On the 4th and 5th of May 2006, the European Final of the Java™ Programming Contest 2006 took place in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. On May 4th, the finalists, their supporting professors and industry leading keynote speakers were invited to attend the ‘Technology Round Table Conference’. This conference focused on topics like open standards and collaboration between corporations, universities and research institutes. On Friday, the national winners from the 5 participating countries – Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK – presented the Java™ applications they had developed over the last couple of months. 

During the award ceremony, Virgilio Pigliucci and Andrea Vattani, both students of the Dipartimento di Informatica from the Università “La Sapienza” di Roma – the largest university in Western Europe and the most ancient university of Rome – were crowned as winners. They will be rewarded with a trip to the prestigious Sun Microsystems 2006 JavaOne(SM) Conference in San Francisco, USA.

"Sun is focused on helping to bridge the digital divide through technology and education. The Powered by U! programming contest is an excellent platform for students to showcase their creativity and knowledge of Java™ technology,” said Mark Herring, senior director of Java Brand Marketing, Sun Microsystems. “We look forward to welcoming this year's winners at the 2006 JavaOne(SM) Conference in San Francisco.”

This year’s winning application – 'Aficionados' – is a web content syndication and newspaper manager system, using an RSS-feed from the web and/or the company's news server. It allows viewing, printing and/or mailing of personalised news collections in well-formatted layouts such as PostScript®, html, etc. Aficionados' principal features are efficiency, low Internet bandwidth usage and data integrity. Deployable on Ricoh’s Java™ enabled Aficio™ multifunctional devices and laser printers, this application was developed with a high level of re-usability and expandability, allowing easy future plug-in management, features improvements and patching. 

When asked about the benefits of the contest for the students, Prof. Luigi Vincenzo Mancini of the Dipartimento di Informatica from the Università “La Sapienza” di Roma, commented: “The ‘Ricoh & the Sun Java™ Platform – Powered by U’ contest is a great opportunity for students across Europe to express their talent and creativity and prove their Java™ skills. It is in fact a chance to put their theoretical knowledge to use. Quoting Albert Einstein: "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom". This concept clearly expresses the large potential of open source software development. Our hope is that in the future other major IT players will start similar programs to help the growth of free software and open source applications.”

For more information (and pre-registration) on the 'Ricoh & the Sun Java™ Platform – Powered by U! – Programming Contest', please visit http://edu.ricoh-developer.com.

For more information on the University "La Sapienza" of Rome, visit http://w3.uniroma1.it/dipinfo/.

For more information on the 'Aficionados' application, visit https://ricoh2006.dev.java.net.

Ricoh’s "Embedded Software Architecture™" and the “Ricoh Developer Program™” (RiDP™) are trademarks of Ricoh Company, Ltd. Sun, Sun Microsystems, Java, and JavaOne are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other company names and product names used herein are trademarks of their respective owners.