Alhosn University, a leading Abu Dhabi-based university, won an award for its mobile application for water consumption awareness at the recently held sixth Mobile Application Contest (MAC 2011) in Abu Dhabi.

The SAWACAE (Mobile Software Application for Water Consumption Awareness) mobile communications platform developed by Hussain Al-Bloushi and Mohamed Sobhi Toubar pushes content created by water and electrical distribution companies on the Middle East’s water scarcity issue to mobile phone users.

It provides information on water conservation, water security and other environmentally-related news, and awards won by consumption-conscious consumers.

The Alhosn team used various cutting-edge programming tools, such as the Android Application Development Kit, the Oracle database management system, ASP.NET, and C#.

Judges awarded the application third place out of a field of 15 competing teams.

The victory was a remarkable achievement for Alhosn given that the university was participating in the annual MAC for only the first time and its team had only three months to develop the application, a statement said.

“We congratulate our very talented group of software engineers and would like to express our deep pride in their accomplishment,” said Prof Abdul Rahim Sabouni, vice chancellor and CEO, Alhosn University.

“They are truly inspirations to the rest of our students and we believe that this is just the beginning of a bright career in the programming field.”

The annual Mobile Application Contest was hosted by Khalifa University’s Computer Engineering Department and sponsored by the UAE Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, Nokia, Research In Motion and the Khalifa Fund.

This year’s MAC participants created applications based on the Android operating system and Nokia’s Qt Development Kit. Entries were judged based on originality, usability, quality, and cultural focus. – TradeArabia News Service