Programming Competition Brought To You By The IT Standards Committee


MEET THE WINNERS

SMU SIS students Jonathan Zhan & Mohammad bin Mohsin
and entrepreneur Jacqueline Choo
(Team 0x539)


Jonathan Zhan, Jacqueline Choo & Muhammad bin Mohsin - Team 0x539

"It was challenging to discover what we could build in 24 hours. The competition was daunting, as it included not just our peers, but industry professionals. Though tiring, it was ultimately rewarding."

 

In the News

24 hours to create a program and trio wins trip to Google land
At the Code Xtreme Apps computer programming competition held at SMU's School of Information Systems, a team of two SMU students and an entrepreneur came up with the winning application – a program that allows users to share information on and rank Singapore's tourist attractions and events.
The Straits Times, 29 Sep (Sep 29)

Website Becomes a Ticket to Google USA
An interview with SIS undergraduate Muhammad Bin Mohsin on his team “0x539” on winning the Code Xtreme Apps competition and the trip to visit Google headquarters in the US.
Berita Harian (Sep 29) - with English translation

62 teams in 24-hour programming contest
A team of two students from SMU beat 61 other teams to clinch the top prize in a programming contest called Code:XtremeApps.
The Business Times (Oct 1)
Channel 5 (Sep 28)
Channel 8 (Sep 28)
Warna (Sep 28)

3 Singaporeans Win Trip to Google HQ
3 young Singaporeans - SMU 3rd year students Muhammad Mohsin and Jonathan Zhan together with entrepreneur Jacqueline Choo - beat out more than 60 teams to become champions in the first ever 24 hour Computer Programming Competition. They won an all expense paid trip to visit Googleplex, the headquarters of IT giant Google, located in California, USA.
938LIVE (Sep 28)
938LIVE (Sep 28)

No merger is likely between IDA and MDA: Dr Balakrishnan
Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan presented prizes to the winning team of Singapore 's first 24-hour computer programming competition – comprising two SMU students Muhammad Mohsin and Jonathan Zhan, and an entrepreneur Jacqueline Choo.
Channel NewsAsia (Sep 28)

 
The Judges' Choice

The top team is 0x539, which is made up of two SMU students (Muhammad bin Mohsin, Jonathan Zhan) and a young female entrepreneur (Jacqueline Choo). They have built a community driven application where users can share information about attractions in Singapore .

Members can recommend new attractions, and tag them with categories. Users can search for attractions based on these customized categories and cross reference them with a specific budget. There are other usual community functions such as being able to rate comments and attractions, and upload photos. Their application is relatively complete, and combines innovative features with a clean and easy to use interface.

They have made good use of the suggested tools (for the competition) and ultimately produced a complete yet extensible application.

 
The Winning Entry
Given the theme of tourism or hospitality in a participative society, we felt that it was important to focus on building an application that supports the notion of user participation. Many of the most popular sites on the Internet today share the common characteristic of being community driven, and we felt that it was a good paradigm to pursue.

Hence, we have built a community-driven application that users can utilize to share information about attractions in Singapore. Users can recommend new attractions and categorise them with tags to make it easier for other users to find them. Users can search for attractions by browsing these categories, or by searching for specific terms that interest them.

We allow users to rate attractions they like or dislike, and to add their own comments, so that people can learn things about attractions from the experiences of others. Users can also rate the value of other users' comments, to help future readers find useful comments at a glance.

Ultimately, we feel that a site that allows users to communicate their interests and experiences about Singapore has a number of benefits. It creates an open arena for the community to speak about what they enjoy about Singapore. This establishes user trust and acts as an enabler for the important process of sharing opinions, much more effectively than the traditional model of attractions advertising themselves with static pages which users absorb passively as informational content.

 
Photos & Video
View photos here. Watch the video here.

 

Go to the ITSC website at http://www.itsc.org.sg/codeXtremeApps.html
for more information on code::XtremeApps::