Yes, believe it or not the young, ambitious lad from Duduza, Ekurhuleni Griffiths Sibeko, has devised or developed Rea Vaya App or Application System thanks to Microsoft Appfactory internship programme.
This was prompted after he got lost or attending classes late en route to varsity at University of Johannesburg, were he graduated as BA Information Management graduate, he chuckles.
The 22 year old says:” The inspiration for the App, came when I was staying on campus at the University of Johannesburg. Every now and then, I would commute and explore the inner city. This used to be a daunting experience. So I decided to develop an App to make this process easier.”
The Rea Vaya App is available on the Windows phone mobile platform and offers the following features: a hub page with live tiles, for ease of navigation; detailed links to designated Rea Vaya bus Stations and their routes and; a page with information on ticket prices and bus fares.
And that’s called brilliancy!
“After developing the App, I entered it into the app idea in the ‘Microsoft hack from home competition.’ I won the competition and was invited to join Microsoft’s Appfactory,” says Sibeko, responding on how he came to develop such an App.
At the Appfactory, he got to learn the fundamentals of App Development.
The Microsoft Appfactory is an internship programme; that recruits young up and coming developers, and provides them the skills and resources necessary to develop apps for the windows 8 store.
Appfactory is a Microsoft SA initiative in partnership with the Johannesburg centre for software engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand.
“As a person who likes challenges and designs, being able to interact with my manager has allowed me to grow when it comes to how I develop Apps, and how my looks and works by offering critical and very analytical feedback on my work.
Unlike learning how to develop Apps alone in my own space, the AppFactory has offered me an opportunity to engage with likeminded colleagues where we offer one another help in our learning endeavours,” concluded Sibeko.
Me thinks if Rea Vaya, does not invite this young lad for coffee, Prasa (Passenger Rail Agency of SA) would, although currently he’s a Microsoft Developer. (Fak’ imali u zobona)
With such abundance of talent brimming in our country, why should our traffic system continues to suck, you may ask?
