Finalists named in University of Canterbury’s Entre phone app challenge

August 20, 2014

An app to help children with their speech, another to store paper receipts on a cellphone and a third project to help people get out of bed on time have made it into the finals of the University of Canterbury’s annual phone app competition.

The apps made were selected for the finals of the university’s annual Entre Apps Challenge with the winner to be named on Friday night. Entre is a student club which runs business events where young hopefuls put their business ideas to the test with the help of mentors and business competitions.

Third year speech and language therapy student Kristi Rabbitt has produced a Childchat app that allows users to document, record and analyse the speech and language development of their children.

Fourth year economics and finance student Elisha Nuttall has created the Receipt Wizard app which allows people to store paper receipts in their phone in a searchable format. Whenever a receipt needs to be viewed, the app will search for category, date, and dollar value, doing away with the need for paper.

Finally, second year economics and marketing student George McDonald has produced an app called Get up for Charity. The app is for students and other people who find getting out of bed each morning difficult.

``Why not make it an uplifting experience? Many New Zealanders battle to get out of bed every morning. Hitting the snooze button is a crime most of us are guilty of. It makes us late, makes us stressed and makes our day a little harder,’’ McDonald says.

``What if every time you hit the snooze button you made an automatic donation to a charity? My app is simple. It is an alarm clock that, every time you hit snooze, you donate a dollar to charity. Through your desire to sleep, you could be helping hundreds of people less fortunate than yourself.’’

The judges are Dr Rachel Wright, manager of the University of Canterbury’s Innovators centre to help student entrepreneurs, Toby Vincent and Reuben Biji from Smudge Apps, and Chris Henderson from Cognition Education and the Ministry of Awesome.

ends

© Scoop Media