Sikhroots: The Sikh iPhone Apps List

The Team at SikhRoots have done a great seva by creating a list for the Sikh-related Apps available for the iPhone, of those there is the amazing Gurbani Anywhere App, which is totally mind-blowing and the new SikhNet Radio app, which also features a feed from Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar for live Kirtan. Amongst those, there are also the four apps from developed by ourselves an Sikhroots did them justice and did what they should have and criticised their faults. Before I am accused of making excuses, I would just like to say that I am a student studying accounting & finance, and I only developed these apps in my spare time as a part of my work with The Sikhs Podcast, so, programming is not my strong suit 8-) Now on with the review!

iNitnem [G]

Unfortunately though, there aren’t any English translations or Romanized

This will be rectified in our next app which is due to be released on the app store on the 31st December 2009. iNitnem [E] will feature the Gurmukhi, English Translation and the English Transliteration. The reason we designed another app is because we are not programmer-minded enough to design one app to accommodate the settings to switch the extra views on and off and because many just want a simple Pothi to read their daily Nitnem for which iNitnem [G] will suffice.

the real annoying thing for me is lack of next page or previous page buttons

I can’t keep using the “I’m not a programmer” excuse, so we will try to find a way to incorporate this into the app and will inform you when we have worked it out!

Singh Sabha

It’s understandable that the sangat doesn’t really need this app as most of the information is available on the website, but with the app users do receive some cool functions especially on the Contact page, where there is a one touch button to call the gurdwara, an in-app email function and quick link to load the gurdwara’s address through the native Maps app. This was the first app we launched back in January 2009 and since then we have had 3,440 downloads, yes I admit it is not as much as our other apps, but for a local gurdwara pretty good. And because we are still getting users downloading the app, it seems rude to pull the app from the store, so we will investigate on how we can improve this app.

The Sikhs Podcast™ Podcast Viewer

This app is actually the second oldest app from us, the newest was iNitnem [G] (Sorry about that! It was launched in February of this year!) It’s function is to allow users to watch podcasts on the go, and I guess one could use the native YouTube™ App or our own website. The problem with using the links from our website is that the files from their are relatively huge compared to the .3gp one the app uses and we have timed it against the YouTube™ app and it was faster to exit a video and quickly watch another video. To clarify that this app does NOT download the videos to your iPhone, instead it streams them to it. We will definitely endeavour to improve the app as soon as we can implement ideas that are on the table.

Dhur Ki Bani

We purposely made this app simple so that nobody would have to change the settings in the FStream App that was then advised by the SGPC website. We will definitely work on implementing improvements to the app.

Overall, we are really impressed with the way that Sikhroots have reviewed the apps, they have been honest and ensured impartiality. We hope to implement some of the improvements they have suggested as soon as possible and wish them success in all they do.

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