Two university students emerged as the biggest winners at a Windows 8 Hackathon in Taipei on Sunday, after hundreds of Taiwanese developers worked nonstop for 36 hours to create their dream applications for Microsoft Corp’s latest operating system.
The Super Sport Agent app created by 19-year-olds Hsu Ya-ting (許雅婷) and Hung Yu-hsin (洪聿昕) won the weekend code festival’s top prize.
Hsu, a computer science and information engineering major at National Central University, said the app is capable of running on all three of Microsoft’s platforms — Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and cloud computing service Windows Azure.
Photo: Chen Ping-hung, Taipei Times
Designed primarily for tablets, the app can serve as an electronic scoreboard or as a basketball coaching board showing game strategy.
Basketball enthusiasts who are unable to attend a game can use the app via desktop computers or smartphones to receive live play-by-play updates, game statistics and profiles of each of the players, said Hung, an electrical engineering and computer science major at National Chiao Tung University.
The two were awarded NT$250,000 (US$8,600) and a Windows 8-powered tablet and smartphone for winning the event.
The weekend event was held by Microsoft to attract quality app developers in Taiwan and beef up its app portfolio for devices running on its latest operating system.
With a total purse of NT$500,000 and prizes featuring Windows 8-powered gadgets, as well as plenty of free food, the event attracted more than 300 developers, according to Microsoft Taiwan Corp.
Microsoft launched Windows 8 in late October, hoping to stay relevant in a smartphone market that is increasingly divided between Google’s Android and Apple Inc’s iOS.
At the time of the launch, Windows Phone program manager Joe Belfiore said the Windows Store had 120,000 apps, compared with the more than 700,000 apps available on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms.
More than 30,000 apps have been added to the Windows Store in the short time since Windows 8 was launched, Microsoft Taiwan said.
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