Imagine Cup Malaysian Finals (Software Design)
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal
The Imagine Cup is an annual competition organized (and sponsored) by Microsoft. Check out the detaials at TheSpoke.net.
So yesterday, the finals for the software design category was held at Microsoft’s auditorium at KLCC (29th floor, Tower 2). TAR College had a team (Creative Brains) which made it into the finals, so they wanted us to, basically, go support them. A college bus was arranged for us, and we were leaved at 7.40 in the morning, supposedly reaching there for breakfast at 8.30. Nuts, we we’re still stuck at Jalan Genting Klang at 8.40.
Never mind that part. Going up to the 29th floor was a lengthy affair. You had to get a temporary pass, go through security and take the right elevator. As you would expect, Microsoft had a really nice looking office.. haha..
So let’s get on with the team presentations. A total of 8 teams made it into the finals. 4 of them were from MMU (Cyberjaya and Melaka) and 1 each from UTAR, TARC, UKM and APIIT (I think).
First team up was from MMU Melaka. Boy, was that fella nervous. It was evident the presenter had little public speaking experience. They’re the only team that sort of, re-invented the wheel. They literally built a “framework” that allows tracking of environmental data. They even had little devices that senses the amount of light. Lastly, they had a several sample apps that could be built on their framework: monitoring, statistics and stuff like that. My take? Wasn’t bad, but it doesn’t really tackle anything new. It’s just, repeating something that already exists.
Next was also a team from MMU. Their app is something like a reminder to “computer potatoes” to get of their asses and do some exercises. They had Microsoft’s Genie as your “fitness instructor”, guiding you through some routines to prevent RSI. Parents could also monitor they’re childs’ computer usage, locking up the computer if necessary (via SMS). The best part of course, is using a web cam, the app was able to estimate your eye’s (or rather, face) distance from the monitor. Hence, a warning will appear if you stick to close to the screen.
What I liked about it is that it’s really practical. It really addresses some health issues and the application was well written too, unlike the next one..
Our team from TARC had an app called “Aroma.Net”. The idea was that the app would turn on some of those perfume emitting stuff, when needed. However, there were some parts that I just could not understand: users can go online to find new scents. So I download the “scent” and just “play” it?? Setting the app up to produce the scent I want was also a pain in the ass: users would need to go through a lengthy wizard. One of the steps prompts you to choose the effect scents should have. Among the options that you could choose were “relaxing” and “calming”. Aren’t they pretty much the same?
I particularly hated one of the team members. He was one cocky mother-fuckin’ asshole. The moment he “strolled” out, I felt like giving him a slap. That was even before he opened his mouth. Thankfully, he just did some intro. I would say Moy (one of the other team member) did much better. I liked the idea of their app, but I just feel that not much thought or effort was put into it’s design and implementation. It pretty much sucked. Worse off, it had error messages that read like: “Error1”.
A team from MMU (one of them was obviously not the “undergrad” you’d picture – he was already balding) presented next. Their system could read human signals, such as eye blinks my monitoring the electronic pulses (or something like that). It was pretty technical, but their system stopped there. They claimed that it’ll allow the disabled to turn things on/off with the blink of an eye.. That’s just hilarious.. what there’s dust in his eyes?? I hardly have any idea why their system was known as “Stress Reductions System” either.
After a 10 mins break, presentations were continued. This time, two of the worst systems were shown: vAlcoholics and IFlora (from USM I think). vAlcoholics was sort of a system that monitors your alcohol drinking activites. The dumb part was: users would use their PDAs (wonder how many people have Pocket PCs) to fill out a survey form, asking how often you drink and such. Need I say more?
iFlora (dubbed “Planting@Home” by me and my friends), uses a web cam to monitor plants. You could water them, and uh.. I think that’s about all. To make their app a little “feature-packed”, they had dumb shit like forums and even IM (with a nudge button!). Besides being crappy, I felt that it has absolutely zero practical use. At least the vAlcoholics system was better written.
The best presenter, was a guy from the UTAR team. Their system, entitled “Mobile Medic” is a “next-gen online health system that allows patients and doctors to check health status and perform paperless/online consultation”. I liked the idea. However, I think there was still some room for improvement: for one, the website design wasn’t anything to write home about. It was a cluttered, multi column design. Worse part was, the dumb fella seated at the computer fired off mouse clicks so fast, I could hardly see what he was clicking on. Not a good thing to do in presentations.
The UTAR team was asked about who would they target as adopters for this system. Weirdly, he answered: government. Why would the government want to keep track of millions of patient records? More importantly, who the hell would trust the Malaysian government with such sensitive data? A more probable person responsible for the management of the central database would be a hospital.
Lastly, a team from UKM presented their “Patient Tracking System”. Basically, their system uses RFID to track the location of patients in a hospital ward. I really liked the idea. But, there was much left to be desired in terms of system features. They were just using passive RFID, not active. Hence, the actual tracking wasn’t really done. Second of all, to gain widespread adoption, it would be great if the building plan could be drawn/imported into the system by end-users.
The only teams to use WPF were UTAR and UKM. UTAR’s WPF usage was limited to their presentation and a 3D representation of the human body. UKM had the entire floor plan and system UI done in WPF. Sadly, the floor plans and UI were all in 2D, hardly tapping into the potential of WPF.
Nearly all of the systems presented used ASP.NET as their web front. After all, the requirement was that the system be a web service. UTAR’s web front would really really have benefited if they used Atlas (AJAX for ASP.NET).
Me and my friends thought about it, and we decided that Anti Computer-Potato, Mobile Medic and Patient Tracking System would finish in the top 3. To our surprise, TARC’s Aroma.Net grabbed 3rd spot. Very, very unjustified. They didn’t deserve top 3. Mobile Medic finished behind Anti ComPo in the end.
Some t-shirts were distributed later, and I managed to grab 2 of them.. ;-p hehe… will post pictures of them later.. we decided to ditch the college bus so we could eat before heading back by lrt on our own.. the bus would take too long to reach and we’d be starved by then..
View all photos here. Sorry, most of them are not clear.. since I had to extend my far out as k750 doens’t have optical zoom..
One Response to “Imagine Cup Malaysian Finals (Software Design)”
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Danny Foo Says:
July 27th, 2006 at 1:03 pmAll of them had ideas but if I were the judge, I’d be thinking which is more practical and important now. There was the environmental data collector which is unique, the exercise reminder that addresses a very common issue, the scent maker which everyone is trying to build, the plant monitor for plant hobbyists, mobile medic to track health and patient tracker to track criminals who are warded in hospitals or patients in psycho ward that run off with respitory system in tact. I’m just being dumb. :P
Anyway, I think the exercise was chosen from the group probably because it’s more practical and current. I wasn’t at the place so I can’t really say how good were the facts presented that it won them the qualification.
But overall, it’s good to know there are good ideas among the few that are imitations of what’s trying to be done outside and merely a race of who does it first. :)
