UK, Germany, Poland, Finland and Macedonia teams named as semi-finalists in EAA 2014
Ericsson has announced the semi finalists for the annual Ericsson Application Awards, with five of the ten semi-finalists in the two categories of company and student coming from Europe.
The UK's entry, SmartHub, is an environmental control system that allows you to remotely control electronic devices from your iPad using infrared and radio signals. It is designed to assist users with limited mobility, who may benefit from being able to control their home environment from a single device.
Germany's Team Bhangra app makes life easier and faster for PDF file users. The app allows users to attach audios, videos, images, sticky notes, hyperlinks, shapes and free hand drawings as annotations to a PDF file. Annotations are self explanatory notes, remarks, attachments or meaningful shapes for any particular piece of information in a PDF file. They help users understand the underlying information in the PDF.
Poland's SmartTM is a graphical user interface time management app that allows users to manage all of the data in Evernote (including tags and folders) and uses them to create tasks in an intuitive, fast and smart way. SmartTM synchronises with Evernote and can also be used to add new notes, tags, notebooks, reminders and sync-to-date.
The European teams are competing for the first place spots with teams from Nigeria, South Africa, India, Bangladesh and the US.
The next stage of judging will see two competitors selected for each category from the semi finalists. Winners of that round will be announced on 24 April. Following that, the winner of each category will be chosen.
'New behaviours and emerging technologies are changing how the workplace is organised. Young professionals have high expectations to stay connected at work and have different expectations on communication tools and work life in general. These teams have developed applications that have the potential to define our next generation of working life, we wish them all the best,' said Tobias Jenssen, head of strategy, marketing and communications, Ericsson Western and Central Europe.
The Ericsson Application Awards is an annual competition for application developers organised by Ericsson. The purpose of this year's theme of 'Working Life' is designed to promote innovations that will change how businesses are organised, as well as how people organise work, collaborate and share.
The semi-finalist apps will be reviewed by representatives from three to four countries globally, resulting in the selection of the top two finalist teams in each category. The winning teams will be selected by an international external jury, with the winning teams in each category receiving €25,000 in prize money.