Device to aid deaf, texting app win at HackPrinceton
Grant GolubTwo teams were named overall winners at HackPrinceton — one for creating a texting application and another for designing a product for those who communicate in sign language. The hacking competition is designed to bring together college students from all over the country to compete for various prizes by working on their own software projects. Rohan Doshi ’18, Juan Sepulveda Varon ’18 and Ruiqi Mao, a freshman from Brown, won the best software design category, whileEthan Gordon ’17, David Liu ’17 and Jeffrey Han ’17 won the best hardware design category. While the two categories both employ software in their products, the hardware category requires that the competitors use an external device that is not a regular computer as an integral part of their finished product. “I feel like I’m on top of the world right now,” said Doshi, whose team created an application called Justext, which was designed to enable users to send questions via text message to a server that replies with the information he or she is requesting. For winning the best software category, the team was awarded $1,000 in prize money, three Dell touchscreen monitors, Bluetooth speakers and an electronic whiteboard, among other rewards.The team also won the Best Use of Microsoft Technology Award, which earned it another $4,000. According to Doshi, the app is designed to connect all phones to the Internet, regardless of whether or not they have web browsing capabilities. “For people with ‘dumb-phones’ that do not have Internet capabilities, this app can connect them to the web,” Doshi added.
