JKUAT Shines at the Nokia QT 2012 Hackathon

Jomo Kenyatta University students emerged tops in the Nokia QT Hackathon competition that ended in Nairobi, Sunday June 24 2012.  Mike Kivuvia , a Third Year Computer Technology student developed an  application, SkinSwap, which allows one to theme (phone background look and feel) own phone based on themes (background images) of various wild animals. He walked away with KSh. 1,000,000.

Matu Jotham, a Third Year Information Technology student, came in third with his application Quickdrums, a musical beat sequencing that helps users create musical beats.

Other innovations developed by JKUAT students that were among the top 13 winners included MyBike, a sporting application that allows cyclists to monitor speed while History Management and PeopleAround, combines Foursquare and Facebook features to  help one see ‘which of your friends are near to you’. Read more…

Ericsson Widget Awards 2011

Ericsson Widget Awards is a global competition to inspire both aspiring programmers and hardcore coders to come up with fun, useful and engaging widgets for mobile devices. Show off your creativity and compete for a total prize pool of 30,000 EURO and a trip to Sweden for the prize ceremony in April.

You only need basic skills in HTML, Java and CSS to let your creativity loose and make a fun, useful, useless or just nutty widget. If you manage to charm the jury, you just might be the one to win!

The total prize sum is 30,000 EURO! See the rules of the competition at www.ericsson.com/widgetawards. Please submit your contributions before the submission deadline March 1 2011. Start making your widget and register to the competition today

1. Register to the competition
2. Define your idea for a widget. What is a widget?
3. Develop the widget. Read Opera Mobile Widgets development process on how to get started.
4. Test your Widget on Opera Widgets Mobile Emulator.
5. Submit your widget here

The advantages to the developers/companies other than the prize money will include:

1. Visibility and promotion
2. Possibility to distribute apps in selected markets  on commercial basis – e.g. revenue share
3. Insight into new technologies and trends

 

You can find sample code, libraries and full documentation on Opera Widgets from Opera Widgets SDK. For more information visit the competition’s website or find them on Facebook.

Your face is all you’ll need at an ATM

An ATM with facial recognition project by JKUAT students under the guidance of Dr. Waweru Mwangi is featured in today’s Nation Newspaper.

You may soon withdraw money from an Automated Teller Machines without using your credit or debit card, thanks to a face recognition technology in the making.

Known as the Basic Intelligent Automated Teller Machine, if the new device is incorporated in the current ATMs, all one will require to get money is to stand in front of the machines.

It is the brainchild of Dr Waweru Mwangi, the director of the Institute of Computer Science and Information Technology at Jomo Kenyatta University, and is on display at the national scientific conference in Nairobi.

Click here to read the rest of the article.