Announcing the Desafio Intel 2013 SemiFinalists

Chile

• AGRIMAPS - AGRIMAPS is the first “Social Global Agricultural Map”. It is a powerful platform as well as a smartphone application that allows all participants of the agriculture distribution chain to position themselves, as well as promote and interact globally. AGRIMAPS also allows consumers to trace their food back to the orchards.
• BenchBanking - Benchbanking is an online lending marketplace with presence in LatAm that lets users quote and get the right loan in only one place. Our technology offer an integral solution to banks; quality and filtered leads, market research and business intelligence tools, so they can take better business decisions
• Eduquia - Eduquia is an online platform that goes along with you recording and processing your academic activity and providing you a set of applications to help you learn in different ways.
• First Job - The new standard for the first job search, using Employer Branding for attracting and recruiting graduates.
• InterEdu - Real time, collaborative exam preparation through mobile device,-Tablet-Smart TV in a class room with Whiteboard interaction using smart algorithm.
• Mindscore - Mindscore is the first platform directed at musicians, that makes delivery and storage of ideas, and the collaboration of “music inspiration” more efficient, for both music aficionados and professionals. It gathers the best characteristics of other applications,like Evernote and Dropbox, in order to facilitate coordinating actions for musical content.
• Mobile Monitoring Station - Measurement of worker-related variables, such as heart rate or air pollutants is usually done with fixed sensors. This limits the spatial coverage and does not give a true picture of the workers status. We propose gathering this information with wearable sensors and upload readings to a centralized cloud service.
• Placetribe - Placetribe is a geosocial application. It is displayed in a map, and as a user you can chat and see your Facebook friends connected in the map, create groups (tribes) with common interests and mark places or events that you can share with your tribes.
• Smartour APP - Smartour is the new way of touring being the first Mobile Tourism Agency. It offers all the information the visitor needs and opens a new m-commerce channel, supporting the ‘’on the go tourists’’. Smartour looks forward to guide the most avid tourists along the path of perusing their dream experience.
• Street Cred - Street Cred gives you the ability to quickly document what you borrowed/loaned and who the recipient/owner is. Have fun with your friends! Establish return clauses, connect it to social networks and your friends overall conduct will determine their final street reputation.

Colombia

• Ciudaddemascotas.com - Ciudaddemascotas.com a b2c pet supply ecommerce that integrates inbound mkng, callcenter and micrologistics in LatinAmerican. Delivering a model that solves payment, logistics and trust in order to massify new channel.
• EasyParking - EasyParking is an app that allows real-time interaction between drivers and parking establishments to show you availability, costs and GPS location so that you can always find a place to park.
• Grocery Glee - Grocery Glee replicates the experience of Brick and Mortar shopping into the mobile space, breaking down the barriers between physical and digital retail and dramatically improving the shopping experience for consumers.
• Kapaka Hypertoys - Kapaka Hypertoys:Tato-Toy”Your First Virtual Friend”, is a Toy Doll that virtually gets alive trough a screen on its own 3D educational Videogame.  Tato-Toy is a control for his 3D avatar.
• Lynks Ingenieria - Lynks Ingenieria is a pioneering startup developing key technologies for the Water Resource Management in the agroindustry. Our solutions improve the use of water in irrigation by implementing three strategies (measurement, control and optimization), which generate savings up to 30% (ca. $ 10 million USD a year, only in Colombia).
• Novahand project - Novahand project, is a low cost, high functionality prosthetic arm,  with the potencial to  change the lifestyle of the people who have lost their hands.
• Palco - PALCO is a marketplace that connects musicians with music from around the world. At PALCO arrangers can upload high quality scores and musicians can find sheet music and customize it to their own needs. All is done quickly and easily from any connected device.
• Rolem - Rolem is a company created for gamers, by gamers. We design, assemble and sell PC Gaming Desktops specialized for the most demanding users and unlike similar companies we focus on offering the best balance between performance, design, quality and price, depending on the customer’s preferences, minimizing any possible performance bottleneck.
• Whelmo – Wireless Health Monitor for Babies - Whelmo is a light weight bracelet to wirelessly monitor harms to a baby’s health. Whelmo can measure the baby’s heart rate, blood oxygen level and location, and send the information to a mobile device. Whelmo will help you protect your baby when you can’t be at his side.
• Yimup - Yimup is a cloud-based platform that empowers the new generation of audiovisual creators (musicians, filmmakers, writers) by providing them with cloud based IT Solutions, so they can easily manage the Promotion, Engagement and Monetization of their work directly to their fans with no middleman.

