Today, a kicked-off meeting was held to begin a project between teams from Vinta, UP College of Engineering, Computer Science Department, and UP College of Fine Arts.  The three institutions are collaborating to extend the current mobile application "SabiNila" to Andriod powered mobile devices. The goal of the project is to provide students with applicable experience in industry, at the same time learn to work with different institutions within the University.

The semester long project culminates in the deployment of the SabiNila Android application to the Android Marketplace.  The applications, as with its iPhone counterpart, is free to the public.  User base for the application is targeted for Filipinos, in and out of the country, who follow Philippine news across multiple major publication sources.

The collaboration between the Computer Science and Fine Arts domains are ideal for the mobile application space, because of the need for high impact, low footprint interfaces which characterize software build for phones (and soon readers like the iPad).  There is very little real estate to work with, so the balance between function and form needs to be planned carefully. And, making sure that graphical representation aligns with the features provide to the end use.

Students operate within a formal structure that would be expected of them in their professional work. Experience with intellectual property rights - contracts, and management; are explained and taught to prepare the students for situations that would arise after they leave the academic institution and start dealing with commercial institutions.

The students involved in the project are:

The following professors are acknowledge for their forward thinking and willingness to allow their students to participate in the project: