Singapore Student Developers the best in Asia!
Local students beat 3000 teams, win Asia software development competition in Beijing
Singapore February 28th, 2003 - A team of four students from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University have beaten almost 3000 other teams to win the Asia Pacific Student .NET Competition held in Beijing this week.
The winners were announced yesterday. Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation, personally presented Tablet PCs to the members of Singapore's winning team: Kapil Vaidyanathan, Anumeha Bisaria, Harishankar Vijayarajan, and Kunal Talwar.
The four winning students will represent Singapore at the Worldwide Student .NET Competition being held in Barcelona, Spain from June 30 to July 4, 2003.
'This is amazing,' said Talwar, a fourth year Computer Engineering student. 'We all worked really hard to bring this invention to life. It started as a classroom idea, and now here we are here talking about it with Bill Gates,' he said.
The team's winning entry was AUTOSHOP, an innovative application designed to make shopping easier and more fun. The team used Microsoft Visual Studio.NET to create the solution based on XML Web services. AUTOSHOP provides shoppers a range of special services accessed through a touch screen computer mounted on the handlebars of a shopping trolley. Some AUTOSHOP services are:
- A timesaving GPS-like tracking system that helps shoppers to locate items within a store.
- A personalised shopping list that users can access from anywhere via the Internet. The list is displayed on the trolley touch screen. The screen also displays product information and promotions.
- Customers can use a barcode reader attached to the side of the trolley to learn about product specials and track the value of items in their trolley.
- Shoppers can scan items on the shelf and request home delivery. No need to lug that heavy sack of rice all the way home.
- AUTOSHOP can also locate your friends in the store and alert you when they come or go.
Microsoft Singapore Managing Director Andy Zupsic congratulated the team. 'We're very proud of them. The Singapore team members have proven themselves the best student developers in the region. Now we are excited to see them show that they can be the best in the world.'
The Asia Pacific Student .NET competition, now in its second year, is a unique opportunity for computer science, engineering or information systems students to showcase their programming skills and creativity in XML Web services by developing next-generation applications.
This year's event attracted about 15,000 students in almost 3000 teams from 11 Asia-Pacific countries and territories. Twelve top teams were selected to compete in the Asia Pacific Student .NET Competition 2003 finale in Beijing on February 26th. Each team was asked to develop an original XML Web services application using the award-winning .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET.
'It was great to see the energy and passion among the students,' said Colin Png, Regional Director, .NET and Developers, Microsoft Asia Pacific and Greater China. 'Our goal was to provide the students with a great technology platform to adopt and innovate on XML Web services. The .NET skills these students acquired during the competition will be tremendous assets in their future IT careers.'
The judging panel of the Beijing finals included:
- Professor Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan, of the India Institute of Science
- Associate Professor Min Duk Gi, of Konkuk University (Korea)
- Professor Zhong Chen, of Peking University (PRC)
- Mr. Hanny Santoso, of Bina Nusantara University (Indonesia)
- Colin Png, Regional Director, .NET and Developers, Microsoft Asia Pacific and Greater China
Students from all four winning teams will receive an all-expenses-paid invitation to attend the upcoming Microsoft TechEd Conference in Barcelona, Spain, from June 30th to July 4th, 2003, where they will be able to participate in the first Worldwide Student .NET Competition.
Each member of the first-placed team received a Tablet PC, courtesy of Acer Corporation. Each student of the second-place team won a Pocket PC, courtesy of Legend Computer.
The 2003 Asia Pacific .NET Competition was organised by Microsoft with the official sponsorship of Acer Corporation, Legend Computer, and CNC.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq 'MSFT') is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software ? any time, any place and on any device.
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James Brasher
Baldwin Boyle Shand
DID: (65) 6230 5129
Mobile: (65) 9437 0553
Email: james.brasher@bbspr.com.sg
Charlene Chian
Marketing Communications Manager
Microsoft Singapore
DID: (65) 6433 5672
Mobile : (65) 9677 2562
Email: cchian@microsoft.com