Costa Rica

• Milton Villegas-Lemus - Develop a prototype of a low cost unattended camera recording system. This product is oriented to record academic lectures with minimal edition to publish the classes on internet or in an intranet, using simultaneously multiple cameras, tracking system, gesture recognition running embedded on a system with an Atom processor.
• Parko - Parko is a state-of-the-art parking payments platform that allows you to pay for your parking space using your cellphone, without the need to use regular and old-fashioned parking tickets.
• Sistema Inteligente de Gestión Vehicular SIGV - The SIGV is a confluence of technologies that enable traffic to be smart and efficient, avoiding traffic jams, minimizing accidents, avoiding the possibilities of vehicle theft and enabling traffic authorities to have real time control of the streets.
• Treo electric vehicle - The Treo is an electric vehicle used to move around in urban environments, designed primarily patroling. It is also an eco-friendly and innovative option for urban and recreational mobility. It has a two-passenger capacity, designed to function in crowded places, zero emissions, simple to use, stable, resistant, efficient.
• Virtual Therapist System - Some physical rehabilitation patients perform their routines without proper control, causing that the exercises are not done correctly and generating further injuries or the prolongation of it. Virtual Therapist is an innovative tool that improves the quality of the care in the clinics and reduces recovery time for patients.

Mexico

• Bee Kind - Bee Kind is an social platform promoting a smart scheme to link donors with altruist organizations and increase the rate of successful donations. BeeKind is a competitive and exciting environment based on rewards that make the donation experience fun, challenging and engaging, increasing the chances to help people in need.
• CAMINA (Computer Analysis of Movement by Image and Numerical Algorithms) - Diagnosis of human movement disorders is performed by visual inspection of the patient. The disadvantage of this evaluation is the lack of objectivity because its dependency on the experience of the physician. We propose a low-cost tool based on image analysis which will reduce the subjectivity of the diagnosis.
• EMOSpeech - We develop applications based on speech emotion recognition; our first product is a speech analytics platform. Less than 1% of recorded calls at call centers are analyzed; some of the reasons for this include the volume of calls received and because the auditing process is costly and time consuming.
• Eyehunt - Eyehunt is a smart platform that recommends and matches, through it’s own algorithm, qualified candidates from the creative fields (Architecture, art, design, photography, video, web) with the best job opportunities in Mexico.
• RankTab – Insights from your crowd! - RankTab will disrupt enterprise and community social decision-making by introducing the world’s first visual crowd intelligence engine.
• Schoolcontrol - SchoolControl is a communication platform through which teachers, students and parents can find school information, such as: grades, announcements, calendars, events, reports, tasks, homework and details about the academic performance of the student. Access to all this information, using any desktop, mobile devices such as, iPhones, iPads, WP7s, & Blackberries.
• SmartDomes - SmartDomes are protected agriculture environments powered by solar photovoltaic energy that implements last generation hardware and software to operate autonomously. The hardware is based on wireless sensor networks and open source controllers, while the control-monitoring software runs on the WEB 2.0 and mobile platforms with the support of Cloud Services.
• Worldwide donations platform though mobile phones - Collecting money for charity from cell phones outside the USA is close to impossible for most NGOs. We are creating the Paypal of mobile donations where charitable NGOs can register and receive donations billed to the donors’ cell phone in over 80+ countries worldwide.
• Xeen Technologies - We believe in applying innovative technologies to solve problems of mobility and health for people with disabilities.One of our first products is the project we have called “Roboesqueleto” consisting of a robotic suit that allows a person with paraplegia rise from his wheelchair and walk again.
• XP Médico - A Platform of Medical Information  where patients can make a doctor’s appointment online, and doctors can manage the clinical information of their patients anytime and everywhere as necessary.

