WODONGA mothers Sabina Cartwright and Yvette Buhagiar may not look like your average IT geeks, but they are helping drive the Border’s smartphone revolution.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The administration worker and businesswoman are behind five mobile apps now on the market for Albury-Wodonga businesses and organisations.
Another five aren’t too far away.
Ms Buhagiar was inspired to delve into the mobile marketing world last year after searching for someone to create an app for her accommodation website, but finding no one locally who could do the job.
In November, mobile marketing business “appbudgie” was born.
Ms Cartwright got on board in January and the duo got their first client in February — the pair recently developing an app for their children’s school.
Ms Cartwright said while the St Monica’s Primary School app hadn’t been officially launched yet, it has already been downloaded by 80 people.
It’s one of very few apps like it.
“We could only find one other school in Australia that has an app and that was Geelong Grammar,” Ms Cartwright said.
Now at St Monica’s, there is hope notes home getting lost could be a thing of the past, as school notifications and news are beamed instead straight to parents’ smart phones or iPads.
By downloading the app, parents get instant access to the school’s canteen menu, calendar, newsletter and contact information.
And text notifications are sent directly to parents’ mobile devices, making it less likely they’ll forget there’s a sausage sizzle on or that it’s a student free day.
Recently, during a school camp, families were kept up to date with what the students were doing by Twitter updates posted on the app, and sent a notification to tell them what time the school bus would be arriving back in Wodonga.
School principal Brendan Flanagan said the app was a lot cheaper than the simple text message notification service they’d considered investing in before they were approached by Ms Cartwright about using an app instead.