More than 130 projects were submitted to the fourth edition of the SIMagine 2003 Worldwide GSM and Java Card Developer Contest. At a gala dinner at the 3GSM World Congress at Cannes in February, an international jury selected three winners from ten finalists who presented their projects during the show.

Gold Award

EtnoTeam, Italy – for a location-based application called Locate & Map that enables users to access a map of the area in which they are currently located.
“SIMagine gave us contacts with Italian Mobile Telcos and other customers, eg in the Finance market, for our prototype. Even if it is not yet possible for me giving too many details about it (NDA's are pending), I'm optimistic and proud of what's going on - great opportunities and great business on the horizon.”

Silver Award

SoNear, France – for Intelligent Conference – an automated set-up of voice conference between fixed and mobile users.
“The key benefit of SIMagine is an increased visibility that allowed us to develop close relationships with several operators and industrial partners. We are now developing new services which could be good candidates for the 2004 contest.”

Bronze Award

Vaka Technology, Hong Kong – for Ringboard+ - a J2ME Java Card smart whiteboard and chatting application.
“SIMAGINEprovides the perfect place for top developers to share our ideas with industry leaders and prospective customersaround the world. It creates fruitful opportunities for us to launch our applications into the real world. VAKAworks closely with Schlumberger teams to integrate together complementary products and technologies.“

SIMagine 2003 finalists

EtnoTeam – Locate & Map
This service allows users to access a map of the area in which they are currently located through a SIM ToolKit application providing the CellID to a back end server. The server maps the CellID into geographical coordinates and then sends back an MMS of the area. The map can be browsed and possibly zoomed. Furthermore, the map can be enriched by text and audio.

SoNear, France - SoNear Convergence
SoNear Convergence is an Intelligent Conference that automates a voice conferencing between fixed and mobile users. This application is part of the SoNear application environment - a new patent-pending infrastructure-independent fixed mobile voice convergence technology that enables a series of new value-added voice services and intelligent call management for users of fixed and mobile phones.

Vaka Technology, Hong Kong - Ringboard+
Ringboard+ is a J2ME-Java card smart whiteboard and chatting application that enables simultaneous multi-party voice + data communication and collaboration. Applications include progressive chatting, dating, on-the-go presentation. It features Java card-driven dynamic voice call and data routing, dual-channel transport GSM/GPRS (voice) and SMS (data).

Cellnext Solutions Ltd – JTijori
JTijori provides a Java Card™ based application that provides secure storage of sensitive data in the SIM card of a user’s mobile phone. With its password authentication and encrypted data storage mechanisms, the confidential data of the user remains highly secure and since it is stored in the SIM card of a mobile device the user can access the data anytime he wants.

S-Tecno – SIM Companion
SIM Companion is a software agent that turns your SIM card into an interactive city guide. You can ask your agent, in natural language (just like sending him an SMS) or through menus, “what’s fun around here?” or “where should I eat for under 10 EUR?”. Your SIM companion will then connect to its content provider (depending on the country and/or city you’re in), and fetch the appropriate information for places nearby, sending you driving directions, maps and/or a picture of the place you should go to, in an informal, friendly way.

PurpleAce – JustDial
JustDial allows subscribers to send voice messages along with their SMS to any email address or phone number. Using patent-pending technology, JustDial provides a user-friendly, entirely natural way of sending voice + text messages to friends and associates. Subscribers can send voice messages to emails and mobile phones, from any phone, in exactly the same way as they place phone calls. JustDial provides a clear migration path for operators to provide text + voice messaging to their subscribers, regardless of the network in use.

Inetique – Java card applets generation tool
Application for automated generation of card applets and OTA-based proxy server. This system will enable the access of Web services without hard coding. The application automatically generates a card applet using just a web service definition (WSDL) file. This system automates the process of creating and adding new elements (applications) to the SIM card menu.

National University of Singapore - SIMBAD
SIM Bluetooth ADvertising (SIMBAD) offers a method for targeted commerce in an interactive environment. It offers a new and effective way for advertising to reach the customers and for customers to reach the
advertisers. With SIMBAD, advertisers can target their advertisements to customers who are interested in their product and make it easy for customers to make purchases anywhere and anytime.

Nanyang Technological University – location-based alert engine
Reminders today are primarily based on time. There is a need for a scheduler that not only allows users to set reminder and alerts based on time but also on location. This application provides a network-based alert engine that allows users to associate alarms with the description of a location. The user then receives an alert when he enters/leaves the selected location.

University of Murcia – Mcampus
This project defines a multi-platform mobile infrastructure for the management and payment of educational services like computer and sport field reservations, course enrolment, printer quotas, etc. based on Web services, XML, micro-payments, intelligent agents, cryptography, Java Cards and SIM-AT.