By Emeka Aginam, in Warsaw, Poland


While recognizing their innovative technology solutions that address the toughest challenge of the 21st century, global software giant, Microsoft this evening at the Opera House and National Theatre of Warsaw, Poland has announced the worldwide finals at the just concluded 2010 edition of Imagine Cup, even as it gives out cash prizes totalling $240,000 across five competition categories and six awards.

Running in its eight series, more than 400 students gathered to celebrate their unique innovations, creativity and passion geared solving the world’s toughest problems as contained in the Millennium Development Goals, (MDGs)
Sponsored by Microsoft as the world’s premier student technology competition, the capacity building program began with a field of more than 325,000 high school and university students representing more than 100 countries and regions and culminated with a week-long celebration in Warsaw, Poland.

Throughout the week, the talented students demonstrated their real-world solutions and competed for cash prizes totaling $240,000 (U.S.) across five competition categories and six awards.

Already, Team Skeek from Thailand took home the grand prize of $25,000 (U.S.) in the Software Design category for their solution eyeFeel, which allows hearing-impaired people to communicate with others via an augmented-reality environment.
The solution combines speech and face recognition, converts it to English from text, and generates virtual conversation text balloons and sign language animation in real time.

The following are list of the top three winners in each of the five competition categories. Cash prizes, totalling $150,000 (U.S.), were awarded to winners across the five competition categories.

Software Design
*First position: Thailand, Skeek
*Second position: Serbia, TFZR Team
*Third position: New Zealand, OneBeep
Embedded Development
First position: Taiwan, SmarterME
Second position: Russia, MCPU
Third Place: France, GERAS
Game Design
*First position: Philippines, By Implication
*Second position: Belgium, NomNom Productions
Third Place: France, Gears Studio
IT Challenge
*First position : China, WeiQiu Wen
*Second position: Bolivia, Miklos Cari Sivila
*Third position: Singapore, Zhengbin Hu
Digital Media
*First position: Taiwan, Mirror Vita
*Second position: Saudi Arabia, Dreaming Spirits
*Third position: Singapore, Woolgathering
In addition to the competition categories above, the Imagine Cup includes six achievement awards.
These six awards provided more opportunities for students to win cash, prizes and a trip to Poland. $90,000 (U.S.) worth of cash and prizes were awarded to winners of the six achievement awards. The following is a list of these winners:
Envisioning 2020 Award. The Envisioning 2020 Award challenges students to express their vision for how technology could transform people’s lives by the year 2020.
First position: Taiwan, Jigga-Dongxi
*Second position : India, KOLA
*Third position : India, Target Locked
Interoperability Award. The Interoperability Award is designed to recognize the software application that best leverages out-of-the-box Microsoft technologies and blends them with other technologies to connect people, data or diverse systems in a new way.
*Firstposition: Jamaica, Xormis
*Second position : Brazil, Uptiva Dreams IT
*Third position : Indonesia, Chandradimuka
Next Generation Web Award. The Next Generation Web Award asked teams to write open source Web applications using modern technologies, such as Silverlight or ASP.NET, on the Microsoft Web Platform.
*First position: Korea, Wanna Be Alice
*Second Place: Poland, Rhea
*Third position : Brazil, Samba Samba
Touch & Tablet Accessibility Award. The object of the Touch & Tablet Accessibility Award is to create a new education application that uses Touch & Tablet technology while expanding the possibilities about how a user interacts with the computer.
*First position : United States, Team Note-Taker
*Second position : United States, OneView
Windows® Phone 7 “Rockstar” Award. This award challenged teams to create a Windows Phone 7 application in either Silverlight or XNA Framework that was original, visually compelling and appealing to the average consumer and that used mobile-oriented features.
*First position : United States, Beastware
*Second position : Indonesia, Tselina
*Third position : Malaysia, Hypo Team
*Windows Internet Explorer 8 Award. The Windows Internet Explorer 8 Award competition is designed to recognize software applications that create an enhanced user experience by leveraging Web Slices, Accelerators and Search Providers in Internet Explorer.
*First position : Poland, Rhea
*Second position : Poland, LittleRitle
*Third position : Poland, CieszakTeam
*Web Slice: Poland, Invention Task Force
*Accelerator: Brazil, Samba Samba
*Visual Search: Russia, BigTurtle
With excitement, Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International told the gathering that,
“These student projects are sophisticated technology accomplishments that highlight the incredible things that can happen when inspired ideas and the will to make them happen come together.
“These students should make us all proud, as they are taking concrete steps to help others and make our world a better place. With their passion and the assistance of technology, these young adults can and will affect the future.”
The Imagine Cup, according to Professor Dennis Anderson of Pace University, one of this year’s Software Design judges stands alone as a competition that is focused on applying technology to solve the biggest problems of our time.

“Microsoft has created more than a technology competition for students; it has created a lasting impact for the next generation of leaders” he said.
Responding, Pichai Sodsai of team Skeek who was full of excitement and appreciation told the capacity audience that, “We wanted to implement something that would have a unique impression on the user and also be fun to use,” said Pichai Sodsai of team Skeek. “We dare to dream and worked hard to make it come true.”
For one thing, students care deeply about their projects having an impact. This year’s projects primarily focused on solving challenges in education, healthcare and the environment. Within those, a few trends emerged among the students’ projects that spoke to specific global issues. For example, a number of projects used social networking to address carbon emissions caused by vehicle traffic, several teams created alert systems to help people quickly access local emergency services, and a plethora of solutions were designed to help the visually and hearing impaired communicate more effectively.

In addition, the increasing prevalence of cloud computing was carried into Imagine Cup projects.
Students historically have been the early technology adopters who set the pace for others, and this year’s Imagine Cup is no exception. Nearly one-third of all finalists used Windows Azure, one of Microsoft’s cloud computing offerings, to develop their projects.
Microsoft today also announced that the Imagine Cup 2011Worldwide Finals will be held in New York City, America’s financial and emerging technological center. This is the first time the United States will host the event.

The Imagine Cup was made possible by support from a number of key partners dedicated to helping students realize the potential of technology. These sponsors include Ministry of Economy in Poland, Institute of Industrial Design, Energa Group, Orange, TakingITGlobal, XNA Game Studio, Lenovo, Bradesco, Windows Embedded, Microsoft Central Marketing Group, Microsoft Interoperability, Microsoft Office Labs, Windows Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft Office of the Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Accessibility, Microsoft Learning, Microsoft/web, Windows Mobile and Microsoft Research.
Meanwhile, the following are list of the top three winners in each of the five competition categories. Cash prizes, totalling $150,000 (U.S.), were awarded to winners across the five competition categories.