KOSeek

is a new mobile information system for Android for students of the Czech Technical University. This is also an invitation for an official introduction of KOSeek along with Samsung watch presentation. What a coincidence: check on your watch what is going on at your university.

Thanks to CTU support students of the CTU Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Faculty of Information Technology developed a simple mobile application for Android. It allows searching students and employees allowing direct call or email. Students can access the courses information, business hours in the student’s office, get in touch with dean's office. The application also shows the recent RSS feeds for CTU, FEE and FIT. Once you get hungry check the menu at the cafeterias.

The KOSeek beta version was launched one week ago and the Google Play Market already shows 100+ downloads. We have not advertised the application properly yet, and we know we have more downloads. The rating is approaching 4. We also have some crashes but we work on debugging them. We are also happy to report there is already a discussion and many students are sending us comments and suggestion. Unfortunately, as far as I know, no faculties comments. Wait, my boss had commented!

The whole app was developed thanks to CTU. It is based on a long time project at FIT developing KOS API, which was essential for the KOSeek. This API is allowing to access the basic databases in the main information system called KOS. By the way KOS in Czech == blackbird and KOSeek == little blackbird! The FIT students are working with the Computer Information Center of CTU and it is definitely not a smooth ride, but it is hard to beat a person who never gives up. We keep the fingers crossed to get more out of KOS API and enable further functionality. Thanks guys!

The fronted, the Android application was developed at FEE. Three students, MSc, BSc, and a freshman, Adam, Dusan and Tomas joined together to design a great UI. Along the lines they have put together a reasonable development environment using standard tools, git, Android Developers Studio, Play Market. We have now a reasonably organized development and product threads in git, build system with Unit Tests and other tools. This is allowing newcomers to join effectively and get fast productive. I am sure there will be many other students joining. Are you interested, let me know. The build includes also an automatic User Database generation, which is part of the download allowing for KOSeek incremental search support. We use the Android build-in SQLite db.

KOSeek is still in its beta version, there is still lot of work required to make it perfect. We are receiving many suggestions for improvements from users as well as from developers. We have created a wishlist and we try to prioritize based on demand. It will be a hard task to keep the number of features at a reasonable, most useful level. Yes, most of the users are people of technical background, they will handle it, but anyway simpler is better!

Currently, the team is busy debugging, adding the most requested feature and some more goodies. We would like to introduce this features during the official KOSeek kickoff in the eClub meeting on Tuesday Oct. 8th at 5:00 pm in ERA Svet. Come and join us, you will also have a chance to see the latest Samsung watch and Note 3. Samsung representatives will bring the gear with them to let you enjoy a sneak preview. We also be very happy to answer questions and we are expecting further questions and suggestions. In the mean time enjoy KOSeek.

Check, what we prepare in eClub

EClub starts on Tuesday first of October in ERA Svet at 5:00pm. Michal Pechocek will open the series with the Cognitive Security story. Join us to learn how to replicate their success.

We will meet Zdenek Paskevic in the next meeting (Oct 8). This will be a unique opportunity learning all about the new Samsung watch. Zdenek is the mobile devices program manager in Samsung and will introduce the whole line including the latest flagship phablet Galaxy Note 3. Zdenek and his colleagues will be ready to answer all questions and we will try to let you play and test the gear. In addition, with Samsung we plan to run a small presentation at two stands in Karlovo nam and in Dejvice. For two weeks starting October 10, all the latest devices will be displayed. But that is not all eClub, CVUT and Samsung are together with some more partners busily working on a New Academic Year Surprise for all students. Wait, I will soon report!

Let me quickly mention the next meeting topic. Microsoft will visit eClub after Samsung (Oct 15). Stepan Bechynsky will deliver an Internet of Things presentation. He will discuss the new opportunities of this technology and will share with us the Microsoft perspective. This is a great opportunity for a discussion not only about the new contextual oriented applications but also about the future mobile and wearable devices and applications in general.

We have many other presentations in preparation. Check our web page for the program. The first three presentations are confirmed but we may still need to do some changes. Check carefully the location and time, because of space limitations in ERA Svet we will run some of the presentations from CVUT at Karlovo nam. Stay tuned we will inform you as soon as we complete the next presentations.

eClub high tech competition

eClub is back, we are starting the next round. I would like to explain why we shoot for high tech projects. How is the competition organized this semester. I also would like to attract all students with great innovative ideas to join us. We will help you!

The Winter 2013 eClub will extend the tradition of our weekly meetings, but with some enhancements. Let me explain. The startup scene is getting bigger and bigger world wide as well as in Prague. Every global company has a sort of startup program attracting startups. We can see many new incubators. In Prague some have already a good track record - StartupYard and Node5. All this made me to think about our direction as a university club for students of technical universities.

I get in touch with many young people who are starting their professional career, making the first decisions. Basically there are three choices: working for a company, creating a startup or becoming a scientist and pursue the PhD. Most of the graduates will start their professional life as engineers in a company at various positions including sales. eClub tries to help students with their own ideas and enthusiasm, who are committed to change them to products. They have essentially two different ways how to materialize the ideas and get them to customers: through a startup or a technology transfer. In either case eClub will help. We will present know-how for creating startups as well as helping with innovation and technology transfer. This way eClub wants give you the opportunity to test your skills and choose the best future path.

This semester competition for CVUT and other universities students will therefore reflect these changes, see below. We plan as usual a competition for the best startup project. But the competition will also addresses students interested in high-tech, innovation, science and research too. We will welcome proposals for not only startup plans, but in addition, we will also support development and research projects. The only condition the proposed projects must lead to a clear industrial solutions. The entrants have to prove they are solving real problems and with a demonstrable impact. We will try to give away awards in both categories.

Who can enter? We will welcome students working on their baccalaurean, diploma as well as dissertation works. Yes, it will be difficult to decide what project to support. The variety will be very large. To ensure equal opportunities an fair decisions we will as usual put together a panel of international judges to decide. Therefore, traditionally all presentation are expected to be delivered in English. The criteria for startup projects will be the same as in the previous semesters. In the technology transfer we will focus on how innovative is the proposed project and what is the financial impact. The scientific quality of the proposed ideas is not the only part of evaluation. The problem formulation and how it solves industrial problems will have significant weight in the final project selection. Currently I am working on detailed competition rules. They will appear at the eClub pages soon.

And how about presentations? We will again deliver interesting and entertaining presentations. As usual we want to open in a grand style. We are lucky Prof. Pechoucek, the director of the local Cisco research office promised unwrap the whole block and deliver the full Cognitive Security story. CoSe is an enormous success not only for the CVUT but for the whole Czech startup scene. It is one of the first startups acquired by a large company as Cisco. What more, it is a research based, high-tech lab employing the top Czech brains. We need many more of these. Currently, we are also preparing the Geewa and Nejremeslnici presentations showing how to start and grow international and local business. This semester we will try to balance how to do business and the technical trends presentations. We noticed that the technological presentations were very popular last semester and this is another reason for this move. One of the first very attractive trends we would like to cover is Internet of Things inspiring a great number of new ideas and startup.

This is a first of the eClub blogs. Follow me, I will tell you more. Let me know if you have better idea or comments. I would like to set all to encourage the largest number of students to actively joining us.