The decision is finally made!

We had two hard days and it was not easy to make the final decision. After 5 hours of debate and tens of calculations, we could finally set our minds together and got to a pleasant result. It seems that now, at 1 AM in the night, we decided who will take the gold, silver and bronze medals. Moreover, we could also make clear who gets the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize in dollars.

It was great to have you with us during this time. Please be present at the awarding ceremony on Monday, 11 AM, in the ISB Campus.

No result will be made public before that moment. Do not insist!

Good night, everyone! Thank you for your participation and effort. We hope you’ve enjoyed the time spent in Bucharest!

Football Game Manager

For all you football fanatics here is a game for you packed with features, even if not all of them are implemented yet.

FGM was developed by a large team using all kind of technologies: php, mysql, c/c++.

We enjoyed their entrepreneurial spirit; they want to turn this project into money, so good luck with that!

As usual, for suggestions for further improvements we may note:

• focus on delivering the most important features first
• work on feature to differentiate yourselves from the competition

Energy Saver Manager

Energy Saver Manager (or ESM) is an application which approaches the electricity problem: waste of energy means waste of money and of resources, and the presentation emphasized this in numerous ways.

ESM was developed in Visual Basic and uses Microsoft Access as a database backend. It features three modes:

• Administrator mode: an administrator can update the location, the prices for electricity, add possible devices and consumption information for them, etc.
• Manager mode: a manager can add devices for their house hold, can configure usage parameters and generate reports to see the progress over time.
• Tips: there is a special section with tips on how to lower consumption over time. However, tips are present all over the program. For example, if you want to use a mixer, you are suggested to try and mix your juice by hand

We enjoyed the entrepreneurial spirit of the young Macedonian, and also her persuasive skills: she convinced us to turn off the lights in the judging room during the presentation.

Suggestions for further improvements:

• Convert your project to a web application
• Support text tips with visual aids
• Make relative comparisons, use percentages! Illustrate progress using charts! People are more receptive to the fact that they consumed 30% less this month, than to the fact that they consumed 50kWh less.

Text encryption in computer using genetic methods

This project presented a method for encrypting text documents using the genetic algorithm approach. Unfortunately, due to the high level of programming  and algorithm implementing skills required, we could not see a demo of the software which was still under development. However, we encourage the authors to continue work on this project and we welcome them in future InfoMatrix editions.

Recommendations:

• Expand the field of encrypted data to files, voice, etc.

Good luck!

Ancestryca

Ancestryca is an application which can store and display the ancestor tree of a family. The interface is very appealing, , and is useful for both individual families and schools. The presentation showed the family of Windsor as an example, and Prince Charles as the key figure – hence, the utility in history classes.

It would be useful:

• to make the application web-based, so that everybody can contribute to the tree
• to be able to retrieve data from common history sites or Wikipedia (including photos).

Maybe in a few years we’ll be able to see our hierarchy path up to Adam and Eve!

Forecast with Artificial Neural Networks

By using an external implementation of neural networks and a large volume of data from the Turkish weather forecast institute, the team managed to forecast weather parameters with errors as low as 0.4%, over periods of up to 3 months.

The system looks like an interesting alternative to current methods of weather forecasting.

Niels Bohr, famous scientist, once said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”. We hope that in the future, this software will help predict a sunny weather over the skies of Bucharest.

Tertemiz – Unnecessary File Deletion Tool

Tertemiz means “the most clean” in Turkish. A nice buzzword for the application, which deletes unnecessary files in the computer with a simple interface. The program was designed for Linux in Qt, actually for Pardus, a certain distribution of Linux which is, apparently, very popular in Turkey.

Unnecessary files include:

• Temporary files from the package manager
• Temporary files from the browser
• Temporary files from the interface display

Further suggestions for the development of this program:

• Try to use programming API’s provided by each application to clean the cache instead of manually deleting the folders. This way you will be protected against future changes in the program.
• Try to include this application in the Pardus distribution in the near future.
• This application can run when the low disk space signal triggers.

My Voice

My Voice is a lightweight alternative to popular voice exchange programs. It is based on a client-server architecture in which the server intermediates the transfer of messages between clients.

We hope that in the future, the program will allow 2-way conversations, or even conferences. Also, the interface should be more user-friendly, because this program competes against Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, and others.

Basarilar! (which is “Success!” in Turkish. The girls saluted the jury in Romanian, with “Bună ziua!”).

Vocabulary Trainer

The Turkish team from Tarabya Highschool in Istanbul presented a portal which can aid to learning words in foreign languages. The method is modern and makes use of images and pronunciation audibles.

As for the contents:

• The words are assigned different difficulty levels and are classified in several categories.
• There are nicely designed interfaces for managing the words.
• The system is user-based and users have the option of marking certain words as favourites (maybe for further reference?). Also, the users have a history of visited words.

Future recommendations:

• Target the program towards specifc users! (children, business persons, TOEFL candidates)
• Make use of the words in sentences!
• Include interactive learning activities, games. Especially if you target the program for children.
• Send intelligent feedback to users after taking tests.

PLPN

PLPN stands for Program for Local Presentations using the Network system. The team from Thailand designed a system which helps several people share their own presentations to only one presentation server, without the hassle of exchanging the files.

This system is very useful in:

• professional environments, where several team leaders present their achievements
• schools, where several students present their project work to their peers.

More useful features include:

• Multi-OS support (Windows and Linux for now), which is a common occurence in most groups.
• Adjustable resolution, with most screen formats already supported.
• A nice and pretty download page on the server, which is optional (and requires an Apache HTTP server).

We were surprised to find out (in the end) that the presentation was delivered using PLPN. The team had 3 laptops: the server, and 2 clients: one with Windows and one with Linux.

Suggestions for further development:

• Try not to send the whole screen to the server, but only the differences between the current and the previous screen.
• Try compressing data over the network. Maybe you will notice improvement.
• Create a user for the moderator (choose a computer, end a session etc)
• Show the connected computers on the server as separate windows
• Autodedect the connection speed and adjust bandwith usage.