Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009 Worldwide Finals

NYP’s Team PlanetKY Wins Second Prize at Imagine Cup!

NYP has once again made its mark at the prestigious Microsoft Imagine Cup. Team PlanetKY took second prize in the MashUp category at the worldwide finals in Cairo, Egypt.

A total of 444 students from 149 teams representing 70 countries and regions competed in nine categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Development, IT Challenge, Robotics and Algorithm, MashUp, Photography, Short Film and Design.

Wen Bin with mentors Ricky Ho and Kang Siew Hwa.  (Planet KY team member James Yeo not in picture)

Team PlanetKY comprising two of our final year Diploma in Multimedia & Infocomm Technology students Kong Wen Bin and James Yeo, out-performed other teams and went on to represent Singapore in the World Finals at Cairo, Egypt.

The team created "VENews - Virtual Earth News" that uses MashUp technology to gather the latest environmental news from RSS feeds around the world and present them intelligently on Microsoft Virtual Earth. VENews uses a Mashup application to retrieve information from various sources and re-mixes them, enabling the user to view a holistic environmental picture of the Earth.

For Wen Bin, the experience has taught him how to cope with unexpected changes. It was only close to midnight on the first day of the competition when all six finalists of the MashUp category were informed that they had to make a presentation the following day.

“Everyone was a little shocked as it was late at night. We were told that we were required to convince the judges as to why our projects deserved to win,” recalled Wen Bin. To prepare for this presentation, Wen Bin and his mentors thought of possible questions and how best to answer them.

Wen Bin added, “It was a very stressful experience especially when I felt the judges seemed impressed with the other teams’ projects. So I was ecstatic when PlanetKY was announced the second prize winner together with the Monastry of Innovations Team from Poland.”

PlanetKY won a trophy and USD$4000 cash.

This is not the first time which NYP has done well in the Microsoft Imagine Cup. Last year, another NYP team “Trail Blazers” won top honours in the Embedded Development category. Our heartiest congratulations to PlanetKY!