Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Aug 12, 2006
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Aug 12, 2006 |
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Info-Tech
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Events Tech innovation in the shadow of the Taj Preethi J
Recently in Agra A throng of young techies hugging laptops and grinning in anticipation bore down on the town of the Taj Mahal this week. The 100 finalists from over 40 countries - from Lebanon to Croatia - were showcasing their solutions at Microsoft's fourth Imagine Cup, held at Agra. This year's contest had students come up with innovative concepts on how tech can be used to make a healthier world. Last year the theme was music, which saw more varied applications but not as many with a commercial leaning, according to British Telecom, a sponsor of the event. The six categories of Imagine Cup saw a rainbow of entries, ranging from concept-level to products complete with business focus. Software design category had students with applications on .Net and Windows Mobile 5.0 (an operating system for mobiles), while the algorithm contest was a series of brainteasers and performing feats like searching the entire Internet in a nanosecond or decoding the human genome. Short film and interface design (where designers created new interfaces for health apps) saw students of drama clubs and fashion design participating, while IT (networking) and programming battle (a game) had geeks battling it out in the virtual world. Three teams across these six categories competed in the finals at Delhi held on Friday. The team from Italy won the prize amount in the primary category (software design) - a sum of $25,000, while Brazil and Norway walked away with the second ($15,000) and third ($8,000) places respectively. The three teams will also be invited to BT's accelerator programme, through which the winners will receive consulting, business and financial expertise on how to get their product from concept stage to marketable software. BT has invested half-a-million dollars this year in sponsorship and the accelerator programme. Representing India, the Avengers did the country proud by bagging the third place in Interface design category for their work on wearable electronics. Mitushi Jain, a fashion designer at National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), and Mohit Bhargava, a student at Ambedkar Institute of Technology, came up with a military base camp interface that would make it possible to transfer information about the health conditions of army personnel. Another native team, Sonique, made it to the finals in the software design category with a brilliant solution for the visually impaired. The team, comprising four students from the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, had many backers for their dual-purpose solution that would make it easier for the blind to use a PC with software that amplifies the usability of the mouse and a navigation device that used ultrasonic sensors and a handheld to map rooms, offering the blind the hope that someday they could discard their walking sticks. Teens from Hong Kong also received kudos for their brilliant use of Bluetooth and smart phone to control avian influenza. The Taiwanese applied video-conferencing to an emergency situation - using it to play a streaming video that enacted simple steps in case of emergencies. Another similar concept by Chinese students - Project Helen - was a PC-based interface for the home user that offered exercise suggestions and helped store health data. The hi-tech Japanese submitted an augmented reality project - a headgear that would replace bar code reading for medical assistants.
GAMING & FENG SHUI
Ending the monotony of the health theme, Imagine Cup had a gaming category called programming battle. "We thought up the idea after looking at spaceship games and thought it would be fun to include this in this competition, replacing the spaceships for nanobots swimming in the body. It is a peaceful game," said one of the judges, Mr Richard Clarke.
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