In a country, Ethiopia, where more than 80 local languages are spoken, localization play a vital role to share knowledge and information digitally in the larger community. As the usage of Smart phone is increasing from time to time, availing the knowledge with local language is important. Now a days several millions of informations on specific topic is available in different languages on the internet. Even so the data size is growing overwhelmingly, making use of the data is important. In this aspect, the idea of "Apps in Local Languages" attracted me to invest my time to develop more than a dozen Apps all designed barring the localizations aspect in mind. Some are in 3-4 major Ethiopian language, while most of them are at least in Amharic. English has been also included to give preference to the people who wants to access the content outside the local language speakers.
The Apps are named by taking some Amharic words that I thought it will express them best. Below is the list of some of the Apps and their brief descriptions.
- Cooking Ethiopian Dish / የኢትዮጵያ የምግብ አሰራር : this App includes cooking recipe or instructions of local foods that are popular by most Ethiopians. The recipe is categorized in groups so that people can search there interest based on categories.
- Ethiopian Traffic Symbols / የኢትዮጵያ ትራፊክ ምልክቶች : this App is mainly designed to users that want to know all the traffic symbols and signages. The traffic symbols are categorized with their restrictions rate to make accessing easy. This App has also included a quiz on the different traffic symbols and signages. Users can select categories and prove their knowledge on the symbols instantly. The questions, with multiple choices, will be generated randomly and evaluation is give instantly. In addition some miner information clarifying the major part of a car is also displayed and explained. Ethiopia uses different vehicle registration plate for different uses. All possible plate types are described and visualized in this section.
- Ethiopian Calendar / የኢትዮጵያ ዘመን መቁጠሪያ : this App one of the first App I have programmed it. At that time, Amharic fonts are not fully integrated to all Android enabled smart phones and the Unicode was not assigned. Then I tried to represent the numbers in this app to be visible even if users don't have the Amharic fonts on their mobile. The calendar will show the current date uniquely and users can go forward and backward by months. A few public holy days are also shown on one page.
- Amharic Alphabets / የአማርኛ የፊደል ገበታ : this App is for users to know and learn the Gee'z alphabets that are unique and only used in Ethiopia. The naming will remember the Baby Bummers and partly the Generation X for using "የፊደል ገበታ" literally defined a single printed board containing all the Gee'z scripts and numbers on it. This board has two sections, one where similar scripts and their family's is shown (ሀሁሂሃ) and the second section is where scripts are systematically mixed (አቡጊዳ) where both are included in this app. One has to graduate the first to the next. When school starts at the early age, every kid has one የፊደል ገበታ to learn them in common areas (local schools). This App, like the Ethiopian Calendar, don't use the in built fonts on a mobile.
- Amharic Numbers /የቁጥር ገበታ : This App has similarity with the Amharic Alphabets. The additional feature include here is that users can listen each number after clicking it. The numbers shown looks limited, but you can build by concatenating them in systematic ways. To show that, one option is added to enter any below 10million and get it converted. While this number is not used commonly, this App will help users to remember them.
- Ethiopian Constitution : this App is to avail the currently working constitution for any reference in both English and Amharic. The 11 chapter and 106 Articles of the constitutions are shown. Users can click on each article to read article by article. Search facility is also part of the app.
