral High School in Bangalore is perhaps the first prodigy from India to join the league of Lim Ding Wen from Singapore, who wrote an iPhone app at the age of nine to be hailed the world's youngest programmer, and Aaron Bond, who at 13 became UK's youngest mobile app developer.
Sivan Sundar first developed a mobile equivalent for the Fusion Tables — a Google web-based tool to manage diverse data matrices — came out with Geocode, an app that maps addresses by longitude and latitude along with map or satellite view and followed it up with improved version of the “Where am I Geocode” app.
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Since launching on the Android market, the “Where am I Geocode” app, which boasts a better user interface and mapping precision than its predecessor, has featured hundreds of downloads and active installs across the world.
“I am delighted to see my application being downloaded and used by people from all over the world,” said Sivan Sundar aka Sivan Chakravarthy Sundaravadivelu.
Sivan says it was his father Kandaswamy Sundaravadivelu who encouraged him to have a shot at Android programming.
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Enrolling as an Android application developer on payment of $25, Sivan Sundar used the developer kit to write a mobile app for Google's Fusion Tables, a web-based application to streamline and share data tables online in the format of spreadsheets, Comma Separated Values files or even Keyhole Markup Language files.
His next applications, the Geocode and its improved version “Where am I Geocode”, were conceived in response to a requirement expressed from his father's firm for tracking locations by longitude and latitude, he said. “The improved Geocode can also help trace persons who get lost,” says Sivan Sundar.
The computer whiz usually takes a little over a month to develop an application.
“I'm working on my next application and hope to launch it in a couple of weeks,” says Sivan Sundar, who when he is not behind a computer is glued to the fortunes of his favourite football team Manchester United.