TecHKU » Natalie Lung https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU The HKU Community of Technology Tue, 12 Jun 2018 08:03:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2 Blog: Final Pitches at Startup Weekend HKU #2 https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/19/swhku2-day3/ https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/19/swhku2-day3/#comments Mon, 19 Oct 2015 04:17:52 +0000 http://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/?p=3604 by Natalie Lung and Nayantara Bhat | Photo credits: Natalie Lung | 19 October 2015

Spoiler alert! You might want to read our Day 1 blog before proceeding.

Natalie: Can I just start by saying how proud I feel for everyone involved? I was at the first Startup Weekend HKU, and I must say the quality of presentations and prototypes this time were at a whole other level. Perhaps the massive venue they booked and the cocktail bar they had this past weekend contributed to that.

Nayantara: HKU’s second Startup Weekend was definitely on a bigger scale than last time, with much more diverse and ambitious creations. I wasn’t around for most of the creation process, but it definitely looked like an exhausting weekend for some of the participants. Now that the 54 hours have come to a close, they’ll finally be able to get some sleep – and some of them have gone home victorious.

Natalie: All of them have gone home victorious with the new insights and new connections they have made. We live-tweeted all the 13 final pitches on Twitter, and if you haven’t heard already, here are the results:

Overall winner: ShopIG
1st runner up / Best business model: Botomatic
2nd runner up / Best customer validation: CollegePars
Crowd favourite / Special mention: I’M IN by InJoy@HKU
(FYI: Poll results)

Nayantara: I’m happy to say that the products I was most fond of made it into the top four, although one of my personal favourites, HappyCorner, didn’t. Their idea of creating an Airbnb-like platform for rooftop events and parties was something I really liked, but it might have been a little too niche market for the judges’ tastes.

I’M IN was something we were quite happy about, and they won the Crowd Favourite award by a landslide. Think Facebook events but tailored to your preferences, with a special little calendar showing all the events near you. Definitely something that could be used to create a good few crazy house parties (see Project X!) Their concept, bolstered by a snappy presentation and a well-designed prototype, definitely had the votes of most of the audience.

Natalie: I thought HappyCorner was a breath of fresh air among the fitness and social apps we have today. Rooftops are quite an integral part of urban culture in Hong Kong, yet their scalable business model allows for renting out under-utilised private spaces across the globe.

Let’s talk about our grand prize winner. The team of three at ShopIG offered a rather all-round solution to leverage the e-commerce potential of Instagram. Instagram shops are really popular among locals, but the app limits its own ecommerce capabilities because it doesn’t allow hyperlinks in posts–so no link to purchase or to more product information, unless it’s a sponsored post or the “link in the bio”. But the team took it to the next level by feeding Instagram content onto their own e-commerce platform, which makes much more sense with a Buy button and a shopping cart.

My concern, though, is that ShopIG is built on the assumption that Instagram would allow their own content and user database to be fed into a third-party platform for commercial purposes. Remember when Twitter cut Meerkat off its social graph? Ouch.

I do look forward to what these guys would create in the future. Nelson, one of the technical co-founders, told me he sees himself working with his business co-founder Louis, whom he had just met this weekend, in the long run. Looks to me the team has great chemistry for the #startuplife — and for that I am glad events like Startup Weekend exist.

Nayantara: I thought ShopIG was definitely one of the better ideas, and I wish I’d paid more attention to it during the initial pitches. The same goes for Botomatic, a multi-tasking app that allows you to do several things simultaneously by using a custom-developed ‘bot’. For example, a bot might allow me to tweet, send an email, post to Facebook and check Pinterest all at the same time. The group’s revenue plan was to charge a certain price for the API keys, so any programmers who may want to develop a bot would have to pay for the privilege. It’s also worth mentioning that the group’s prototype app was really aesthetically appealing.

Meanwhile, there were a lot of apps that some members of the audience felt were quite superfluous. Prof. Mandarin (learning purpose-specific Mandarin with the help of a specially selected online tutor) and CollegePars (aggregating job/internship opportunities and student-led initiatives specific to each university) were two of these apps, with some audience members claiming that TutorMing.com and Jobsdb.com respectively are more or less substitutes. However, the CollegePars team impressed me during their pitch, and they definitely seem to have impressed the judges enough to get through to third place despite the audience skepticism.

