Makeweekend

EduServ provides logistics and accommodation to help international students and their families settle into Malaysia. With a large influx of foreign students from the Middle East, many are looking for a way to settle their accommodation, transportation, and other needs in KL. EduServ provides this as well as vacations as well as a concierge service that participants can call to get recommendations on places to eat and so forth. The service supports students over a period of 3 months.

Super Umbrella is a product that solves the perennial problem of people getting their clothes wet when they are out to dry and it rains. The product is made from a transparent umbrella that covers a circular clothes hangar. That umbrella hangar can be hung from a standard clothes line.

EasyPhone is a stylish accessory that allows people to easily pull their phones out from their pockets, particularly in the common case where people are wearing jeans where it is difficult to access their phones. The product comes in a variety of designs for men and women.

Magic Lid Pot is a device that helps automate the cooking process. The lid can be filled with ingredients and places them in the pot automatically and stirs the ingredients when needed.

One of the major challenges in Malaysian agriculture is the low yield of rice paddy. As a result of this, Malaysia is forced to import rice rom neighboring countries.

Cellulolitic Bacterial Consortium breaks down cellulose in a plant. It is prepared as a solution and applied after the harvest to decompose the rice straw and then bonds with nitrogen to go back into the soil for crop production. The product can increase crop production 30% and potentially much more.

The team aims to market this product through direct selling with the permission of the ketua kampung. The company will recruit a group of local people to sell the product to people in their community, providing jobs to people in rural areas.

Because the live bacteria normally has a short shelf life, the team has come up with a way of sustaining the bacteria by using a solid that slowly releases nutrients to the bacteria.

Earning income is a major concern for students. This team is creating a book for students with all the tips on how they can generate income. The project generates income through sales of the book to students online and in hard copy.

This team is a new type of carpooling for the Malaysian context that focuses specifically on the question of safety for its users. The app allows users to login with their Facebook account and find mutual friends they might trust to carpool with. The app comes with a mobile companion that allows users to report their location as they’re using the service and send a distress signal in case if emergency.

The company makes money by allowing users to pay for the rides through the platform and taking a commission. This creates the possibility for refunds. Like eBay, the service provides insurance for buyers that do not get the services they ordered and for the safety of their journey.

This team is helping women around the world solve the problem of switching between flats and high heels. They are designing telescoping heels so that people can reduce or increase the height of their heel when needed.

If you’re interested in working on projects in the social sector (that’s social impact — not social media!), there is a great new initiative in town we will be working with called the Social Innovation Lab.

The Social Innovation Lab works with the public and social organisations to build innovative solutions to social problems. For Makeweekenders, that means that if you have a social enterprise or social innovation that involves technology, this is a great group to speak with for potentially taking it forward. (Full disclosure: the Social Innovation Lab is supported by us folks at Tandemic).

Currently, interest areas for the Social Innovation Lab include helping NGOs access talent, blended education, and much more.

If you don’t have your own project but would like to contribute to projects at the Social Innovation Lab, you can read more about how to take part. There are opportunities for volunteers!

Marvelous Four is doing a project to transform dull local museums into a “theme park.” Much like a theme park, the museum will have history-related games to involve attendees in the exhibits. During the exhibit, people will get a chance to determine alternate courses of history through the choices they make while playing the games. Different rooms in the museum will be used for different situations in the game, such as caves or natural scenes.

EventPass is a system that fast-forwards attendee registrations at events. Users register online and get a universal ID in the form of a QR code. That QR code can be scanned at events to automatically register the attendee’s information and grant them entry. This helps reduce hassle and prevent long lineups when people have to enter their personal information at the event. The QR code can be used at any participating event. EventPas generates revenue by charging events to use the software for registrations based on the number of people registering at the event.

Save Energy Set is an online game where users can take actions in the real world that translate into energy saving measures in their virtual home online. The game assigns users tasks on a daily basis tasks to improve energy efficiency targeted at times when users can take action on them.
Homes compete against each other to maximize their power savings. The game tracks offline behavior by getting users to take photos of their actions and peer-reviewing them as well as using information such as product codes for energy saving lights to verify purchases.

Students in universities can also compete by taking energy saving measures. The site shows the winning university of the month in terms of energy savings.

The Blind Assist Device is a system that allows blind people to see further by translating images and distance information into tactile feedback on their back as well as auditory feedback. The system uses 3D cameras, infrared sensors, and ultrasonic sensors to create a map of the environment around the user.

SkillGap is a platform that helps students assess whether they are ready for the job market and which areas they need to improve. The platform allows students to enter their grade information as well as take peer-reviewed assessments of soft skills. The system indicates general areas where they need to improve. The system also allows potential employers to anonymously provide feedback to candidates on areas for improvement.

SmartPark is a parking system where users have a prepaid smart cart that is placed in their windshield and allows payment collectors to scan the card and charge them for parking. Parking pricing is variable based on whether you are parking during peak hour or off-peak.

BooksLink is an application that creates a virtual layer for libraries. As users pick out books in a library, they are guided to find related books or other books within “stories” that the public have contributed. Stories on this app are guides that link information from different sources such as web, photo, newspaper and books to tell a story about some topic. The app shows tips that users have left on books, such as a page that has a particularly interesting insight. These tips are sourced from “virtual annotations” that users can leave on books within the app.

This can also be set up as a terminal in libraries to guide users through the journey of discovering content within the library.

Ideasphere is a platform where users can post ideas and tag other content such as photos and location. Users can choose whether to make their ideas public and can collaborate on ideas with each other. The company generates revenue by using the platform to survey users about whether new product ideas have a market.

It has always been a problem for villagers in the rural areas to get clean water. This group came up with a water extraction system using the mining style conveyor belt for the buckets of water.

Graduates often faced the problem of managing their financial quotas in the first few years after graduation. This group designed a board game for financial plans that involves investment plans, savings, loans and several other concepts of liability and expenses.