While it’s fair to say that there is a piece of software that covers virtually every computing requirement, it seems some people are still left wanting when it comes to performing certain tasks. Despite the rise of online photo-blogging services like Flickr and applications such as Web Photos Pro, one Indian paediatrician was disappointed at the lack of tools for his personal requirements and decided to take the matter into his own hands by creating his own piece of software.
In order to help him set up his bird photography site, nagpurbirds.org, first-time developer Tarique Sani turned his hand to a spot of PHP programming and conjured up his fully featured photo blogging creation, CheeseCake Photoblog, in just three weeks. Like many before him, Sani believes that the open source PHP and MySQL platform is proving to be the perfect launchpad for bringing bespoke web applications to life.
The doctor-turned code junky explained: “PHP has a phenomenal potential for India. There’s money to be made provided it is built up properly. Now it’s making inroads into the enterprise class of code, which was earlier dominated by Java. That’s good news.”
Though it’s unlikely that CheeseCake will ever come near to toppling Flickr, it’s certainly a decent application with plenty of tailor-made features such as buzzwords, specifically designed for blogging, and is open to expansion by bolting on plug-ins. With PHP authors such as PHP Designer and DzSoft PHP Editor becoming ever easier to manipulate, we’re bound to see more part-time developers making in-roads into extremely niche areas within the software world that the big players simply don’t have the inclination to explore.