Natalie: I like the fact that CollegePars included job listings for student-led initiatives alongside jobs on the market. Student groups like TecHKU mostly rely on Facebook, physical posters, and mass emails for recruitment (from my personal experience, those are methods with pretty low ROI). Our message could have better reach on a college-oriented careers platform like CollegePars; Facebook’s news feed algorithm can leave Page owners disappointed at times.

(And yes, TecHKU IS indeed recruiting. Shoot us an email if you are interested to join us as an editorial contributor / video producer / branding strategist, covering the burgeoning tech & startup scene in HKU and beyond! :D)

Nayantara: Can’t have a tech event without at least one vaguely sexist app, so I had my dose of that with Fitland, an app for women’s health that combines fitness with a game by a team called Hello Fitty. Cute idea. Very cute, had the team not opened their pitch with “Women complain a lot about their appearances, but never really do much to fix it.” In my humble opinion, if you need to make a joke about women to sell your app, it’s probably not a great app.

Natalie: If I may interrupt — Regardless of what you say about the nature of their app, Fitland had hands down the best original graphic designs out of all the prototypes. Props to their designers.

Nayantara: Then that’s great for them I suppose…

There was also a product called Micro Probe, which we were very skeptical about during pitching, as you can see in our Day 1 blog. The final pitch did not make me any less skeptical, to be honest. It’s a great idea in theory but developing something like that would take a seriously intense research budget and a lot of time. I really do admire your ambition though, guys, although I was a little confused about whether you were selling the Micro Probe or an insurance plan.

Natalie: Let’s talk about Tour4U. I am surprised they pursued the original idea from the first pitch on Friday. This travel app is definitely one that’s on the creative end. People who cannot travel, perhaps due to their disability or financial ability, could log onto their platform and join tours by local tour guides in the format of “follow-me-around” live video. A lot of attendees I talked to agree that it is a unique way to experience the world without setting foot outdoors as you get to interact with your tour guide, but I can foresee several problems when it comes to implementation. First, since the quality of these tours depend highly on live stream quality, it would not be feasible for users to have guides visit remote terrains like Mount Everest for them, however exciting that might sound. Perhaps better QC has to be done to ensure that guides have stable Internet connectivity when conducting tours. This leads me to the second point: Can the monetary return from the app cover the guides’ costs of having a good cellular data plan?

I do appreciate the team for letting their imagination run wild– they hope to integrate their service with the 360° camera and VR headsets.

That sums up the final pitches at SWHKU #2. We believe we will be around to witness a third SWHKU in the future, hopefully with even more participants and exciting product developments. (Organisers said it might be held at a joint-university level.) We wish all newly-admitted Startup Weekend alumni the best of luck in their future endeavours!

Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page as we will be posting video recaps of the event (with exclusive interviews) over the next few weeks!

Disclosure: TecHKU was a community partner at Startup Weekend HKU.

Related posts:
Blog: Startup Weekend HKU #2 Day 1
For HKU, Startup Weekend HKU is just the beginning
See more Startup Weekend coverage on The Lion Post!

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)


hit me up

Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.
hit me up

Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

The opinion and views in this article are that of the authors’ and do not reflect the opinion or views of The HKU Journal of Technology, or the TecHKU Editorial Team. You can comment below to let the authors know what you think.
To submit an opinion piece of your own, send an email to techkueditors@gmail.com or use the contribute button on the top right of this site.

]]> https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/19/swhku2-day3/feed/ 0 Blog: Startup Weekend HKU #2 Day 1 https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/16/swhku2-day1/ https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/16/swhku2-day1/#comments Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:36:18 +0000 http://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/?p=3560 by Natalie Lung and Nayantara Bhat | Photo credits: Natalie Lung | 16 October 2015

We are at the second Startup Weekend HKU, a three-day event for participants to meet like-minded peers to take their startup ideas to the next level. They will be pitching, validating, and prototyping their ideas all within 54 hours. The organisers just wrapped up the initial round of pitches– here are our thoughts and insights.

