Awards recognise local talents

Awards recognise local talents

With the belief that mobile phones can be much more than just communications devices, two developer teams have shown their talent by developing mobile applications which can search for places and routes to get to them, and to find and view video clips while on the move.

Published on December 11, 2007

The two teams last week won Gold Awards in Samart Innovation Awards 2007, the country's mobile-application contest, which was hosted by Samart Corporation with support from the Information and Communications Technology Ministry and Software Park Thailand.

More than 330 applications were submitted for the contest and developers from Kasetsart University and Chulalongkorn University were selected as the winners this year.

Gold Award and Media Award

Project: Siam Earth

Kasetsart University

You're on the road and want to find a way to your destination but there is no one around to help you.

Worry no further as now you can use your mobile phone to search for the route.

With the idea of using mobile phones to search for places and route information, three computer engineering students from Kasetsart University developed a mobile application called Siam Earth to allow mobile-phone users to search for routes around Bangkok.

The three students are Tossawan Klaythongkom, Nuttawit Polwattanasuk and Pathompol Saeng-Uraiporn.

Nuttawit said the application allowed users to search for places in Bangkok as well as for bus, Skytrain, subway or even railway and ferry routes. The search result comes in the form of a digital map.

He said that the application would link with Google Map, a free digital map, to pull up map information to show on mobile-phone screens. Once users search for a destination, the application will show its location on the map.

To offer search results of places and routes, the application will be linked with SiamEarth.com, a Web service site that allows users to search for places around the nation.

Users can search for areas or districts, places such as restaurants, petrol stations or shopping centres, roads, as well as mass-transit routes, and they will get a result within a minute. The application also allows users to select the types of maps to be displayed on the screen.

There are three formats of map information, the developer said. The first is a regular map, which shows only roads, while the second format is a satellite map, which includes details of buildings in each area. The third is a hybrid map, a combination of a normal map and a satellite map. This map gives more in-depth detail.

Nuttawut said users could also get more details of famous places to take a look of the overall picture of the place as well as see events that will occur at that venue.

The application also allows users to save location points and send them to other mobile-phone users through Bluetooth to direct them to that point.

Gold Award

Project: Vid View

Chulalongkorn University

Searching for video clips will no longer be limited to just personal computers. With a tiny communications device, users can also search for the video clips they want and download them to view on their mobile phone.

As the demand to see video clips is increasing, a group of computer engineering students from Chulalongkorn University had the idea of making access to video clips on the Internet easier from anywhere.

The team - Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Kamsit Rattana and Thiraphat Charoensripongsa - has developed an application called Vid View, which once installed on a mobile phone allows users to search for video clips on the Internet.

Thiraphat said the application was designed to be user friendly. Users just enter a keyword and select the site they want to search to get a result.

The application allows users to search for video clips from sites including You Tube, Google, Myspace, Metacafe, Uncut VDO and Daily Motion, for example.

He said the results would be sent from the server and show on the mobile-phone screen with a thumbnail picture and details. Users could also select the clip they want and download it to the phone.

"Just press the download button and the clip will be downloaded through the phone's GPRS or Edge network. It will take around three minutes to download each file and users can play the clip anywhere," he said.

The developer said that the program also had a favourite-keyword feature, allowing users to apply the keyword they often use for the next search.

Based on J2ME, the program is only 70 kilobytes and it supports various mobile platforms including Symbian and Windows Mobile platform.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation