Microsoft SA last night announced the South African winners of its annual Imagine Cup programming competition. Now in its 11th year, the Imagine Cup is a global contest for student developers, run by Microsoft.
Microsoft SA developer and platform team head Clifford de Wit says the competition aims to foster innovation in the student space, challenging teams to solve real-world problems.
This year saw 78 teams from universities around the country compete for a place in the global final - to be held in St Petersburg, Russia, in July. Some 1.65 million students across the globe have participated in Imagine Cup over the past decade, De Wit says.
The company describes the Imagine Cup as its premier student technology competition.
The winning project, SentiMeter, is a big data social media analysis tool that competes with products like Brandseye, Radian 6 and BrandWatch. The product's creators include University of Johannesburg (UJ) mentor Dr Ian Ellefsen, Computer Science Masters students Jan van Niekerk and Merrick Benghis, and Computer Science Honours student Lorenzo Boccetti. UJ has won the local competition three times in the last four years, and two years in a row, says Ellefsen.
SentiMeter was entered into the cup last year, says De Wit, and part of its appeal for the judging panel this year is that it has persisted, and grown, and shown it's a viable commercial offering.
"The tool combines sentiment analysis derived from an identified location anywhere in the world and various social platforms to provide companies with detailed reports, trends and insights," says Van Niekerk. The offering has just gone into closed beta.
"UJ assisted us to set up our own company and we are testing actively in real world environments to see what companies find useful, what features they want, etc. We have had interest from companies wanting to buy our IP, but we want to keep it and push it, and show that a local company can compete with international offerings."
He says the team wants to take SentiMeter into the US, Europe and Asia once it's established locally. SentiMeter currently only tracks English language posts, but the team has plans to expand its language base, specifically looking at languages that are used across Africa, Bhengis says.
SentiMeter is sold on a subscription basis, and the more you want to analyse, Benghis comments, the more you will be charged. Various packages are available.
Senegal, Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya will also enter teams into this year's competition. SA has not yet won the global contest. A local team - WhereIsMyTransport - won an innovation award at the global finals in 2008, but that is the closest the country has come. WhereIsMyTransport has been commercialised and is operational in Cape Town.
The event this year saw entries across three categories - Gaming, Innovation and World Citizenship. Microsoft also included an additional App Challenge, where students were challenged to build apps for the Windows 8, Windows Phone and Windows Azure platforms.
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