Words of encouragement from His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam during the ruler's recent visit to Chung Hwa Middle School's 90th Anniversary turned out to be the key motivation for three students from the school to win top honours in the APICTA 2012 Awards held last night in a glittering ceremony at Indera Samudra Hall, The Empire Hotel & Country Club.

Derby Teo, Wong Chun Lynn and Angeline Lin of Chung Hwa Middle School (CHMS) made the country proud as they were crowned winners in the Secondary School Project category for their mobile application called 'Brunei Treasure'.

They received the honour from HRH Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah, the Crown Prince and Senior Minister at the Prime Minister's Office.

Derby Teo, 16, told reporters that His Majesty's encouragement motivated them to win the award and they feel very pleased to have fulfilled His Majesty's wishes.

"It was during His Majesty's recent visit to our school in conjunction with the anniversary that we showcased our product (Brunei Treasure) at our display booth. It was there His Majesty told us that we must win in the APICTA 2012 Awards," said the ecstatic youth.

The mobile app is available for download for free at the Android Market. They are currently waiting for approval from Apple and will be available soon for iPhone users.

As of last night, the app has hit the 100-download mark and the three students hope that the number will increase to 150 by the end of the year.

The app, developed by the Chung Hwa students, is to promote tourism in the country as well as sharing the latest promotions and discounts available in the local market, which is one of the key features of the app.

"The app is an ideal marketing platform for businesses to promote their products and services effectively. After all, people nowadays are mobile oriented, meaning that everyone has a smartphone," they noted.

Not only is the app informative, but it is also interactive with mini-games all related to the country. It's an ideal app both for tourists and locals to get to know about the country's geographic features, currencies as well as the dress code while visiting some tourist areas.

Among the local merit winners last night was ZimacSilicon Technologies Sdn Bhd with their product 'Intelligent Clearance Identification or (i-CLID)' in the e-Govermnet category. It is a solution to facilitate cross-border trade by leveraging on ICT as a tool.

The solution will apply a combination of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Web Portal Technology whereby this product is the first to be introduced in the Borneo region.

MediaHikmah with their product, Let's Pray, also won the merit award in the e-Learning category. The application is an educational Muslim application for children aged three to seven to learn how to pray.

Let's Pray or Mari Sembahyang was created to make it convenient for parents to teach their children how to pray in a more interactive, colourful and exciting way.

In the Tourism and Hospitality category, local app developer MeSixty with their social media app called Chatworthy, which is an app that allows users to discover and share interesting social network posts by their location, won the merit award. It allows users to engage in conversation with people in their social networks about posts tagged with locations.

Another local company, John Harith Technology Sdn Bhd, also won the merit award in the e-Logistics and Supply Chain Management category with their product EPCIS HALAL Traceability.

The local firm was recently awarded a pilot project to develop a Halal traceability and supply chain management system for the Ministry of Religious Affairs (MoRA).

Participants competed in 17 categories in APICTA 2012 which comprised e-Goverment to e-Learning, Tertiary Student project, Tourism and Hospitality, Media and Entertainment, Security, Tools and Infrastructure Application, Research and Development and Sustainability and Green IT.

APICTA's 16-member economies include Australia, Brunei, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.

The event is an international awards programme aimed at increasing ICT awareness in the community and assist in bridging the digital divide. By providing networking and product benchmarking opportunities to ICT innovators and entrepreneurs in the region, the programme is designed to stimulate ICT innovation and creativity, promote economic and trade relations, facilitate technology transfer and offer business matching opportunities via exposure to venture capitalists and investors.

Participants of the awards programme comprised members of the APICTA Alliance.

APICTA 2012 was organised by the Ministry of Communications and supported by the Authority for Info-communications Technology Industry of Brunei Darussalam (AITI) and InfoCom Federation Brunei (IFB). - Borneo Bulletin (6 December 2012)