UC Mobile Competition Update

Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Cincinnati Bell, NuSoft, Dell, and UC Mobile are sponsoring a programming competition to provide opportunity and incentive for our students to design and develop creative applications for the mobile environment. Students in the College of Applied Science (Information Technology), College of Business (Information Systems), and College of Engineering (Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science) are currently participating in the competition throughout FY08. Competition winners (who we will announce during spring quarter) will receive prizes that could include cash, Dell laptops, a Windows Mobile device, and an interview at Cisco or Microsoft or Cincinnati Bell headquarters for employment internships.

During fall quarter, ten teams submitted design briefs which were judged on the clarity of conveying their mobile application concept and their ability to articulate the technical execution. The students submitted mobile concepts that included money transfer, wayfinder, event notification, presentation assessment, e-mail notification, student bulletin, and social networking.
Eight of the ten teams continued into  the development phase of the competition in winter quarter. All eight teams produced application prototypes by the end of winter quarter and must subsequently have fully functional beta applications by 30 April. Students completing the 30 April task will then have an opportunity to present their mobile applications and business cases before a panel of seven judges in May. The panel of judges is made up of competition sponsors.

To help the students succeed, each team received mobile devices and service, Visual Studio Pro 2005 software, access to a Microsoft .NET development sandbox and technical support from UCit and NuSoft (a Microsoft development partner).

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