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Imagine Cup 2008 World Finals: Paris July 3-8 "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." We'll be providing you with daily coverage of the Finals including team profiles, interviews, and much more!
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July 10 Some photos from the World Festival where the Winners of Imagine Cup 2008 were announced!I wanted to show everyone some interesting perspectives on the World Festival as well as photos of the Winners of Imagine Cup 2008!
Check them out below. Have fun!
We kicked off the World Festival with an entertaining display of acrobatic feats... then Joe Wilson, Senior Director of Academic Programs at Microsoft took the stage and documented the exciting moment with his video camera.
Students are tense as they await results... but when there's a win the whole country's team erupts in pandemonium!
And here we see the Imagine Cup flag officially transferred from Microsoft France, host of Imagine Cup 2008, to Microsoft Egypt, Host of Imagine Cup 2009.
"Good luck!" says France. "You'll see, this is a LOT of fun!"
AND Now: See the Winners!
Team SOAK from Australia: Winner of the Software Design competition!
Team Trail Blazers from Singapore: Winner of the Embedded Development Competition!
Team Mother Gaia Studios from Brazil: Winner of the Game Development Competition!
Team RedDevils from Russia: Winner of the Project Hoshimi Competition!
IT Challenge Winner Jean Benoit Paux from France! Algorithm Winner Roman Koshlyak from Ukraine! Team Provisio from the United States: Winner of the Photography Competition!
Team EcoVis from the United States: Winner of the Interface Design Competition!
Team NEIP from Korea: Winner of the Short Film Competition!
ALL Imagine Cup 2008 Winners on the stage! July 09 Team Protasis from Greece: The Youngest Competitor AND a One-Person Team!Team Protasis from Greece is one of the big stories of this year's Imagine Cup. Imagine a world where a 16-year-old-- still in high school-- wins his country's local software design competition against teams of four who are in college?
Anthony Platanios of Team Protasis is that person! He developed a smart house technology system that reduces your home's carbon footprint. It's divided into a PC application, a sensor network, a mobile phone, and a PDA application, a PC client, a Web server, and a Web page. The PC application uses artificial intelligence, by means of fuzzy logic and a smart algorithm. It receives data from the sensors, processes this data, and sends other data back to the sensors (for example, a command to turn off a light). Through this system, it reduces your home’s consumption of electrical energy, water, and oil. Furthermore, it gives you realtime information such as electrical energy consumption in kWh, water consumption, oil consumption, and voltage in graphical format. It also sends data to the online server, which creates statistics related to other users in your category. You can access the data from the Web page. Moreover, it has more features such as remote control over all the devices of your home, either from the computer, the PDA, or the mobile phone—from any place in the world. It also alerts you to abnormal situations, such as high consumption, high/low voltage (it can turn off all the devices in order to protect them), movement on a place where there should not be, etc. It is very easy to set up and afterwards it does not need any human interaction in order to work; that is where artificial intelligence comes into place. Here Anthony demos his model of Team Greece's Smart House Solution.
Anthony's project is directly connected to this year’s challenge, because it makes your home ecologically concerned and it adjusts differently to each user while it is being used, so it constantly evolves. Project Protasis enables a sustainable environment by reducing the resources consumed by your home in a smart way.
Anthony's dream is to go to MIT in Boston and I have no doubt he will go to college there or at an equally prestigious school. And in addition to being incredibly articulate, poised, and smart, Anthony is a really nice guy. We all wish him the best, and we congratulate him on his "Smart House technology"-- making your house do the work of reducing your carbon footprint! We see Anthony as a real inspiration to other high school students who are thinking of competing in the Imagine Cup! Good Times at the Imagine Cup Part 2: Ducks!Another evening a bunch of Imagine Cupees decided to look for a vegetarian restaurant outside the hotel. We received detailed instructions on where to go from the concierge. Parisians like meat so finding a place with options for vegetarians can take some thought. But off we set for the place described.
What did we find there? Ducks, ducks, and more ducks. There were three pages of duck menus (with an occasional goose thrown in for variety), which as Surya the Interface Design Captain pointed out was a little odd in light of how fond the place seemed to be of ducks. There were duck napkins, Duck salt and pepper shakers, ducks decorating the windows and wine bottles... it seemed Duck-Friendly but when you looked at the menu you realized any duck would be crazy to go in there.
Here is the biggest and most dramatic duck in the place:
It was a good meal though!
And we did find some salads that were Duck-Free!
Good Times at the Imagine Cup: Mini Eiffel Towers, Sparkling Eiffel Towers...When you get this many creative people together, funny stuff is bound to happen!
