A total of 106 teams from 51 universities and colleges participated in a competition organized by the Industrial Development Bureau of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (Moeaidb), The 10th National Collegiate Service Innovation and Projects for Information Managemnt Awards, on Dec 17. TKU topped the Information Technology category, while winning a second and a third in the category of Information Applications. For these results, the chair of TKU Department of Information Management, Shaw Ruey-shiang wants to thank the efforts the students put in and the support of the university to his department.

The team that won the number 1 consists of seven students. They wrote an easy to use and yet sophisticated digital system that maps our galaxies on the computer for astronomic purposes. The team that won the first runner-up, on the other hand, designed a digital guiding system for visually impaired people, named “E-Guide Dog.” This design was developed quite some time ago, so it has gone through several successful trials already. It is, in fact, on the verge of a commercial breakthrough as Hewlett-Packard is showing some interest in its market potential. Should that happen, it would become a well-known product worldwide.

The third award went to an interesting but a potentially highly controversial application—checking on someone’s identity with an image captured by a cell phone. That is, once you take of photo of someone you fancy with your cell phone, you can send it on line to a databank to “check out” that person’s background. It’s a great way of finding out whether that person is a “good catch” or not, yet, it also opens doors for some amateur James Bonds who want to “snoop” on other people’s secrets!

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