Busy UC students could get some organizing help from the "Bearcat Campus Life Assistant," a mobile phone application developed by fifth-year student Brandon Slaby. The BCLA could enable students keep tabs on events and information, pulling together a personal calendar for campus life that's available through cell phones. Slaby's innovation won a first-in-the nation competition, which boasted major corporate sponsorship, to create workable applications for smart phones.
UC Mobile, an on-campus cell phone provider, organized it, and teams from applied science, business and engineering worked the entire academic year on the project. Cincinnati Bell, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft and RCM Technologies underwrote the challenge. RCM Technologies is now evaluating each of the applications, hoping to develop those with the most promise.
Each project had to be working and demonstratable by the final presentations, held at the end of the school year. Slaby says his co-op experience at Cincinnati ad agency
Bridge Worldwide, where he worked on Web programming, helped him get through the rough spots in making the application do what he wanted. "There were many hours involved in little, stupid, quirky things," during the project, he says. But his persistence and creativity won him $1,000, a new laptop, a Windows Mobile smart phone and a free trip to Microsoft headquarters. And maybe something more valuable: "This is definitely something that will look good on the resume," he says.
Writer: David Holthaus
Source: Carey Hoffman, University of Cincinnati
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