Interface Design Captain Surya Vanka and Accessible Technology Captain Annuska Perkins and I went out to check out the Eiffel Tower one night. The Eiffel Tower is lit up in blue every night for the next 6 months to honor France's Presidency of the European Union.
Little did we suspect that in addition to being Microsoft's Design and Usability Training Manager, Surya is a very gifted photographer.
Whereas my photos of the Eiffel Tower look this this:
Surya used some kind of magical formula to concoct pictures that look like this. Baby Eiffels is one of my favorites: created by purchasing one of the little battery powered blinking Eiffel Towers that are sold on the street and lining it up with with an Eiffel Tower key chain in front of the REAL Eiffel Tower. At the time we really didn't know what Surya was doing but when we saw the results it all made sense! Enjoy!
So many teams, so little time... CO2 Monitoring, Carpooling, & Kids!Everyone is leaving today! however fortunately that gives me some time to tell you about some of the teams I haven't introduced you to yet.
Let's meet the Software Design Team from Netherlands: The Four Elements. This team created an interactive game (using XNA technology) and Web site that teaches kids to take care of the environment! When I checked out their game at the student showcase I loved the bright colors and interactive graphics.
Meet the team:
The team explains, "We want to make children aware of the importance of creating a sustainable environment. To achieve this goal, we created an interactive 3D environment where the player will be confronted with a number of environmental problems which they have to solve. This way the child will be learning about the environment. Parents receive a parental guide that describes the environmental issues, which their child will encounter through the game. This also enables them to talk about environmental subjects with their children.
This project has a close connection to the real world. Because of the big similarities, the children will make a connection between the game and the real world. By experiencing the benefits of a sustainable environment, the player will learn that reducing pollution affects the world in a positive way. They will immediately be rewarded for taking care of the environment. With our game we created an online community through Xbox-LIVE®/Windows Live. The player can play different types of mini-games online."
Teaching the next generation how to live in a more sustainable way: Well done, Team Netherlands!
Next up: Team Nigeria'sCarBurn Project. CarBurn is part of a proposed framework that is made of three components that work together to create better environmental conditions by enabling governments to measure CO2 emissions in areas. These three components are the chip firmware, the Web service, and the data center. The chip firmware is created to work with the Engine Control Unit (ECU) of cars. It picks up the quantity of CO2 being emitted. The data is logged and sent to a Web service. The Web service picks the data from the firmware and sends it to the data center, which contains the database that can be used for environmental analysis based on location, engines, etc. The information can now be available to government agencies, private organizations, and individuals. Great job helping governments monitor CO2 emissions from cars Team Nigeria!
(That's moi-- your Imagine Cup Blogger-- with Team Nigeria at their workstation in the Louvre yesterday!)
Next: Let's take a close look at the Belgium Software Design Team's ECar Solution. This team has created a carpooling web site! We all know that it's bad for the planet to drive around by yourself. But as anyone who has ever tried to get a car ride knows, coordinating the ride with total strangers and finding a car that's going in the same direction you are can be a real challenge. This team has solved that problem with their innovative Carpooling Web Site which offers an attractive and user-friendly carpooling
service. This cheap service is available to anybody who can access the Internet and who is registered. Two kinds of users can access the Web site: “Poolers,” the ones that provide their car, and “Poolees,” the ones that request services. Functionalities have been developed to attract users. There's an interactive map which displays the journey and enables users to localize meeting points. Poolers have also the opportunity to print their itinerary or to upload the journey information into their GPS. Poolers can see where they must pick up Poolees on the map. Personal information of each participant like the avatar, first and last name, or mobile phone number are also available. Way to go Team Belgium! If more people teamed up on Car rides, there would be a lot less pollution. This takes me to another car ride service developed by Poland's "Together" team, a finalist for the Software Design Interoperability Award. This team has developed a carpooling site called "ToGetThere" that is also a social network. When you sign up, you list your hobbbies and interests, whether you're a smoker etc and you only get matched with people who are 1) going in the same direction as you are and 2) share your interests! In today's hectic world we all need to multitask! Why not make new friends AS you reduce your carbon footprint?
Meet Team Together!
The team explains, "The main goal of 2GetThere is to associate people who are travelling in the same direction. Using mobile devices such as widely available mobile phones, allows you to arrange your trip ad hoc without the need to plan long in advance. Such joint journeys decrease the number of cars on the road, and thanks to this the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere is lower. The users of 2GetThere system make their journeys less expensive and at same time they preserve the environment. Finally, our system helps people with similar hobbies and tastes to meet. In a society where communication
and social relationships are becoming more and more virtual, such support is really vital." Nice job reducing carbon emissions by making carpooling a lot simpler, Team eCar and Team Together! July 08 Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words...
Yep, take a good look! That's what it looks like folks: The Imagine Cup Software Design Trophy. See, there really IS a Cup! It has traveled the world from the USA (2003) to France (2004) to Russia (2005) to Italy (2006) to Thailand (2007)-- and now it is going to get a little time Down Under. Congratulations to Team SOAK of Australia and to all our Imagine Cup 2008 Champions! And whether or not you won a prize remember: In this competition the PLANET was the winner. So great job everyone for innovating and creating great software that will help the planet! We're heading out to the Party now but never fear-- I'll be back online later telling you some more stories about Imagine Cup 2008 and introducing you to more teams! Winners of 2008 Imagine Cup Announced!!!!And the winners are...
Software Design
• First place: Australia — Team SOAK Team Members: David Burela, Dimaz Pramudya, Ed Hooper, Long Zheng • Second place: Slovakia — Team Housekeepers Team Members: Marián Hönsch, Michal Kompan, Jakub Šimko, Dušan Zeleník • Third place: Hungary — Team DigitalMania Team Members: Ákos Kapui, Laszló Zöld, Bálint Orosz, Gergely Orosz Embedded Development • First place: Singapore — Team Trail Blazers Team Members: Pinto James Dominic, Shi Ben Yong, Hu Shuhan, Denver Lim • Second place: TIE Ireland — Team AcidRain Team Members: Brian Byrne, Aodhan Coffey, Karl O’Dwyer China — Team Wings Team Members: Shibiao Xu, Junjie Li, Zhongjie Wang, Lei Yan • Third place: Poland — Team Aero@PUT Team Members: Piotr Kryger, Mikołaj Małaczyński, Jakub Pawłowski, Piotr Slęzak Game Development
• First place: Brazil — Team Mother Gaia Studio Team Members: Guilherme Campos, Helena Van Kampen, Rafael F. Costa, Túlio Sória • Second place: Belgium — Team Drunk Puppy Productions Team Members: Kenny Deriemaeker, Filip Van Bouwel, Timothy Vanherberghen, Jeroen van Raevels • Third place: Korea — Team GOMZ Team Members: Kim Dong Hoon, Kim Ki Hwan, Park Min Kyu “Project Hoshimi” (Programming Battle)
• First place: Russia — Team Red Devils Team Members: Ilya Grebnov, Sergei Grebnov • Second place: China — Team Zephyr Team Members: Peng Guo, Jiaze Huang • Third place: Ukraine — Team Dream Team Team Members: Pavlo Liapota, Margaryta Skrypachova IT Challenge • First place: France — Jean-Benoit Paux • Second place: Romania — Cosmin-Viorel Ilie • Third place: China — Yan Liu Algorithm • First place: Ukraine — Roman Koshlyak • Second place: Hungary — Szilveszter Szebeni • Third place: Japan — Naohiro Takahashi Photography
• First place: United States — Team Provisio Team Members: Jennifer Hui, Melissa Hui • Second place: Austria — Team Austria Team Members: Rosa Maria Binder, Benedikt Wurth • Third place: Croatia — Team Voodoo Delirum Team Members: Duje Nebojša Pandžić, Martin Štokić Short Film • First place: Korea — Team NEIP Team Members: Il Jin Joung, Seong Ran An, Yeun Jun Choo, Sung Wook Lee • Second place: Mexico — Team Lava Lamp Team Members: Grace Montoya, Aldo Murillo • Third place: Canada — Robotree Team Members: Drake Birmann, Ryan Morrison, Media Ridha, Dan Tran Interface Design • First place: United States — Team IU EcoVis Team Member: David Roedl, William Odom • Second place: Canada — TeamGreeNet Team Members: Jin Fan, Kevin Muise • Third place: France — Team Edelweiss Team Members: Johanna Rowe, Steven Muhr In addition to the category awards, five Achievement Awards were presented. • The Rural Innovation Achievement Award, sponsored by Microsoft’s Unlimited Potential Group, is designed to recognize the software solution that contributes toward a more sustainable environment and best helps promote the social and economic growth of underserved populations in developing countries and regions and best helps them better meet their basic needs. It was won by Indonesia’s Antarmuka: Arief Widhiyasa, Dimas Yusuf Danurwenda, Ella Madanella Dwi Mustika and Erga Ghaniya. • The Accessible Technology Achievement Award, designed to recognize the interface design solution that makes it easier for anyone to see, hear and use a computer, and to customize their computing environment according to their own preferences, needs and abilities, was won by Jeffrey Bigham, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science from the University of Washington, United States, for Project WebAnywhere. An additional onsite challenge was won by France’s Team JivAd: Jivane Rajabaly and Adrien Ossorguine. • The Interoperability Achievement Award, designed to recognize the software solution that best leverages Microsoft technologies to connect people, data or diverse systems to help address real-world