Imagine Cup Blog

May 2010 - Posts

• Malaysia To Send Team HDC to the Worldwide Finals

  More than 1,280 students registered for this year’s Malaysian Imagine Cup competition. Only 29 teams were selected by a panel of judges to compete in the Malaysian finals taking place May 17-19 at Awana Porto Malai, Langkawi. Congratulations to Team HDC and good luck at the worldwide finals this July! Team HDC: Project Apple Team HDC (Home Dietary Consultants), from the Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (Apiit-UCTI), won the grand prize at the Malaysian Imagine Cup event. Team HDC developed "Project Apple," a dietary and nutrition planning system. Project Apple is a dietary and nutrition planning system aimed at helping families and individuals keep better track of their eating habits. In addition to being a meal planner, Project Apple incorporates a number of features, including: recipe searches based on specific ingredients, suggested items to eat when sick, and the ability to input different profiles for each member of the household with data on their dietary needs. The team also created a mobile application which runs on the Windows Phone 7 platform. The app includes a feature to scan the barcodes of products to compare nutritional value. Team HDC is made up of three students and a mentor: Keith Khoo Lay Kit, Choong Yen Yen and Lee Chong Yang with Ngan Seok Chern as their mentor. Check out this video to learn more about Team HDC and their winning project. Other Finalists: Team Celestial & Team MediaLab Studio Team Celestial, from the University of Sains Malaysia (USM), claimed second place in the competition with their Map Integrated Disaster Sharing Portal (MiDS). Team Celestial also one the special award for “Coolest Application.” Team MediaLab Studio, from the University Malaysia Pahang (UMP), won third place in the competition for their educational flash game about environmental issues called Eco Bumi. Posted May 26 2010, 04:59 PM by editor with no comments Filed under: Imagine Cup, Finalists, Countries, Software Design, Worldwide Finals, Awards, Malaysia, Competition, Students, Technology

• Team Error 404 Wins 2010 Imagine Cup Italy Finals!

  More than 200 students came together at the University of Naples Federico II on May 20, 2010 to battle it out for a place at the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Poland.  Congratulations to Team Error 404 who will be representing Italy this July! Check out the following video overview to see highlights from the award ceremony. First Place: Team Error 404 with Lift4u project Global warming and sustainability are big buzz topics, particularly in terms of individuals wanting to make a conscious effort to reduce their carbon emissions. 31% of carbon emissions are generated by cars and this figure increases dramatically in urban areas. Car pooling is a system recognized in many European countries as a way of helping people to lower their emissions, however, despite several attempts, it has failed to take off in Italy due to locals being wary of sharing their cars with strangers. The Error 404 team developed the Lift4u software which searches a number of data paths allowing users to find the ideal route, mode of transport (public and private) or people to car pool with and providing useful feedback and ratings as those seen on Facebook and Ebay. 2nd Place: The University of Cagliari project called Flexy, is designed to speed up the recruitment of temporary staff within seasonal/ flexible employment by giving employers access to databases of available staff. The system, assigned to temporary employment agencies or employment centers, aims to simplify recruitment procedures. 3rd Place: ByBNet is the project of the University of Genoa, which uses artificial intelligence software and key data to determine the validity of a charity to potential donors. Posted May 25 2010, 04:27 PM by editor with no comments Filed under: Imagine Cup, Software Design, Poland, Worldwide Finals, Competition, Technology, Italy

