Click to view image: '5947d5d0759d-tech090206doodlekidsscreenshot.jpg'A screenshot from Lim Thye Chean's website shows some of the code for his son's Doodle Kids program. (Lim Thye Chean's website)

Embed CodePlays: 4695 (Embed: 0)

A nine-year-old boy has created an application for the Apple iPhone that allows users to "fingerpaint" on the phone's touch-screen.

Tracing your finger over the screen while the program Doodle Kids is running allows you to create multi-coloured shapes. The screen can be cleared by shaking the iPhone.

Fourth grader Lim Ding Wen originally wrote Doodle Kids for his younger sisters, his father Lim Thye Chean wrote on his website.

"It is designed and written completely by himself," added the elder Lim, who bills his son as "probably one of the [world's] youngest iPhone developers" and said the boy has been programming since he was seven.

Doodle Kids has been available for download for free since Jan. 19. As of Thursday, Singapore's Electric New Paper reported that the application had been downloaded 4,000 times. A spokesperson for iPhone Friday would not disclose how many downloads there had been since then, saying the company does not provide that kind of information.

The original version of Doodle Kids was written in Pascal for the Apple IIGS computer and later adapted for the iPhone.

Ding Wen's latest programming project is Invader War, a space game written in Orca/Pascal for Apple IIGS. His father's website said it is currently in development as an iPhone application also and will be available for download at the App Store when it is finished.
The elder Lim is the chief technology officer of a technology company in Singapore and said he teaches children to program in his spare time.


Source:http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/06/tech-iphone-app.html

View comments (11)