Spotlight Imagine Cup: Team Hawk
(Photo from Tom Ziegmann’s Flickr stream)
This Imagine Cup is special in more ways than one. After all, it is the first time the worldwide event has been held in the United States. It’s also the first time Iraq has had a presence at the World Wide finals.
Team Hawk, a team from Iraq, has traveled far and faced many challenges to come here to the United States. They built a Windows Phone 7 application for easily registering and tracking refugees in camps.
The team aims to “help refugees change their life for the better”. By registering refugees, they are able to get them welfare. Until a refugee is registered at a camp, they are essentially non-existent. Team Hawk wants to speed up this process, and help them get welfare as quickly as possible.
I sat down and interviewed Team Hawk. You can watch part one here:
While they may not have made it further, they still have overcome amazing obstacles and have great ideas. You can support them by voting for them in the People’s Choice Award voting here.
Until next time,
Patrick Godwin
Spotlight Imagine Cup: Team LifeLens
One of my favorite things about the Imagine Cup is the amazing goals many projects carry. The spirit of the competition is in the innovative thinking of each of the competitors. They come together with the common goal of “Solving the world’s toughest problems”.
Team LifeLens exemplifies this theme greatly. They have decided to tackle Malaria, hoping to make detecting the disease a relatively simple and affordable task. They developed a Windows Phone 7 application that takes pictures of different blood samples and sends them up to a cloud service for processing.
The cloud service then uses computer vision image processing to count the blood cells in the sample. It then goes through and searches for infected cells. The algorithm they developed is currently 98% accurate, as opposed to 62% accurate when they started.
Since arriving in New York for the finals, the team has been excited. They feel that they are “one of the stars of the show”, which they really are. They, along with the over a hundred competitors are all winners on their home turf. Whatever happens now, they’ve all succeeded greatly.
Team LifeLens was featured on CNN the day of the 2011 Opening Ceremonies. They, along with some other Imagine Cup competitors, presented their projects to the world. You can take a look at it here:
You can read the full article here.
LifeLens is already in talks with organizations to promote and test the solution they’ve developed. They believe that, after the Imagine Cup, they can change the world.
If you support their cause, please vote for them in the People’s Choice Awards here. I’ll be bringing constant updates about them, and other competitors, as a part of my coverage of the World Wide Imagine Cup Finals with the Student Partner Social Media Team. You can follow our coverage using the #mspsmt hashtag.
Until next time,
Patrick Godwin
Imagine a World–The 2011 Imagine Cup Card Game
If any of you follow Andrew Parsons, Academic Developer Evangelist for the New York region, on twitter, you may have seen this picture:
I wondered what could possibly be in all of those boxes, especially with the Imagine Cup in New York City approaching quickly. Well, today I got my answer.
Introducing “Imagine a World”, a card game created by student Stuart Burton:
Andrew came up to me and handed me this deck of cards. It turns out each competitor will be receiving a deck of cards to play with throughout the competition. The rules of the game are as follows.:
First Turn:
- No effects can be played.
- Player 1 shuffles and draws 5 cards.
- Player 2 shuffles and draws 6 cards.
Every turn:
- Draw a card.
- Buy Tech, Effects, and Team cards.
- Attack your opponent.
1. Draw a Card
You must draw a card if you have cards remaining in your deck2. By Tech, Effects & Team cards
You may buy one Tech, one Effect, and one Team card per turn. Play cards you buy on your field.3. Attack your opponent
Select one of your Tech cards and attack an opponent’s Tech card. If your Impact is greater than their Wow Factor, their card should be removed from play. Otherwise there is no effect.
Extra Rules
- World Event cards must be played immediately.
- You must use Money cards to buy Tech, Effect and Team cards. Other cards in your hand may be used in place of $1 Money cards.
- You may use multiple Effect cards on a single Tech card.
- You must wait a turn to use your Tech to attack your opponent unless it is the only Tech card on your field.
Optional Rule
For longer gameplay, players must choose to play cards OR attack per turn, not both.
Winning the game:
A player wins when their opponent can no longer make a play (draw a card, play a card from their hand, make an attack, etc.)
I think it’s really cool that the East Region Academic Team brought this card game to the Imagine Cup. If you enjoy the game, give a shout-out to the team members on twitter:
- Alfred Thompson
- Bob Familiar
- Erin “Ed” Donahue
- Edwin Guarin
- Lindsay Lindstrom
- Andrew Parsons
- Tara Walker
And remember to read the Microsoft Student Insider and the Microsoft Student Partner coverage of the Imagine Cup finals by using the #MSPSMT and #MicrosoftSI hashtag on Twitter.
Until next time,
Patrick Godwin
Spotlight Imagine Cup: Team Rapture
In this installment of Spotlight Imagine Cup, we’ll be taking a look of Team Rapture of Bangladesh. Team Rapture is composed of Avishek Ahmed, Mustakim Ali, and Sahidul Islam of American International University in Bangladesh. They are mentored by Ahmed Niaz Morshed.
Team Rapture is building a smart phone application, Third Eye, with the intent of helping the visually impaired with tasks. It hopes to give people with poor vision the ability to read, play games, and problem solve using a smart phone. It allows people to play games, read the news, and connect with others in a way they couldn’t due to a lack of accessibility.
You can connect with Team Rapture via their Facebook page. And you can help support them in the People’s Choice Awards by voting for them here. Be sure to follow this blog, and my Twitter account, to see my coverage of the Worldwide Finals in New York City. For the entire Social Media Team Coverage, you can follow the MSPSMT hashtag here.
Until next time,
Patrick Godwin
Spotlight Imagine Cup–Team A41 (Software Design)
The first team I met with as a part of my Imagine Cup 2011 Coverage was Team A41, a Software Design team from Puerto Rico. Team A41 consists of Francisco Fernández, Amarilys Méndez, Roberto Durand, and Juan Martí of Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico. They are mentored by Pedro Maldonado.
The team has developed a project called All 4 One Solutions, which is a suite of software that would allow scientists and organizations to crowd source research for environmental issues. It’s a mobile and web based solution designed for collecting as much data as possible.
The team identified an issue in the local ecosystem, and developed their project with that in mind. They feel that the database of information created by the crowd sourced efforts can be used to help scientists who face wildlife that destroy ecosystems around the world. An example they gave me was Coral Reef Bleaching. The data gathered can be sent to scientists around the world, allowing them to work without being around.
You can follow and root Team A41 on Twitter and Facebook. You can also support them in the People’s Choice Voting here. Be sure to follow me on Twitter as I get ready to go to New York for the World Wide Imagine Cup Finals next week. And follow the MSPSMT Hashtag here.
Until next time,
Patrick Godwin
about me
Welcome! My name is Patrick Godwin, and I'm a Computer Science Engineering Major at the University of Michigan. I'm a Microsoft Student Insider focusing on XNA, Kinect, and now Windows 8 Metro Style Apps. I'm very interested in areas surrounding NUI, Game Development, and Web Application Development.
While I primarily focus on Microsoft technologies, I am expanding to work with Node.js and other OSS technology. On this blog you'll find my thoughts, findings, and dablings with different technologies and events, like the Imagine Cup and MIX.