Two Australian university students will be travelling to Yokahama, Japan, to compete in the worldwide finals of a global technology competition called Imagine Cup 2005 on July 27.

John Dethridge of Melbourne University topped the algorithm category and Doug Stockwell from Queensland University of Technology will be competing in the software design category with his development ‘Colle’, a new collaborative environment for learning foreign languages.

Imagine Cup is a technology competition open to students from around the world with a passion for programming, with a theme of ‘imagine a world where technology dissolves the boundaries between us’. Students have a chance to win from a prizepool worth US$215,000. This year 16,000 students from over 90 countries competed, making it the largest student technology competition in the world. For more information see http://imagine.thespoke.net/

John Dethridge of Melbourne University has topped the first round of the algorithm category, a great result! The algorithm invitational takes competitors through a series of brain teasers, coding challenges and algorithmic puzzles. John will be competing in the final round while in Yokahama.

Doug Stockwell has made it to the finals for the software design category which calls on students to create technology that dissolves boundaries and is created on the Microsoft .NET Framework and Windows platform. Doug’s project, ‘Colle’, makes it easy to create and share flash cards, provides automated and intelligent training and allows for collaboration in distributed and close-proximity environments for learning a foreign language.  The application takes advantage of mobile technologies such as Tablet PC and Smartphone as well as some of the newer development technologies such as Avalon.