7 May 2009

Dundee students take on Yahoo! challenge

A team of three computing students from the University of Dundee will pit their wits against programmers from all over the world at a Yahoo! global 'Hackday' tomorrow (Friday May 8th).

The team of Matthew Ross (21, from Ellon), Laurence Hole (20, from Glasgow) and Christopher Brett (21, from Cambridge) will be flown to London at Yahoo!’s expense tomorrow to take part in OpenHack 2009, where teams are challenged to produce an innovative piece of software.

Dundee’s School of Computing has enjoyed unique access to Yahoo!’s 'hackday' challenges over the past three years, with the company holding local events on the University campus.

Matthew, Laurence and Christopher won the most recent one in March, and as a reward have been invited to take part in the international challenge, which will see them take on professional programmers from around the globe. Yahoo! stages the 'hackdays' to try and generate new ideas and open up creativity in computing.

'These Yahoo! events are a big deal and attract a lot of competition from people with years of experience in the industry, so for us as students to be invited to take part is fantastic,' said Christopher.

The team will be presenting a modified model of the project with which they won the local Dundee competition. Their 'IntelliSearch' programme allows users to navigate their way through search engines without ever having to touch the keyboard.

'The project brief we were given was 'Accessibility'and we decided to push that in the direction of increasing accessibility for people with complex disabilities and limited motor skills,' said Laurence. “People with these kinds of conditions cannot use a keyboard but may be able to use a mouse or some other form of remote control or sensor.

'The version of IntelliSearch we have at the moment uses the mouse to 'fly' through letters on the screen, which then open new menus of predictive answers, making it very easy to navigate your way through options on something like the Yahoo! search engine without ever hitting the keyboard.'

'There is a big push to make computers and new technologies more adaptable to people with disabilities, and this kind of tool could really help with that.'

The Yahoo! hackday comes just as the trio are finishing their end-of-year exams.

'It’s a great feeling to think we have just completed our third-year exams and immediately we are flying off to show off our work to one of the world’s biggest companies and seeing how it stacks up against other projects from around the world,' said Christopher.

'But we aren’t going just for the nice experience - this is a project we have put a fair amount of time and effort into, and it would be great if we could win.'

The trio are also attracting fans within Yahoo! for some of their other activities, as Christopher explained.

'We have developed a game called Zandrok which we’ve had a lot of people within the School of Computing testing and playing, but since Yahoo! were here a couple of months ago we’ve had some of their developers joining in, which is great.'

'That is something we are hoping to develop more over the summer.'

For more on Yahoo!’s OpenHack London 2009 see: http://openhacklondon.pbworks.com/.

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk