Microsoft announces Imagine Cup 2011 winners

By Tom Warren, on 13th Jul 11 10:34 pm with 3 Comments

Imagine Cup 2011

Microsoft revealed the winners of the Imagine Cup 2011 contest on Wednesday.

The software giant held a lavish winners party on Wednesday at a special event in the Lincoln Center, New York. Microsoft’s Imagine Cup World Festival and Awards Ceremony marked the end of a six-day event covering the Imagine Cup 2011. More than 400 students from 70 countries traveled to New York to compete at the Imagine Cup 2011 finals. Microsoft narrowed the contestants down from 350,000 applicants.

“The innovators, entrepreneurs and humanitarians who compete in the Imagine Cup have developed an inspiring spectrum of projects, raising the bar higher and higher each year,” said S. Somasegar, senior vice president, Developer Division, Microsoft. “We are in awe of the students’ solutions for addressing social and real-world challenges, and want to help them take their projects to the next level with the financial, technical and business support they need to change the world.”

Microsoft awarded a number of prizes in a variety of categories. Irish Team Hermes secured the top honors in the Software Design competition. Team Hermes designed a device that plugs into cars and monitors dangerous driving and road conditions. The technology behind the device uses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

Microsoft also promised all attendees a Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) device by September, hinting that the Windows Phone update will be made available by that time. Here’s the full list of winners:

Software Design. Students create innovative software, service solutions and applications that unleash the power of technology to benefit society.

First Place: Team Hermes (Ireland)
Second Place: Team Note-Taker (United States)
Third Place: OaSys (Jordan)

Embedded Development. Students develop embedded devices, working with hardware and software to build solutions that use Windows Embedded Compact 7.

First Place: NTHUCS (Taiwan)
Second Place: Harmonicare (China)
Third Place: Endeavour_Design (Romania)

Game Design. Students select one of three tracks (Mobile, Web or Windows/Xbox) to create games that are not only fun but also help to improve the global community at the same time.

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