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RedZebra Mobile goes to Paris - Microsoft Imagine Cup Competition

Imagine Cup is a global competition created by Microsoft ®, designed to encourage young people to create innovative technology in order to find solutions to real world problems.

Students from around the world begin by entering local, regional and online contests. The winners from those contests attend the international finals being held in Paris this year from 3 to 8 July 2008.

Team Smile is the group of graduates from The University of Cape Town who won the local and national competitions using their design they had created for their Honours programme. RedZebra Mobile, alongside Sibanye Bus Services and M.A.N, is sponsoring Team Smile in the form of finances and technology support to assist the development by Team Smile.

Team Smile's project is called WhereIsMyShuttle and it was designed in conjunction with Golden Arrow Bus Services and Sibanye to improve transport services within the public transport industry. This first of a kind service in South Africa will not only improve routing and scheduling capabilities of the transport companies, but also use the data that has been gathered by the system to provide a service to the passenger. In addition to this, Team Smile also came up with a product to help make it safer for passengers to travel on public transport.

As the theme of this year's Imagine Cup competition is "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment," Team Smile have aligned with this concept by creating a system which not only improves the running of the transport industry, but also improves the services which it offers, thereby getting more people to utilise transport services. This in turn reduces the number of vehicles on the road and reduces the carbon emission per capita.

RedZebra Mobile's technological involvement is mainly from a security aspect. Team Smile is using RedZebra Mobile's Image Management service to receive pictures from CCTV cameras installed in the buses. When the driver hits a panic button near him, due to an event that has occurred, the pictures captured before, during and after the button is pushed, are transmitted to a control centre. The GPS location of the pictures is also recorded. The control centre will then get a notification of the pictures arriving and be able to quickly review them and take action.

The bus driver is able to use his camera phone to take pictures from anywhere around the bus or bus stop and transmit them immediately to the control centre. Again, operators could review and take action. Using RedZebra Mobile's GPS application, REDZEB GPSTM, the bus driver is also able to transmit the location of where the pictures are taken from his mobile phone.

RedZebra Mobile is not only providing the service of receiving the pictures from the CCTV cameras and various camera phones, but is also providing via an interface to quickly review all incoming pictures and to drill in further to view specific picture details and provide a street-level map and reverse-geocoded address for accurate positioning.

This is just a few of the many ways RedZebra Mobile can offer any business, transport or otherwise, security options which are easy to implement and can be viewed in real time, anytime, anywhere.

RedZebra Mobile is proud to be associated with Team Smile's efforts and believes that they will be well rewarded at the finals in Paris in July. Watch this space...


                    

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