Perú

• canchas.com.pe - Online scheduling and payment of soccer fields for users, integrated with an online management system with POS and business dashboard for the soccer camps. Replicable to other sports (Tennis, basketball, etc) as well as other industries (Hotels, restaurants).
• Dipoo - Web and mobile platform to find all the benefits you get companies as customers and as employees.. Customers and employees have access at their benefits in real time in their smartphones and web site. Available in iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone and Web.
• DUHEM -DUHEM is the first Peruvian community commerce for social consumers and cause-oriented brands. DUHEM gathers the coolest socially conscious brands and products that give back to society on a single and innovative e-commerce platform (www.duhem.co). All products directly support a social cause like education, health, environment, human rights or development.
• FractalUp - There is no clear order when learning in the noisy world of education. eLearners need a guide map and good quality content. FractalUp assists your learning search with graphical paths. It’s more precise than googling and less tedious than wikis, because it shows your position, using a Dynamic EdTech Engine.
• Peoples Voice - Let the people be aware of how their government is using their resources and give them a platform to map the problems and propose projects that are most important for their cities in a structured and localized way integrating many information sources helping them to make better decisions
• RECLUTEC.com - An intelligent web platform for companies and startups that matches talented engineers from top universities with companies and job opportunities, using a proprietary technical skills validation system, with advanced search, rankings, ratings, recommendations, an online community of engineers sorted by skilles with content, online courses and reference matching algorithms.
• Sembraire - Sembraire allows people and companies to offset their carbon footprint in an accessible, user friendly manner. They´ll be able to measure their footprint, acquire products to compensate it, visualize their evolution, educate and inform themselves on these matters and share with the world their concerns for the environment.
• Streetdom - Streetdom is a next-gen mobile game where people can learn while playing a role in an adventure. The best adventure of your life.
• trackingmotion.com - An online marketplace that links people displacements with shipping needs by taking advantage of our trips to offer retailer courier services
• TuCloset.com - TuCloset.com is an online marketplace that is changing the way we discover and buy fashion apparel products. It’s an online meeting point between buyers and sellers and their experience is complemented by the social aspect that the community delivers: a place to share and discover trends and street style.
• Vadavu.com - Vadavu.com is the first e-commerce in LatAm with a huge component of community where mothers can have a great shopping experience, while finding a variety of products and sharing life experiences with others.

Latin America General

• Appetite+ Discover apps with friends (Venezuela) - Have you ever wondered what apps your friends have? Or what apps they actually like? How about a better way to discover cool new apps? Appetite+ is a social network for app-discovery that allows you to see into your friends Iphone to find great apps they use.
• CUBIC  (Ecuador) - Improve the quality of life for those who take medicine, making the efficiency of the drug is superior and more effective. This tool is activated through an Internet portal that sends messages to mobile with prescribed medication in doses scheduled hours and by the physician and / or laboratory.
• Flatbox (Guatemala) - We are making a platform for connecting the things that people love, with themselves using sensors and Bluetooth low energy technology.
• Mario (Bolivia) - A mobile application that can find different’s kinds of activities (different courses, gym…), georeference the places and give to the users detail information (prices, options of activities, schedules, promotions and others), With time the application will learn about the user, personalized service (about their likes).
• Pacha (Bolivia) - Create a tool that makes farmers live easier by enabling them to obtain data about their fields and crops at anytime

The application deadline has been extended to April 15, 2013. Please here!

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Desafio Intel 2012 Winners announced

Congratulations to:

*1st place: Sustainable Agriculture Solutions, Colombia

SAS provides expert farming solutions. Its products and services make an efficient use of the available resources and guarantee the long term viability of food production. The first product is an enhanced-efficiency fertilizer (EEF) designed to deliver the exact nutrients needed by the crop thus avoiding waste and increasing productivity. Our EEF includes a patented nanotechnology that increases efficiency by 40% over traditional fertilizers and increases productivity by at least 7%. Farmers will benefit from a cleaner environment and premium post-harvested products with less chemical residue. SAS will beat out other fertilizers in the market by: minimizing nutrient loss, improving crop nutrition and reducing the cost per acre.