Natalie: What did you think of the ideas pitched? I can definitely sense a recurring theme here – matching apps, i.e. Uber for X apps. Amongst others, there was an app matching fashionistas with those who may not have the sharpest fashion sense when choosing outfits, a platform to find an owner for your old furniture, and an app to find someone with free time to clean your house.

Nayantara: Yeah, and there were also some ideas that were similar enough to be streamlined. They could integrate their ideas and business models and make something really great. The Surprise app combined with the Plannable app for example – a surprise event planning platform mixed with a way for busy parents to plan their children’s birthday parties more easily. I actually really liked Surprise in particular; I thought their idea of “gift-giving consultations” was really cute.

Mass-market oriented things like this are all good, but there were a lot of ideas that seemed super unrealistic though, don’t you think? For example, ProCram, or as the would-be creator describes it, “Reddit with an academic twist”. In theory, I like the idea. I like it a lot. Who wouldn’t want teachers and TAs on standby to answer questions that the lecture slides and textbook can’t? The issue I find with this though, is that why would professors and TAs even be on standby? They would almost definitely have better things to do.

Natalie: Yes. There was an idea for a biomedical startup to detect and offer treatment for different stages of cancer. Finding a cure for cancer has been a long-time challenge for the medical field – How would the team here be able to prototype this idea in two days? And they hope to offer treatment- that’s what hospitals are for, right?

Another problem I noticed across the pitches was that they were super niche. A rating platform for dog salons only caters to dog owners. Perhaps this team could upscale it by rating vet clinics or grooming centres in general. So OpenRice but for pet care.

I liked the idea of a platform for sharing mistakes. Experience –not Google– is the best teacher. What better way to learn than to learn from others’ mistakes? But I am not sure what their business model is. After all startups got to be sustainable and earn profit. We haven’t heard a lot about monetisation from the participants.

Nayantara: A lot of the pitches seemed very hardware-oriented as well, so I’m interested to see how they’re going to implement them. One of my special favourites was the idea to create a vending machine with ‘fun’ food: pizza for example! Look and Taste would let users select their food and watch it being made. This pitch came from the frustration of being on campus until late and having absolutely nothing to eat – a frustration I can definitely understand when writing this on campus at 10:20 pm! I can definitely see a lot of robotics going into the ‘Look’ part of it though, so let’s see if the group refines their plan to just the ‘Taste’.

Smart bands are also featured heavily in this year’s pitches. Eric, the man behind I-Care, pitched a medical smart band with basic biometric sensors for blood pressure and heart rate, and also special features like reminders for taking medicine and a way to automatically alert hospitals to any medical emergencies.

I think another thing that really stood out to both of us was one of the last pitches, one that proposed to produce menstrual products for women in developing countries. Cost-effective to produce, reusable and supposedly with fewer health risks, the proposed products could really make all the difference to women on their periods. As a supporter of both feminine hygiene and the use of the word “vagina” in public, I loved the pitch, but unfortunately I don’t really see how it’s a startup, and I really don’t see how it relates to tech. It’s an R&D-intensive, biology-related project and in this case the R&D has already been done. Which leads me to ask, what exactly is the group planning to do with this idea?

Ideas we liked

Natalie: Ricky’s Seat Finder uses the WiFi access points at computers or smartphones in the library or a canteen to generate a virtual map of the space, so that students could easily find vacant seats once they enter the premise. In fact the official HKU app has this feature implemented for the Main Library, the Oval, and the Chi Wah Learning Commons. It would be cool if Seat Finder could provide the same solution for virtually any public space– I totally see myself using it.

I’M IN would sound exciting for those who want company at an event, like watching a movie or having hotpot. You get to propose, browse, and join events by saying I’m In on the platform. I personally don’t mind experiencing things alone, but it would suit those who want to make new friends, especially when you are in a new country or environment, as the creators have mentioned.

There was this feel-good app that gets people to think positive by sending encouraging messages when they check-off items on their to-do list. It may well be just a to-do list app, but it does help restore my faith in humanity, a bit.