customer needs, was won by India’s Team SKAN: Sameet Singh Khajuria, Karun AB, Amith George, Noel Sequeira. • The Windows Live Achievement Award, designed to recognize the software solution that makes the best use of the Windows Live platform and adds new social dimensions to both new and old Web sites and Web projects, was won by Spain’s Windows Drive: Carlos Junquera Cachero, David Rodriguez, Héctor Juan and Miguel Llopis. • The Engineering Excellence Achievement Award, sponsored by Microsoft’s Enterprise Engineering Center, is designed to recognize three outstanding teams from the Software Development category that have created solutions that demonstrate the potential to be developed to scale with focused guidance from a Microsoft engineer, was won by the following: • Bulgaria — Team Atlas Team Members: Boryana Miloshevska, Dobromira Ivanova, Martin Damyanov, Yordan Pavlov • USA — Team Sparx Team Members: Adam Risi, Zachery Shivers, Ziyan Zhou • Russia — Team Ignition Team Members: Anatoly Nikitin, Roman Belov, Daria Elkina Furthermore, six finalist teams will have the opportunity to explore how their software solutions could potentially turn into business realities. The teams will receive intense business and technology training as part of the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator program, co-sponsored by Microsoft and British Telecommunications plc (BT).
“The creativity demonstrated by the competitors this year has shown that tomorrow’s technology leaders are ready to apply their solutions to real-world issues,” said Joe Black, director of Business Development for Emerging Technologies, BT. “The Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator is an exceptional opportunity for young developers to explore the entrepreneurial possibilities of their software solutions. We are excited to offer our encouragement, guidance, and support to these talented students through comprehensive training sessions to help students bring their ideas to fruition.” The six teams chosen to participate in the Imagine Cup Innovation Accelerator program are the following: • Australia — Team SOAK (Smart Operational Agricultural toolKit) Team members: David Burela, Dimaz Pramudya, Ed Hooper, Long Zheng • France — Team Well K’Home
Team Members: Regis Hanol, Gauthier Chanliau, Sebastien Warin, Jean-Noel Gauthier • Germany — Team PoinT-Power in Time
Team Members: Daniel Franke, Jörn Schindler, Vasilios Filippidis, Axel Ernst • Hungary — Team Digital Mania
Team Members: Ákos Kapui, Laszló Zöld, Bálint Orosz, Gergely Orosz • Slovakia — Team Housekeepers
Team Members: Marián Hönsch, Michal Kompan, Jakub Šimko, Dušan Zeleník • South Africa — Team Smile Team Members: Devin de Vries, Christopher King, Nabeel Nazeer, Nadeem Isaacs Excitement is in the Air!I'm blogging from the Louvre Museum in Paris where in just a few hours we'll know the winners of Imagine Cup 2008! All the Finalists have gathered here today and there is a Student showcase of all the Software Design, Embedded Development, and Game Development teams.
The atmosphere is relaxed but everyone is very excited! I saw some teams who are competing against each other for the championship title laughing and checking out each other's booths. It's nice to see that friendships are born even among competitors in this very tough and arduous competition. Here are a few photos from the Louvre Museum this morning. Enjoy!
Meet Software Design Finalist Team Housekeepers from Slovakia!This team's project focuses on reducing energy consumption in the average household. They designed a solution for monitoring of electric energy consumption in a household based on the measuring of expenditures of individual appliances. Measuring is done by devices plugged between the power source and appliance. Data is transferred wirelessly and collected at a central antenna. Then they are passed to an ECM Application that runs on a home PC. The application analyzes received data and presents statistics about the user’s home consumption and suggests where improvements can be made. There’s personalization according to different users’ nature and habits.
If a user allows, anonymous data from the household can be shared with others and vice versa. This improves the analysis, since you can then follow up on current trends and standards. Aggregated data are also shared with appliance producers and distributors, in exchange for technical details about their appliances. Since the demand for effective appliances will grow, producers will be forced to adapt and produce more environmentally friendly devices. Meeet the team!
