Next-Gen PC Design Competition nominated its winners for 2007

Next-Gen PC Design Competition has been promoted by Microsoft in the late years in order to spot creative new PC designers who could help computing industry move "out of the box". And by seeing the winners of this years edition, i must admit that there are some brilliant quixotic out there.

Interest over this competition grew this year, having almost 350 projects at start, that were judged on several criteria, like the amount of innovation, gadget’s ergonomics and aesthetics, the new technologies used and the level of environmental friendliness. The contest was fierce and in the end, here are the winners.

Chairman’s Award, selected by Bill gates himself and his advisers, is going to the project called "Made in China". John Leung, a 21 years old student from Melbourne, Australia, designed a PC meant for the Chinese people. That means a device affordable and profitable, but still performant and good looking. Aesthetically resembling the traditional Asian-style dining table, completed with a chopsticks-like stylus, "Made in China" has an infrastructure containing touch screen interface, remote servers for storage and 4G connectivity that link that part together.

 A panel of 10 jurors, all internationally renowned industrial designers, chose the three Judges Awards:

• "Blok" came in first, being an interactive learning tool for kindergarten children. Basic lessons can be hold with the help of this gadget, helping the kids learning some basic things, like the recognition of numbers, letters, symbols, basic maths operations or reading. Being a learning tool, "Blok" is focusing on making the computer appealing and useful to children. And it’s design and functions are a proof of that.

• Second place came to the "BulbPC" project, a simple and efficient computer designed to meet the need for a PC of every living persons, even the ones with very low incomes. It will fit the standard grommet hole in the desks, being thus cheap and very easy to use and store.

• Last but not least, "Zeed+ for the Future" won third prize, being a PC that tries to maximize the mobility of its components while remaining incredible good looking, as it is inspired by "Ikebana". The gadgets really resembles a floral arrangement and can be used to play movies, music or navigate the Internet.

One more award was won by "Light up your life", honored with the Public Choice Award. That’s something, as millions of people visited the competition site and voted all the projects. The design features a mobile terminal in the form of a glowing cylindrical orb called the Light, that can serve as flashlight, portable multimedia player or mobile phone and comes with both a traditional graphic user interface and natural-speech-interaction interface also.

Source: Microsoft (via Core77)

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