Nayantara: Look and Taste, once they’ve solidified their concept – I could definitely do with some hot pizza in the middle of my midnight studying. At this point, it’s unclear how they’re going to achieve what they’re envisioning, especially if they’re set on having the vending machine cooked from scratch. There’s this and a hundred other problem points to consider, but hopefully they get it together and we’ll see a prototype on campus soon! I can definitely see myself single-handedly making up half their revenue.

There were a lot of ideas that seemed great in concept but would be tough to implement – for example, there was an idea proposing selling warm, home-cooked meals to people. I can definitely go for a warm, home-cooked meal at any time of day, but not personally knowing the cook would be awkward. Not to mention, the person cooking the meal might not want to let strangers into his or her home in the first place. And there’s just something very secure about knowing (or at least hoping) that a restaurant is only operational if it follows government-mandated health codes. So I’ll put this idea down as a maybe. Again, if they can figure out the kinks in their model, then I’m all in.

(Side note: apparently I’m only interested in food-related apps. Huh.)

Natalie: I’m looking forward to how these ideas would pivot in the coming two days– after all participants had only 60 seconds to pitch their idea. It wouldn’t surprise me if we end up having a whole new set of startup ideas from the teams on Day 3. Follow us on Twitter for live updates at the final presentations. Goodnight!

Disclosure: TecHKU was a community partner at Startup Weekend HKU.

Related posts:
Thoughts on Final Pitches on Day 3 here
Recap of first Startup Weekend HKU back in March

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)


hit me up

Nayantara Bhat

Second-year journalism student at HKU. Book-lover. Food-lover. Music-lover. Chronic procrastinator.
hit me up

Latest posts by Nayantara Bhat (see all)

The opinion and views in this article are that of the authors’ and do not reflect the opinion or views of The HKU Journal of Technology, or the TecHKU Editorial Team. You can comment below to let the authors know what you think.
To submit an opinion piece of your own, send an email to techkueditors@gmail.com or use the contribute button on the top right of this site.

]]> https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/10/16/swhku2-day1/feed/ 0 Four Engineering Undergraduates to Represent HKU at First Ever Amazon Picking Challenge https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/05/27/pre-apc/ https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/05/27/pre-apc/#comments Wed, 27 May 2015 13:05:10 +0000 http://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/?p=3253 by Natalie Lung | Photo credits: Natalie Lung and Chao Cao | 27 May 2015

TecHKU is back at the Faculty of Engineering’s Advanced Robotics Lab, where we covered the Atlas robot, the DARPA Robotics Challenge team, and the M2 Robotics team. This time, we spoke to the undergraduate team representing HKU in the first ever Amazon Picking Challenge at the upcoming International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) 2015 in Seattle, Washington.

The four Engineering undergraduates, Marco Chow (MechEng Year 3), Tommy Hu (MechEng & CS Year 3), Yibo Chen (EE Year 3), and Chao Cao (CE Year 2), are part of Team Ali baba, a HK-Shenzhen-US development team that is working on a robot that will be competing against 31 other teams this week.

Handling millions of orders worth $61 billion a year, Amazon’s massive warehouses have been known for its highly automated environment, with orange Kiva robots zipping around tall yellow shelves to manned workstations. Such automation have allowed warehouse workers to get through more customer orders. But it still takes human effort to pick the correct items from the shelves according to a customer’s shopping list. This is the problem the Amazon Picking Challenge wants participants—no, robots—to solve.

Programming a Universal Robotics (UR5) robot, the four students have been developing unique software algorithms and hardware designs for it since last December. The list from which the robot will read items off of is a subset of 25 pre-selected everyday products which you can buy on Amazon.com. From Oreos and Cheez-It crackers to school glue, outlet plugs, and dog toys, the robot will need to recognise those items, pick them out from the shelf, and carefully lower it into a bin behind it—all in a fully automated process. The team scoring the most points in 20 minutes wins.

While the Shenzhen robotics company Dorabot, Inc. works full-time on the UR5, the team at HKU is responsible for three main aspects of the robotic arm—motion planning, computer vision, and the gripper.