*2nd place: Inventive Power, Mexico

Inventive Power help industries to reduce their operating costs by installing our Solar Concentration technology for water heating, steam generation or drying at a lower cost than using Gas, Diesel or Fuel Oil. Our technology, The Power Trough 110, is a Parabolic Trough Solar Concentrator which generates thermal energy between 60-250 ºC, ideal for process heat generation. The system can be easily installed in rooftops of industries and commerce with remote monitoring to guarantee the correct operation in the 20 years of life expectancy of the product. Our solar technology is superior to currently available on the market by having greater efficiencies compared against other solar collectors, also allows have a more modular installation and generates more thermal energy per unit area.
Customers can purchase the systems with no upfront cost investment by leasing programs, having savings between 15-30% in energy cost since first month of installing the system.


*3rd place: SurfDog WebProtection, Brazil

SurfDog develops and markets IT security products that reduce scam, fraud, and honest mistakes risks specially of people without strong background with computers, as some elders and computer newcomers. The company’s SurfDog-WP currently supports all major Brazilian online banking services for Anti-Phishing protection. Our mission is stop good and innocent people from becoming scam victims.

A big congratulations to these winning teams who will be traveling to Silicon Valley to compete in the Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley on Nov 5-8.

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Desafio Intel Finalists:

ALP GROUP, Argentina
ALP GROUP S.A.: Argentina Eolic system technology advance. New and more efficient wind technologic system: it´s economic, efficient and low maintenance. An innovative wind mill, with a three-phase induction generator (380V – 1100W). It can pump water with standard three phase pump without batteries. Moreover, it can store
energy in batteries for isolated homes and schools. Currently we have over 50 systems working in Argentina.

Biogen, Costa Rica
Biogen is an integrated biomechanical system for generation, storage and use of electricity for people in rural communities. Throughout analysis I designed a product that adapts to the physical characteristics of the human body and produces energy to power small devices with a big impact on their lives.

 

Computing Kloud Solutions, Mexico
Computing Kloud Solutions is a Mexican company dedicated to creating and delivering solutions in the cloud, currently we developed the program Waitronic offering a solution to bars / restaurants. This is achieved with the integration of customers and market differentiation. Now you can order from a mobile device, not just your drinks and food, but also what you want to hear. You can step by step create different drinks, which will be created especially for you. Also you can sync your social networks to communicate with your friends and see who of them is in the same bar or restaurant.

Dengue-off, Costa Rica
Dengue-off: Electronic device against Aedes Aegypti (dengue virus transmitter), there are not yet any vaccines to prevent infection with dengue virus and the most effective protective measures are those like Dengue-off that avoid mosquito bites. This product is to help as many as 100 million people that are infected yearly and more than one third of the world´s population that is living in areas at risk for transmission, is also important to mention that besides these 120 millions travelers are exposed to this disease yearly. Dengue fever (DF), together with associated dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), is the most important and world’s fastest growing vector-borne viral disease affecting humans. Aedes aegypti, the urban yellow fever mosquito, is the principal dengue-carrying vector. A secondary vector is Aedes albopictus. Dengue-off was developed by ACB Mecatronica which is a startup company in incubation process at Entrepreneur Center (CIE-TEC) Costa Rica Institute of Technology.

Epicrisis, Argentina
Epicrisis is an Electronic Health Record for doctors in their private practice for Latin American Market. Epicrisis offers via Web a patients index, statistical reports and an electronic medical record; and for their patients offers a Web appointment service. Our goal is to become a regional standard in Web Medical Records. Epicrisis is a Cloud Service, so doctors won’t need to install any software in their PC’s in order to have access to their patients infomation anytime and anywhere, their just need a notebook or a table with connection to the Web to register the attention. The system was conceived and developed by two doctors specialized in Medical Informatics and a experimented developer with many years working in the health market.