Congratulations and good Luck to Team Housekeepers from Slovakia! Meet Software Design Finalist Team (*void) from Portugal!This team's creative approach to recycling used vegetable oil earned them a place in the top 6 Teams! The team's solution, "Smart Containers", helps the environment in two ways. First, they collect vegetable oil that might be discarded into drains, thereby helping to preserve water supplies from contamination. Second, they recycle and convert the oil into biodiesel! Today, companies that recycle vegetable oils are facing a problem. They collect vegetable oil in
restaurants and from fast-food establishments. But most of the oil consumed isn’t being collected to recycle because it is being thrown in the garbage, or even worse, in the sink. And the few people that collect the oil for future recycling don’t know where to deliver it. This happens because companies feel that household consumers don’t collect enough oil to justify the investment. So for both sides this is a giant problem. Consumers don’t have a place to deliver the collected oil, and most of them really don’t care, using the excuse, “I don’t have time to find where the collecting point is, and go there to deliver a very small quantity periodically.” For the company, this is a problem because they collect a very small quantity in each place when compared to an industrial consumer. So our idea is to create a system that allows the regular home user to collect vegetable oil in a “smart container.” When the container is 80% full, it sends an alert to the recycling company that it is ready to be picked up and taken to a recycling facility. The investment is more profitable and much simpler for both the home user and the recycling company. Apparently, the team was brainstorming their Imagine Cup project when one member was eating. As he threw his oil into the drain after he finished cooking he was sternly reprimanded for polluting the water supply. And thus is a brilliant idea born! Smart containers: Being SMART, making it easy to do the right thing in your daily life, and turning something potentially very bad into a positive benefit for society. Congratulations to Team (*void) from Portugal on their smart contribution to the environment! We wish them the best of luck in the Software Design Finals of Imagine Cup 2008! Let's Meet the Game Development Finalists, Part 3: Team GOMZ from Korea!Team GOMZ from Korea Game Name: Clean UpThis team's game is extremely imaginative and features stunning colors and graphics. It's set in the future, when the human race has left an overly polluted planet earth. You the player are a superhero who decides to clean off the earth one bit at a time. You can choose from well known historical sites like the Leaning Tower of Piza, and then you attack the pollution with a "cleaner" by zapping it. In the team's own words: "CleanUp is composed of cubes which show real parts of the earth. Both living creatures and pollutants exist in this Cube. Our team imagined a hero who can convert pollutants into energy. A hero needs Cleaners which enable him/her to convert pollutants into energy. So the player should move actively while playing this game to get the Cleaners in all the Cubes. Through the player's effort, the environment can be sustainable and keep the The technology to help reduce pollutants and purify pollutants will show us the future that people imagine. Our sincere thoughts and actions in this technology should always work together to protect our world." Let's Meet the Game Development Finalists, Part 2: Team Mother Gaia Studios from Brazil!Team Mother Gaia Studio from Brazil Game Name: City RainImagine a world where everybody is aware of environmental issues and respects our planet. City Rain provides this world to players by teaching them lessons about urbanism, ecology, and a sustainable environment. City Rain can be used as a teaching tool to make K-12 students aware of environmental issues. Because the game has several difficulty levels, it can be slow and smooth so the players can learn, or fast and challenging so the players can test their skills and compete with their friends. The team's goal; is to educate: " With the XNA Framework technology provided by Microsoft we can teach in the best way: Students can learn while having fun. We want to make youth aware of how to make ours a better planet." The team told me they had learned a lot about the environment just by researching the game-- for example they are very intrigued by the potential of "green roof technology." Mother Gaia's Studio's presentation yesterday demonstrated some of the interactive features of their game: As you play you have the option of making money or doing the right thing for the environment-- eg building homes with green roofs that both cool homes and help reduce CO2. One team member got a bit carried away with building very lucrative factories: Things got out of balance and tornado appeared that wiped out the whole city. A powerful lesson that money isn't everything especially when it comes to protecting the planet for future generations!
Let's Meet the Game Development Finalists: Team Drunk Puppy from Belgium!Let's Meet the Game Development Finalists!Yesterday XNA Product Manager Bill Wagner introduced the Game Development teams at the Finalist presentations at the Louvre. The purpose of this competition is to use Microsoft's XNA technology to create an educational yet entertaining game about creating a sustainable environment. Each team took on a fresh approach to this big challenge. Team GOMZ from Korea tackled pollution, Team Mother Gaia Studios from Brazil's game teaches players how to create a livable and healt | |||||||||||||||||
