Media & Events

Unimas team wins Maxis challenge

25 Oct 2007, The Star
KUALA LUMPUR: Team FocusIT from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) beat 96 others from 35 institutes of higher learning to emerge as winner of the Maxis Mobile Content Challenge 2007. The team received a cash prize of RM30,000 and certificates of participation. Telecommunications company Maxis Communications Bhd also presented RM30,000 to Unimas. FocusIT’s winning entry was an MMS (multimedia messaging service) application called HalalPro, which helps Muslim users determine if a product is halal or not. The application uses a verification system that matches halal products to a database, using product barcodes. “HalalPro is a simple application that can be used by anyone as long as they can capture the image of the barcode with a camera phone,” said 22-year-old student Maznirahayu Rosle from team FocusIT. She and her other team members will continue working on HalalPro and hope to commercialise it next year. The second and third prizes were won by teams from Universiti Teknikal Melaka (UTeM) and Multimedia University (MMU) in Cyberjaya. They won RM20,000 and RM10,000 respectively. Maxis' challenge required participating teams to create a mobile application, game or solution in less than two months. The winners were selected based on the innovativeness, technical feasibility, user-friendliness and commercial value of the applications. Roslan Mohamad, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) content and industry development director, who was also chief judge in the competition, said the judges were impressed with the number of innovative applications submitted. “It is clear that the participants have done extensive research on their projects ... also, a number are ready to be commercialised,” he said. The competition was co-organised by the Ministry of Energy, Water and Communications, as well as by MCMC which regulates the telecommunications industry. The winners received their prizes at Menara Maxis here recently. At the prize giving ceremony, Tan Sri Megat Zaharuddin Megat Mohd Nor, chairman of Maxis Communications, said the main objective of the competition is to tap the country’s pool of creative talent and allow them to express their ideas. “With content and data services in growing demand, it is important that we (at Maxis) constantly look for innovative applications that deliver value to our customers and the community,” he said.
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