HAZFUTBOL.COM, Peru
Our company SPORT NET S.A.C. (founded in 2012) has the mission to help people practice sport more often, creating more opportunities to do it. Such opportunities involving the use of information technology and communication to integrate sport communities and infrastructure suppliers, services and products needed for the sport, and the application of social and business strategies to create a better environment to practice more sports. HAZFUTBOL.COM is a social network for those who play soccer. Our first project is motivated by the collective sport with more fans around the world. We present you this project, HAZFUTBOL.COM, where we (Franco and Hernando Zurita) are the cofounders, each with 50% of shares.

Inventive Power, Mexico
Inventive Power help industries to reduce their operating costs by installing our Solar Concentration technology for water heating, steam generation or drying at a lower cost than using Gas, Diesel or Fuel Oil. Our technology, The Power Trough 110, is a Parabolic Trough Solar Concentrator which generates thermal energy between 60-250 ºC, ideal for process heat generation. The system can be easily installed in rooftops of industries and commerce with remote monitoring to guarantee the correct operation in the 20 years of life expectancy of the product. Our solar technology is superior to currently available on the market by having greater efficiencies compared against other solar collectors, also allows have a more modular installation and generates more thermal energy per unit area.
Customers can purchase the systems with no upfront cost investment by leasing programs, having savings between 15-30% in energy cost since first month of installing the system.

Knowsys, Mexico
Knowsys brings products, brands and consumers together. The Latin American market lacks widely available product information, which limits product discovery
and discourages users from trying new or different products. On the other hand, businesses suffer from not having detailed information on the consumer perspective of their products and brands. Existing efforts are limited, and mostly based on managing a Facebook Page or a Twitter account. With our social network, users can share, comment, vote and review any product in the Latin American market. This gives users high quality information about products which helps them discover and try new products. Our platform gives registered businesses analytics on their products from different sources, including Facebook, Twitter and our own community. Allowing them to manage, measure and improve clients perspective of their product or brand. Companies can also buy featured spaces in our platform, to promote and attract consumers to their product.

SonicPollen, Chile
SonicPollen is a web platform that connects musicians, venues and producers to improve the organization of shows and tours. We give opportunities to the musicians and erase the headache of producers and venues in the booking process. SonicPollen’s goal is to create a user experience designed to help venue managers and producers to easily manage their agenda, booking and submissions. This will save time, rather than asking the user to use lots of features. We are building the next standard in the booking process for music shows.

SurfDog WebProtection, Brazil
SurfDog develops and markets IT security products that reduce scam, fraud, and honest mistakes risks specially of people without strong background with computers, as some elders and computer newcomers. The company’s SurfDog-WP currently supports all major Brazilian online banking services for Anti-Phishing protection. Our mission is stop good and innocent people from becoming scam victims.

Sustainable Agriculture Solutions SAS, Colombia
SAS provides expert farming solutions. Its products and services make an efficient use of the available resources and guarantee the long term viability of food production. The first product is an enhanced-efficiency fertilizer (EEF) designed to deliver the exact nutrients needed by the crop thus avoiding waste and increasing productivity. Our EEF includes a patented nanotechnology that increases efficiency by 40% over traditional fertilizers and increases productivity by at least 7%. Farmers will benefit from a cleaner environment and premium post-harvested products with less chemical residue. SAS will beat out other fertilizers in the market by: minimizing nutrient loss, improving crop nutrition and reducing the cost per acre.

ThinkGo, Colombia
ThinkGo is a company that provides games and educational tools based on STEM methodology to use in the classroom. Its products will help teachers and students improve and optimize the education process with hands-on learning.

Tryouts, Mexico
Tryouts is about recruitment, technical recruitment. We are building a virtual online arena, where the only thing that can save you are your skills and knowledge. Tryouts provides confrontations mechanisms in a really interactive way using serious games concepts. Tryouts connects talent with opportunities.

V3D, Brazil
V3D is a company specialized in research and development of solutions on image analisys and 3D visualization. It has partnerships in research, development, and technological transfer projects with various universities. Our team has a strong academic formation and large experience in the industry. V3D aims for challenging projects and levereges on the experience of it’s professionals to develop custom solutions acoording to the client and partner’s needs.