• Team OneBeep Wins 2010 Imagine Cup New Zealand Finals

  More than 500 students came together at The University of Auckland Business School on April 30, 2010 for the final show down of the top four finalist software design teams in New Zealand. Check out the 60 second video overview of the event. Congratulations to Team OneBeep! First Place: Team One Beep from University of Auckland Team OneBeep from the University of Auckland emerged as the victors following a series of 15-minute presentations before a seven-judge panel. The team was comprised of four students, including: Chanyeol Yoo, Vinny Kumar, Kayo Lakadia and Steve Ward. OneBeep focused on the One Laptop Per Child program and its 1.4 million deployed laptops. The team developed an inexpensive and robust method to send educational content to computers anywhere in the world using the power of radio. The laptops are sent out to impoverished schools and communities in areas of the world where there are no phone lines or internet services.    Second Place: Team Enpeda from University of Auckland Team Enpeda has developed a prototype of a mobile phone-controlled Driver Assistance System. The system uses a mobile phone camera to watch the road ahead and warns drivers if they go off course and into danger.  Third Place: Team eUtopia from University of Waikato Team eUtopia developed a live video distribution service that connects conservation organizations to the public. The system allows for remote monitoring, private research and surveillance of animals. Fourth Place: Team Vital Link from University of Auckland Team Vital Link’s project focused on fair trade for artisans in impoverished countries. The team aims to provide a global marketplace by capitalizing on the viral marketing capabilities of Facebook to help people make enough money to improve their daily lives. Posted May 20 2010, 10:14 PM by editor with no comments Filed under: Imagine Cup, Finalists, Countries, Poland, Educators, Worldwide Finals, New Zealand, Competition, Students

• Teams E-Donors & SmarterME Will Represent Taiwan at the Worldwide Finals

  More than 700 students participated in the 2010 Imagine Cup Taiwan Finals. Of the 228 teams that entered projects, only 36 of them (a total of 95 students) went on to the local finals held at Ming Chuan University Campus for a two day event. The Software Design and Embedded Development teams presented in front of panels of judges in the semi-finals on the first day. Teams that went on to the finals on the second day were challenged to quickly adjust and improve their presentations based on feedback given by the judges from the day before. Below is an overview of the top two projects and the winners of the local Digital Media competition.   E-Donors wins Software Design Category Team E-Donors will take their winning project, SEEDS (Secure Electronic Donation System), to the Worldwide Finals in Poland. SEEDS aims to quell donors concerns by the implementation of three separate innovative mechanisms: trackable donations, secure donations via a self-developed digital handshaking protocol, and leveraging social connections to encourage electronic donations. Embedded Development Category: SmarterME moves on to Worldwide Finals In the Embedded Development category, SmarterME will move on to the Worldwide Finals in Poland with their project SmarterMeter. With an e-box as the core of the system, the SmarterMeter solution provides a cost efficient way for households to better observe and manage power consumption in the home, over current commercial alternatives. Digital Media Winners: Team Orange Charlie The Digital Media teams were challenged to come up with a brand new film in the short span of 24 hours with the following theme: Education inspires innovation, innovation invokes education. Team Orange Charlie touched the judges’ hearts with the story of how a young boy who grew up listening to his grandpa’s bedtime stories eventually invented a ‘fishbox’ that enables parents to virtually accompany their children through story telling in spite of their busy schedules. Posted May 19 2010, 05:26 PM by editor with no comments Filed under: Imagine Cup, Finalists, Software Design, Poland, Embedded Development, Worldwide Finals, Awards, Digital Media, Competition, Students, Careers, Technology, Resources, Taiwan

• Imagine Cup Local Finals in Mexico City

  This year’s Imagine Cup local Mexico finals were held at one of the finest museums in the country – the Papalote Children Museum in Mexico City. The museum features science and technology innovation and is run by one of the most important non-profit organizations in Mexico that helps children’s development and learning through games, workshops and interactive activities with a touch, play & learn philosophy. 11,500 students registered for the Imagine Cup in Mexico and the top 10 teams were selected to compete in the finals. During the competition, students were free to roam about the museum grounds and had access to the IMAX Theater as well as the biggest planetarium in the country to watch science and tech movies.   Software Design Competition Students from the Instituto Tecnológico de Acapulco took home the first place prize in the Software Design category and will represent Mexico at the Worldwide Finals in Poland. Their project helps to cure malaria by using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness about the disease. By playing a Facebook game, a person can make real plants grow and produce artisimina, a substance needed to cure 90% of malaria cases. Second and third place were awarded to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nuevo León and Benemerita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, respectively. Through a partnership with Sony, each of the winners took home a new Sony VAIO PC. Papalote Children Museum Award The Papalote Award was a special award given to the team from the Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana. The students created software to enable deaf people to communicate through Windows Live Messenger using sign language. The software uses a webcam to read the sign language and translate it into text. This project will be showcased in the museum over the next year and it will be promoted in a tour around the country in the best science and tech museums in Mexico. Posted May 14 2010, 04:32 PM by editor with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Imagine Cup, Finalists, Software Design, Mexico, Worldwide Finals, Awards, Competition, Students, Technology

• Team Invisible Ideas Wins Imagine Cup India Finals

  More than 86,000 students from colleges across India registered for the Imagine Cup competition this year. Five finalists came together on April 29-30 to compete in the Indian Software Design regional finals for the chance to represent India in the world Imagine Cup event in July. Below is an overview of some of the top projects to check out. Congratulations to all of the teams for their hard work and great ideas! Software Design Category: Grand Prize Winner Team Invisible Ideas, led by Supreeth S, a student of SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, emerged as the winner of the 2010 India Imagine Cup Finals. Supreeth will go on to represent India at the world finals in Warsaw, Poland this year. Project: FleX (Fun Learning Experience) The FleX application is a collaborative learning application which consists of entertaining educational games and a couple of fun activities. It enables the use of more than one mouse on a single computer, allowing all students to learn and play simultaneously. The learning process in a collaborative environment is far more enriching and promotes healthy competition among students and helps in teaching them to work as a team. Second Place Winner Team RSS from Vivekanand Education Society’s Institute of Technology, Mumbai University, was named first runner-up in the Software Design competition. Team RSS is comprised of three students & a mentor—Roma Kalani, Shailesh Lohia, Sneha Ledwani & Gokhale Jayanthi (mentor). Project: Aarogya Marg The application aims to provide immediate, affordable and local medical assistance to the needy and poor, using portable medical devices, a few essential parameters and service virtualization. The “service virtualization” based architecture tries to eliminate the anomalies of existing systems due to unavailability of services. Third Place Winner Third place in the Software Design category went to Team Inferno. Team Inferno is comprised of four students and a mentor from University College of Engineering, Punjabi University – Harpreet Singh Sareen, Amanjot Singh, Gursimran Singh Sahota, Shallu Sarvari & Sukhjot Singh (mentor). Project: Prakash ESP (Educational Software Package) It consists of software catering to the learning competencies as well as reading, writing and listening skills of primary school children. It includes Guided Writing, eScribe & an ESP MT Module using MultiPoint Mouse SDK. Be sure to check out the local award winners on the Imagine Cup India blog and a photo slide show of the Imagine Cup India finals. Posted May 13 2010, 09:17 PM by editor with no comments Filed under: Imagine Cup, Countries, Software Design, India, Worldwide Finals, Student Profile, Competition, Students, Careers, Technology

• Imagine Cup 2010: Road to Poland - Week Two

  The 2010 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals are less than 10 weeks away! As most of you already know the Worldwide Finals will be held in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland. You may be asking yourselves, how did Poland achieve this? Well, when a host country is chosen to host the Worldwide Finals event, a lot of aspects of what that country and city have to offer are taken into consideration. So, what gave Poland the advantage over other potential countries? Let’s find out! Poland as a country is very familiar with the Imagine Cup, organizing local finals since 2004 involving thousands of students. Over the last four years, the Polish students that have participated in the various Imagine Cup editions have been amongst the most often awarded students, a great example of this is the 2007 Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals in Seoul, South Korea, where Polish teams won first prize in three categories! This familiarity with the Imagine Cup certainly gives Poland a head start, but it’s perhaps their mentality that allows them to be the host country. Warsaw is in fact a very eco-friendly city, with one fourth of the landscape made up of parks. It is also very future- oriented, accommodating over 280,000 students providing them with a very dynamic and modern surrounding. Warsaw, and Poland in general, has a lot of history behind it and this is reflected throughout the city. Although most of the city’s historic buildings have been destroyed during the war, you can still admire the old part of the city, with its pre- 20th Century architecture. Particularly impressive landmarks are the Presidential Palace (top), the Royal Castle (above) and the Palace of Culture and Science (below). Securing Poland’s nominee host status is its position in the center of Europe, having the largest number of students amongst neighboring countries and its aspiration to be recognized as ‘The Leaders of Change’ amongst European countries, encouraging education and ensuring that students have an opportunity to make a difference in the country’s future. What a perfect complement for the theme of the Imagine Cup!    - Luca. Posted May 04 2010, 09:31 PM by Luca_IC10 with no comments