It鈥檚 an app that works for dessert too.
Of course, in this case, 鈥渁pp鈥� is short for application, but 鈥淒alEats,鈥� which won Dal鈥檚 second-annual mobile app competition, certainly appealed to the foodies who dropped by the Goldberg Computer Science Building last Thursday.
The idea of the competition, hosted by the Faculty of Computer Science, is to challenge some of Dal鈥檚 best student programmers and developers by having them develop a functioning mobile app in less than a month. Specifically, the students were asked to design an app to benefit some portion of the Dal community, be it current or prospective students, faculty and staff, alumni or the surrounding community.
DalEats, developed by CS student Casey Yu, is a food app that allows students to track their dining on campus.
鈥淚t would include all the dining hall menus, as well as all the health information about the food,鈥� she explained. 鈥淵ou can even subscribe to your favourite foods and get alerts when they鈥檙e going to be served.鈥�
The app was one of many that impressed the judges, whose ranks included Vice-President Academic and Provost Carolyn Watters, Vice-President Finance and Administration Ken Burt and Assistant Vice-President Student Academic Success Services Meri Kim Oliver.
鈥淵ou really blew everyone away,鈥� said Dr. Watters. 鈥淛ust a terrific set of apps made in a very short period of time.鈥�
Making Yu鈥檚 win all the more impressive is that while many of the entries were by a team of students, hers was a solo effort. For her work, she received the competition's top prize of $750.
An impressive app spread
Don鈥檛 go looking for DalEats or any of the other dozen or so competition entries on your favourite app store just yet: these were prototypes, although some of them seemed rather complete considering the students had only a month to work on them. The competition鈥檚 organizers did encourage the students to continue working on their apps and consider pitching them to the appropriate Dal department. (There were representatives from across the university on hand to check out the winners.)
鈥淭iger Connect,鈥� developed by Will Blades and Noah Tong won second prize ($500) in the competition. It allows students to collect social media feeds related to Dal 鈥� from Dal News to the DSU 鈥� and pick the ones they want to follow in a single convenient location.
鈥淩ight now it鈥檚 mostly Twitter feeds, but the idea would be that it would bring in as much Dal content from the Internet you want, sharing more about what鈥檚 happening in the community,鈥� explained Blades.
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Third prize, $250, was awarded to 鈥淒alScholaris鈥� by Philip Yeo, Mei Kuan Wong and Guatambir Chawla. The app lets users stay logged into EZproxy while searching for results on Google Scholar, meaning they don鈥檛 have to enter their Dal credentials multiple times.
鈥淵ou can view all the articles you have access to right on your tablet,鈥� said Chawla. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about making life easier.鈥�
The people鈥檚 choice award, which also came with a $250 prize, went to Skizzo, a campus map application that not only guides users to buildings on campus, but to individual rooms within the buildings.
鈥淚t brings up the floor plans and marks the room for you,鈥� explained Tyler Pachal, who developed the app with Jonathan Wong and Brenden Krochko. Their app also displays its navigation text in 13 different languages.
Other apps in the competition included a mobile Dal Card, an app for Dal Online content and a community polling app that showed the latest results on a real-life weighted scale.
The prizes were sponsored by the President's Office and Student Services.