Cao’s focus in this competition is motion planning. “The last few weeks I was trying to find out the optimal place to mount the robot so that it can reach the largest area as it can.” An aspiring robotics engineer who has been in the M2 Robotics Team, Cao found the experience rewarding. “When I was working here I learnt a lot about an open source system called ROS (Robot Operating System). In the future, many robots will use this system. I think it will be helpful in my future career.”

In order to let the robot “see” the items it is picking, it has to recognise the colour and depth information of the objects under time constraint. Chen, the team member responsible for computer vision, said accuracy is the most challenging part. “Some boxes look alike. The cameras need time to detect the object. If they don’t have enough time, they will give an error,” he said. Expressing excitement towards attending his first robotics conference, Chen said this is also his first time designing real-time vision for a robot. “Prior to this project, all things I learnt in computer vision are all from books and papers—no implementation,” he said. “This is actually my first time to really [get my hands on] some projects.”

Under the guidance of Dr Zheng Wang, a new Mechanical Engineering staff recruit for the Faculty’s Advanced Robotics Initiative (ARI) whose research interests include soft robotics, Hu said the gripper is what makes their entry unique. “The gripper [Marco and I] are working on now uses pneumatics. It mimics how your arm muscles work by contracting and pulling on a tendon that eventually closes the hand around the object,” said Hu. “You need a lot of advanced sensors so that you’re not grabbing [the item] so hard that you’re crushing it.”

Apart from their interest in robotics, the team said it is also under the advice of Dr Jia Pan that they have joined the competition. Like Dr Wang, Dr Pan is a new staff recruit for ARI specialising in Computer Science. His PhD advisor from UNC Chapel Hill specialises in path planning optimization and is helping the HKU team.

The competition, which has commenced yesterday and will last till Thursday, attempts to facilitate communication between industrial and academic robotics communities. “I hope to know the trend of robotics,” said Cao. “And also to have a chance to talk to professionals and other teams to see how they achieve the same goal.”

We wish Team Ali baba all the best at the Amazon Picking Challenge!

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)

]]> https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/05/27/pre-apc/feed/ 0 For HKU, Startup Weekend HKU is just the beginning https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/04/11/swhku/ https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/04/11/swhku/#comments Sat, 11 Apr 2015 04:50:19 +0000 http://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/?p=3114 by Natalie Lung | Photo credits: Natalie Lung and Ivan Law | 11 April 2015

Over 75 undergraduates and alumni from the fields of business, design, and software development gathered at K.K. Leung Building at the weekend of March 13-15 for the first ever Startup Weekend HKU (SWHKU).

Startup Weekend started out in Colorado in 2007 and is now organised in over 400 cities around the world. Following what is called a “lean startup model”, participants come up with fresh startup ideas, get to know each other, form teams, and build a prototype—all under 54 hours. Winning teams are selected based on their business model, execution and design, and customer validation.

Most local tertiary institutions were represented at the event (albeit named SWHKU)—with an estimated three quarters of participants from HKU. Over 30 startup ideas were pitched on the first night and a final 13 were voted by attendees to proceed. The 13 team leaders then broke into a mad frenzy to persuade their fellow participants to join their team—the key here was to have a diverse team of talents from the three different streams. Such a concept could not be made more distinct at Startup Weekend — even the participants were colour-coded with stickers — red for design, blue for business, and green for developers.

Perhaps Microsoft Office users could catch the colour reference?

Is your solution actually solving a problem that people have?

As the event proceeded into the second day, more help came to the teams as mentors with backgrounds in entrepreneurship, law, angel investment, and coding gave tips which helped them envision more concrete targets.

“The most useful piece of advice we have gotten from our mentors was to be specific with the problem [we are trying to solve],” said Ray from What’s Next, a one-stop personal planner for workout resolutions. “We were also told to formulate a hypothesis, which we can later validate with customers.”

As per the standards of Startup Weekend, teams were introduced to two popular lean startup frameworks—the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas. The former helps startups put their ideal key resources and partners, revenue and cost streams to paper, while the latter helps identify the values their product can give to customers.


