Clark State Community College student Santiago Ramirez will be one of the first to graduate with a degree in New Media, but he’s already putting his acquired skills to work.
“I think most people usually think of new media as radio or broadcasting, but it’s way more than that,” said Ramirez. “It’s basically traditional media such as audio, video, photography and animation combined with web development, SEO and social media.”
Utilizing his new media skills, Ramirez designed a hybrid app that is now available on Google Play. “A hybrid app is a mix between a web app and a native app,” explained Ramirez. “You can build a hybrid app with the same programming languages and technologies that you would use to make a web app, but instead of it being hosted on a website, you package the app within a native app so that it can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or the App Store.”
The app, Simple Budget Lite, is free and available in the Google Play Store. “It’s a very simple budgeting app that shows you how much you have available to spend on a daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly or annual basis based on your income versus your expenses,” said Ramirez.
Ramirez spent about a week designing his app, but once he submitted it to Google, Simple Budget Lite was available for download in about one day. He decided on a budgeting app because there were not many apps of this type available in the Google Play Store.
“The thing that I think makes it unique is that it’s functional and looks good,” said Ramirez.
“I think my next app may be a premium version of Simple Budget Lite with added features, but I’ve also been thinking about making a free goal setting app,” said Ramirez. “Whichever one I decide to make, I want it to be native this time. Hybrid apps are great and have their purpose, but there’s so much more you can do with an app when it’s native so I really want to dig deeper into that.”
Simple Budget Lite can be downloaded by searching “santiago ramirez simple budget” in the Google Play Store.