Saturday, December 15, 2012

eClub awarded the winners


eClub awarded the top mobile applications in the Samsung and eClub competition this Monday. If you own a Samsung Android phone or tablet, test them, they are great!

The panel of judges have selected the top applications in two categories Samsung Galaxy Note and Tablet.

Note category:

  1. LearnToWrite   
  2. Puzzloid    
  3. Easy Coloring  

Tablet category:

  1. Prettymeter      
  2. Abalone    
  3. Activity


The awards were given away by the Samsung president Mr. JinHwan Kim and Prof. Vladimir Marik, the chair of the Department of Cybernetics of CTU FEL. The winners in both categories got not only the scholarship provided by MediaLab Foundation and supported by Samsung, but also the great Samsung devices. I hope this will be an inspiration for all participants to create more awesome applications.

The winning apps are currently for Samsung customers only, they will be available on the Android Play market in the second half of 2013. If you own a Samsung phone or tablet download them and give them a try. If you do not own a Samsung device, get one. I had a chance to get my hands on the latest Galaxy S III mini for a few days and I must admit it is a great and inspiring device with a lot of nifty additions to basic Android.

All of us in eClub are happy to see new finished and working applications available for users, that is the best achievement  Currently, we are trying to put together plans for the next semester and the lesson I have learned: we have to put more emphasis on finishing stuff, to not wait, try to make things happening. I am also hoping we will even extend our cooperation with Samsung and other industrial partners. I am looking forward to meet all of you for the next eClub starting middle of February.




Thursday, December 6, 2012

Awesome Demo Day in eClub

Eight teams have presented great mobile applications for Samsung Galaxy tablets and the Note devices. Currently, the jury is deliberating. eClub will announce the winners and give away the prices next Monday.

This year eClub has organized a different competition than in the last rounds. We have worked with Samsung and prepared interesting prices for new mobile devices applications. Mainly student’s teams participated. We were very lucky to see programmers and designers from CVUT and the Tomas Bata University in Zlin forming teams. The top three will be announced next Monday (Dec 10) and will receive 20, 15 and 10k Czech crowns. The winning team members will also be awarded with the mobile devices. There are two sets of winners in two categories tablet and note.

We have met for the apps Demo Day this Monday (Dec 3) it was simply an awesome event. The presentations of All teams were very well prepared and gave excellent presentations in a great style. The Demo Day also attracted a big crowd of friends who created nice atmosphere with a lot of jokes. Check it out on our web. We saw eight presentations in two categories for tablets and the s-pen. Here is the list applications:

Abalone designed by Tomáš Veselý, Kateřina Ondrušová.  This is a simple strategy game for one or two players. It runs on tablets as well as on phones. The goal of the game is to push six opponent's marbles out of the board. The game has a very nice and clean graphics.

Memory Animals Ondřej Hrabal, Marek Polčák, Martin Chloupek  This is a simple memory training game authored by a group of CTU students. The game is known under the name pexeso. It is a guessing game, the goal is to match cards faces. Very nicely done.

One of the most technologically advance applications is the Prettymeter by Pavel Šimurda, Tomáš Vahalík, Jan Plešek. It answers the ever lasting question: mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful one of all? Yes, this is the technology for estimating the beauty. Very useful.

The Social Puzzle by Michal Knizek, Jiri Balcarek, Martin Curda explores the Facebook photos in a new exciting way. The users are challenged with putting together pictures broken to puzzle pieces. Play puzzle with your friends photos!

Fall Detection designed by Jan Pechan aims at seniors or people with handicap  It is very useful in case they fall down and need help to stand up.

LearnToWrite by Vladimir Blazek, Vaclav Podlipny, Lubomir Helcl android.asgards.eu is a simple game for kids teaching them how to properly write characters. This application takes advantage of the unique features of the Samsung Galaxy note. Their presentation was great, the team has done a small usability study and filmed kids using the application, which was part of the presentation. Worth to see it, very entertaining.

Easy Coloring by Ondřej Hrabal, Marek Polčák, Martin Chloupek is another game for kids. As you would guess it offers kids tools for coloring set of pictures. This is a very advanced application with a nice set of brushes and pens.

Activity by Tomáš Sixta, Christian Jánský created a remake of the well known game Activity. The main goal in this game is to get to the end as fast as possible.

The applications are available on the Samsung market and we plan to put them on the Play market in the second half of the 2013. Some of the apps are already so successful that they have hundreds of downloads. Let me conclude with inviting you for the award ceremony to meet and talk to the winning teams.