The Business Model Canvas		 The value proposition canvas

Having worked at six Startup Weekend Hong Kong (SWHK) events and an entrepreneur himself, facilitator Matthieu Bodin wants to point participants to the importance of customer validation.

“You shouldn’t start with just writing things on paper and accumulating ideas in your head. It all comes down to talking to your prospective customers,” said Matthieu. “It’s a very difficult lesson and it’s a lesson you are supposed to learn at Startup Weekend.”

Spots’ Pivot

Participants were able to utilise the only full day at the weekend to get outside the venue to meet potential clients, which yielded some major changes for certain groups.

The team at Spots started out with the idea of putting medical history on the cloud, with the hopes of minimizing mistreatment when you consult doctors overseas. But when they spotted — in the words of the founders — a “hot girl” walking by during their discussion at a coffee shop, they decided to completely overwrite their initial idea with an app that mapped out physically attractive females at social functions (specifically clubs) by crowd-tagging. They thought the idea was more interesting to work on.

To further validate their idea, the team went around campus to gain insight from females and even hit Lan Kwai Fong to understand the market demand of such an app. It was, however, not met with unanimous support from the audience at the final presentations.

Despite its eyebrow raising nature, the team took home the best execution and design award.


The judges were all smiles during the Q&A session after Spots’ final pitch.

“[Spots] did a lot of validation. Though there are a lot of risks, it will do well in the consumer market,” said Shopline’s CEO Raymond Yip, who met his current co-founder at a SWHK event in April 2013.

Other teams managed to wow the panel with their market potential and presentation. #Ask, an app that connects tutors and students with social media and no agency cost, stood out with the best business model; Talent4U, a platform that matches freelancers with companies, was awarded the customer validation prize; CloudBox got a special mention with its short-term storage and cheap delivery services.

According to Data Ng, who is part of the SWHKU organizing team, Startup Weekend is not meant to be an event where participants throw out ideas with a 54-hour-only lifespan. Some teams did consider how they would operate their company in the long term and how it could generate a sustainable revenue stream.

This isn’t the end

Participants traded their Reading Week weekend for new connections with like-minded individuals at HKU. Together, they have created something that has market potential, and have joined the strong network of Startup Weekend alumni. It is worth mentioning that SWHK has played a role in nurturing founders at some of the well-known local startups, e.g. AfterShip, GoGoVan, and Shopline.

The reason why Data and his fellow teammates brought Startup Weekend to HKU was very much like the event’s tagline, “No Talk, All Action”.

“Many university students would like to create their own startups. There are resources and relevant knowledge but few opportunities that motivate them to execute their ideas,” said Data. “That’s why I want to bring this to HKU.”

Witnessing a record turnout, the organisers unanimously expressed their surprise towards to the unprecedented number of people on the waiting list of a SWHK event.

“It was out of our expectations,” said Data. “We initially expected 60 participants. But in the end we sold 90 tickets, with over 50 people on the waiting list. After all it’s the first time such an event is held at HKU.”

The demand for such activities has been big. Being one of the few tertiary institutions without a one-stop student entrepreneurship centre, the University is trying to up its efforts in cultivating entrepreneurial culture among students, which can be proven with the recent launch of CEDARS HOUSE.

The organisers of SWHKU also hope to play a part by making it a regular event. “We plan to hold it every semester or every year. It would also be ideal to hold workshops, pitching and networking events in between SWHKUs,” said Data. “We hope that there will be people who are willing to organise it in the future.”

For aspiring entrepreneurs at HKU, SWHKU is just the beginning. But it is even more so for the startup scene at HKU.

Read on:

Non-exhaustive list of HKU’s entrepreneurship-related groups and programmes:

The General Education Unit and some individual faculties / departments hold entrepreneurship seminars from time to time. A good way to keep on top of things is to keep an eye on those mass emails!

Disclosure: TecHKU was a community partner at Startup Weekend HKU.

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

Latest posts by Natalie Lung (see all)

]]> https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/04/11/swhku/feed/ 0 The “Problem” with Universities WiFi https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/03/28/uni-wifi-its/ https://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/2015/03/28/uni-wifi-its/#comments Sat, 28 Mar 2015 04:44:17 +0000 http://www.engineering.hku.hk/tecHKU/?p=2939 by Natalie Lung and Julius Shih | Interviewers: Natalie Lung and Julius Shih | Photo credits: Natalie Lung | 28 March 2015

Many of us have had the frustrating experience of pacing around the Learning Commons, (literally) searching high and low and not being able to connect to Universities WiFi, then reluctantly switching over to the less secure, in fact, open, WiFi HK via HKU.

With over 4000 WiFi access points on campus, why is connecting to the Internet still a headache? Why does it take so long to connect to Universities WiFi? We invited Dr. MC Pong, Associate IT Director in charge of Learning and User Services at the HKU Information Technology Services (ITS) to give answers to some of our burning questions.

The TL;DR: connections have to go through several bumps due to firewall security, and resources are limited.

Going through delays for protection

It is generally known by students that compared to the open WiFi network, Universities WiFi is the more secure option. This is the work of numerous firewalls that stand between the Internet and your computer. Performing multiple handshakes in the process of connecting to the network causes delays, but it is all for the sake of protection.

On the other hand, WiFi HK via HKU is the open network where people can connect to the Internet in a relatively shorter time. This is because the network connects users to the Internet directly, with no firewalls in between.

A more secure network connection is built on a longer waiting time—it is a simple tradeoff between speed and security.

To further understand the “problem” with Universities WiFi, one has to acknowledge the factors affecting your experience with the school WiFi.

Number of concurrent users

Let’s face it—most students bring to school at least two WiFi-enabled gadgets: a smartphone and a laptop. Twice the devices, double the competition.

Number of access points

Have you ever found the connection unstable while travelling around campus? The problem stems from the fact that when you travel from point A to point B, your device will be constantly looking for the nearest access point it can connect to. The process of connecting to and disconnecting from access point A and B is not always smooth. This can be solved if more access points are installed, enabling smoother transitions and serving more users as a result.

Now if you have settled down at one spot and you are still disconnecting from the WiFi, it could mean one thing—your phone is locked. In such a state, your phone will be perceived, according to Dr. Pong, as “non-existent and dead” by the network host. Since an end-to-end connection cannot be established between the host and your device, the host will release the channel to other users who are attempting to make a connection.

That being said, more users would have a chance to connect to Universities WiFi if more devices were idle. The ITS suggests that students switch off WiFi on devices that are not in use. After all, there’s no point in hogging WiFi when you don’t need it.

As mentioned earlier, there are over 4,000 access points on campus as of now. With “Continual Service Improvement” as one of their core missions, the ITS is expected to install more access points to serve the community in the future.

Size of bandwidth

Currently, HARNET (Hong Kong Academic and Research Network), through which the University’s campus network is connected to the Internet, serves up to 4.2 Gbps (Gigabits per second) of bandwidth. Bandwidth measures the amount of data (bits) that can be transferred from the Internet to your device in a given period of time (seconds). Downloading large files or streaming videos takes up a lot of bandwidth, which explains why the Internet speed can be slow in densely populated areas with high level of Internet activity, i.e. the residential halls.

Apart from switching off WiFi to eliminate unnecessary WiFi-hogging, the ITS has suggested some other tips that can make everyone’s life better:

1) On green tech: Turning off WiFi and 3/4G can save battery on your device. You can save our environment by recharging less frequently.

2) On privacy: Being well aware of the “miracles” that hackers can do with technology, it would be wise to turn off Bluetooth when not in use to prevent them from eavesdropping during transfer of private data.

3) On security: Try not to use USB too often because it may carry viruses that can infect your own or other’s computer. A trustworthy cloud system can be a good alternative.

The main takeaway here is that everyone should be more considerate. Faced with the fundamental economic problem of scarcity, we will have to make sacrifices for greater good.

Natalie Lung

A final-year Journalism and Computer Science student at HKU. News and Internet junkie with deep appreciation for the performing arts. Favourite music genre: retro, house.

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Julius Shih

Julius is currently a year one student in BBA accounting and finance. He likes to keep himself updated with the latest global issues and loves going to the theatre to watch movies.

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