Two UC Davis students have created a UC Davis "smart phone" application. The free UC Davis Mobile application, developed by seniors Sunny Dhillon and Fei Li as a class project, is now available online and through Apple's iTunes store.

"We wanted to create something that we, as students, want to use," said Dhillon.

"Everyone carries around phones, especially smart phones. This is something that has all the information you need to know about Davis, and you don’t have to go to different pages."

The application features the Unitrans bus schedule and GPS real-time bus locations; sports schedules; a campus map and walking directions; a UC Davis e-mail portal; the campus directory; and quick access to student media outlets such as the California Aggie newspaper and AggieTV.

Dhillon and Li developed the app during a new iPhone applications course taught in fall quarter 2009 by guest lecturer Serban Porumbescu and Ken Joy, professor of computer science and director of the UC Davis Institute for Data Analysis and Visualization. Porumbescu works for the application company Tapulous in Palo Alto.

"What’s going on in the mobile industry right now is very similar to the dot-com era of the ’90s," Porumbescu said. "I look back, and I feel like it really would have been fantastic if someone taught a class on that when I was at school. I’m hoping the students who are taking this class are able to see the next best thing."

Porumbescu, who got his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from UC Davis, taught the course without pay as a way of "giving back" to the campus, he said.

Other applications created by students in the class included an expense tracker for students, a disc jockey table, computer pets and a piano tuner.

Joy said that when it comes to iPhone applications, there are no limits. “People don’t realize what you can do with these things,” he says. “Anything you do through the Web, you can write an application for.”

Joy plans to teach the class again in spring quarter.