FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

AppTek Sponsored Contest Explored Compatibility of Google G1 Phone with Human Language Technology Applications   

McLean, VA (March 24, 2009) – AppTek, a leader in human language technology (HLT), today released the results of its joint contest with the Olin College of Engineering to explore the use of AppTek’s core technology -- which includes a set of tools for language identification, translation, and text-to-speech services in a variety of languages -- to develop a compelling prototype Android application for the Google G1 Phone. 

Students divided into four teams and were judged by Olin professors and representatives of AppTek. The resultant prototypes were judged based on their novelty, functionality, usability and potential value to AppTek. This allowed for the teams to be competitive while acknowledging differences in strengths, including technical achievement, business savvy and design/interaction. All teams licensed their final code entries under the Open Source Initiative Approved Simplified BSD License. 

“Utilizing the AppTek language backend was an opportunity for our students to really engage the business, design, and technical challenges of developing real-world mobile applications,” said Dr. Mark L. Chang, Assistant Professor at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. “We appreciate the technical and financial support that AppTek provided. It made the contest possible, and the endeavor all the more interesting.” 

The completed prototype entries included:

 -          First Place: Speech-to-text SMS and an on-device translation mashup tool

o        Team Ccubed: Jacob Getto, Ilari Shafer and Dan Sotingco

-          Second Place: Mobile application that records, transcribes and indexes  meeting minutes

o        Team Minutes: Dan Cody, Michael Ducker, Giulia Fanti and Greg Marra

-          Third Place (tie): Speech-to-text SMS and Email application

o        Team Saymail: Rachael Stedman, Michael Lintz, Kevin Bretney and Erik Kennedy

-          Third Place (tie): Standalone SMS application supporting text and voice translation

o        Team SMSForArabic: Yunseok Jang, Dongwoo Kim and Jongbeom Kim

“As a leader in human language technology, we are always looking for ways to support new and innovative ideas,” said Hassan Sawaf, Chief of Research and Development, AppTek. “The Olin College of Engineering gave us the perfect opportunity to take our core technology and truly test its capabilities for use in next-generation mobile applications. All the teams involved developed significant applications which we plan to further explore and utilize in future AppTek offerings.” 

In appreciation of all the teams’ hard work, AppTek provided a $1,000 cash prize for the first place team, a $500 cash prize for the second place team and a $250 cash prize for the two third place teams. For additional information on the contest and the completed prototypes, please visit: http://mobdev.olin.edu/contest/.  

ABOUT FRANKLIN W. OLIN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

The Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering is a private undergraduate engineering college located in the Boston suburb of Needham, Massachusetts, adjacent to the Babson College campus. In August 2008, US News and World Report listed Olin among the 10 best undergraduate engineering institutions in the country. More information can be found at www.olin.edu.  

ABOUT APPTEK

AppTek, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, is a developer of human language technology products with a complete suite for text and speech (voice) processing and recognition.  The Company also leads major research and development efforts to further the advancement in the field of developing better methods and technologies in the field of HLT.  AppTek's product offerings include machine translation (MT) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) for a growing list of more than 23 languages; multilingual information retrieval with query and topic search capabilities; name-finding applications; and integrated suites providing automatic speech recognition and machine translation in media monitoring of broadcast and telephony speech as well as handheld and wearable speech-to-speech translation devices.  The company has language professionals and computer scientists in offices around the world. For more information visit: www.apptek.com. 

 CONTACT:

Chris Leach

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(703) 218-3555

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/AppTek-Announces-Winners-of-bw-14726429.html

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