In July 2012, Jonathan Dharmaraj and his girlfriend of almost a year broke up. After spending every second together — working in the same hospital and living two minutes from each other — they both went off to different schools. Jonathan’s work at the University of Illinois at Chicago took him more than 30 miles from his sweetheart, who left for nursing school, and the pair decided that the distance and the timing just weren’t working.
It’s been almost six months, and they’ve continued to talk, have remained close, and even find time to visit each other a few times each month. “I realized that we could have made it work,” said Jonathan. “I regretted that we broke up.”
With Valentine’s Day on the horizon, Jonathan began plotting how he could get his girlfriend back. Instead of buying flowers or writing a love letter, he decided to write her an app.
“I used to call her Shipoopi,” said Jonathan. “I know Shipoopi comes from The Music Man, but she and I made it an inside joke after watching Family Guy together. I named the app Shipoopi so that she knows it’s for her.”
The app itself isn’t all that revolutionary. It’s an Android app, only available for Android 4.2 at the moment, that essentially lets you choose which apps appear on your lockscreen, letting you bypass the step of going from lockscreen to homescreen to app. Shipoopi lets you go straight from the lockscreen to the app of your choosing.
He said that his ex, who we shall call Shipoopi because he’d prefer we kept her anonymous, lives and breathes by her smartphone and that this extra level of efficiency is perfect for her. But more importantly, Shipoopi shows her that Jonathan cares enough about her to do something truly creative for her. He plans on meeting up with her on Friday, the day after Valentine’s Day, to show her the app and ask her to be his girlfriend again.
Jonathan isn’t a developer, and he doesn’t work for a startup. He’s a student who taught himself to code in HTML and JavaScript and then moved on to mobile apps. He’s not looking to make money, either — the app is free and has no clear revenue stream.
He just wants his girlfriend back, and he use the skills he’s acquired to do this in a unique, adorable way.
So what do you say, Shipoopi? Will you take him back?