A team made up of three post-graduate students from Wits University are finalists in the SIMagine 2007 competition at the 3GSM Conference being held in Barcelona, Spain.
The three developed Mobiraba, a cellphone version of the popular Morabaraba board game.
The competition, which aims to find the most innovative SIM card developers, brought together more than 80 teams from around the world to the second round, 15 of which are South African. Of these teams, eight finalists were chosen.
Professor Barry Dwolatzky, academic director at the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), says David Vannucci, Rolan Christian and Teddy Mwakabaga, who are all completing their PhDs on topics around convergence, developed the game in the Wits convergence lab, which is one of the JCSE's laboratories.
"The three developed the Java SIM-based application with a SIM toolkit provided by Gemalto as part of the competition. With Mobiraba, players are able to log on to a gaming server via GPRS and compete against each other.
"The online server maintains the results of all the players, as well as rankings and a record of each game," he says.
Mobiraba was one of eight applications that made it through to the finals. Should Mobiraba win the competition, the three will receive 15 000 euros (about R140 000) in prize money.
The second prize winner receives 12 000 euros, while the third place winner receives 10 000 euros. The remaining five finalist teams receive 5 000 euros each.
Colin Webster, president of Mind Sports SA (MSSA) says Morabaraba is the most popular game in SA, with around 20 million players. Through MSSA, Morabaraba players are able to receive their Protea colours.
The game is also played across Africa and in some European countries and dates back thousands of years, he says. He adds that of the 10 previous world champions, seven have been from SA.
Related stories:
SA prominent in SIMagine competition
JCSE promotes Java-based SIM apps
Share