An application that allows users to create their grocery-shopping lists online and then see which of their local stores has the lowest total or individual prices for the items on the list was the debut project to be presented at the first-ever exhibition Monday of projects developed by students at the unique VeloCity incubator-residence at the University of Waterloo. With an objective no less ambitious than to “organize the world’s food information,” Grocerus is a nifty app that, covering a limited array of foodstuffs and listing stores only in the immediate Waterloo area, still has a distance to travel before it meets that ambition.

Indeed, the same could be said for virtually all the projects exhibited, where ambition outstripped — sometimes vastly outstripped — their implementation to date. But considering that these are student project teams that have been working just scant weeks, the dozen and a half ideas on display were an impressive array of creativity, imagination and, for at least a handful of standouts, well-engineered product development.

Some, like Grocerus, were strictly local in their initial iteration. For example, Find It Off Campus, which matches available student housing with students looking for accommodations, and Class Album, which helps students coordinate their schedules, both focused exclusively on the University of Waterloo for starters, but their founders expressed every intention of broadening their horizons once proof of concept was established.

Some of the applications are trying to dig value out of social networking trends. Gruup aims to use Facebook and other sites to bring consumers together for group discounts on products while Emoshion wants to lever social networks to help people uncover rare or hard-to-find fashion items such as limited-edition sneakers. Giftah, whose site is not yet live, wants to capitalize on the 15 to 20 per cent of gift cards that never get used by making a convenient marketplace where they can be bought and sold.

One of the more polished presentations was InPulse, a so-called “smart watch” that will use Bluetooh connectivity to convey key information about incoming emails, SMS messages and calls from your mobile phone to your watch. “Send me an email directly to my watch,” founder Eric Migicovsky said in what had to be the most original line of the day.

The judges bestowed their blessing and $1,000 on Sparknav, which will allow users to download to their phones content about their surroundings, such as directions, tour information or even exhibit details at museums, art galleries or zoos.

Two other good reports on the day’s activities at GlobalNerdy and StartUpNorth provide excellent analyses of how the students’ shortcomings in terms of effective business models and presentation skills can be addressed by getting executives and technology professionals more involved in VeloCity, something to which inmedia is committed as a partner of this fascinating endeavour.

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