Foodie app wins Wowzapp award
KUALA LUMPUR: Software engineer Lim Shang Yi, 22, bested over 400 other students and software developers to grab the top prize at the Microsoft Wowzapp 2012 Hackathon for Windows.
Lim’s Food with Friends social networking app won him an Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook.
He got the idea for the app when a friend complained that he was not invited for a food outing.
“It suddenly struck me that this would be a great idea for an app. So I set out to create an app that users can easily log in via the Windows 8 People app, search for an interesting place to dine and share it with friends,” he said.
“Anyone interested in the post can comment and arrange a food outing. The information will even be shown on the user’s Start screen on Windows 8 any time they log in.”
Lim said he was surprised that he won the competition. Wowzapp was an opportunity for him to learn new skills, and to network and exchange ideas with other developers.
The purpose of the competition was to highlight the ease of developing apps for the Windows 8 operating system, said Dinesh Nair, Microsoft Malaysia developer and platform evangelist lead.
“Participants were able to test their apps while experts and trainers from Microsoft were onhand to answer questions and guide them to create their ideal app,” said Dinesh. “We are proud of the tremendous response from the local software development community. It certainly shows great promise and enthusiasm for the platform.”
The competition was held in November for 32 hours straight and is regarded as the country’s largest software development marathon. — CHONG JINN XIUNG