I met Wilson Chandra, a graduating senior, in the Composite Building Mac lab and he showed me his final year project (FYP). I recognized it immediately because it was one of the projects that received honorary mention in the annual FYP competition, getting the third place overall.

You can tell CloudNG is Wilson’s baby. He talks about it most fervorously. CloudNG is basically a personal and privately hosted cloud. It is the software and interface for a multifunctional server that you can set up at home. Imagine a dropbox clone but instead of uploading your files to the servers of some company, your files can stay at your home. Here are a couple of screenshots of the CloudNG webapp:

It syncs your files:

And your contacts:

Your calendar:

And your bookmarks:

This may not be the newest of ideas but the design and execution of CloudNG is beautifully done. The interface is clean, gorgeous and looks suspiciously similar to the dropbox web portal so it is familiar and easy to use.

Built with a standard open source Apache server, the MySQL database is so widely supported that you can sync from practically any device or service. CloudNG therefore inherits great compatibility and the team built a detailed user guide on how any user can quickly sync up the data from their PCs, Macs, tablets or phones. You can even type in the address in the file explorer or finder of any PC/Mac, and your files would show up as if they are locally stored after a password prompt.

I asked him how long did it take for him and his teammate to build it, only to get the hilarious response of “We procrastinated until almost January…”, so only three months of after school hours.

You can actually sign up for a 1GB test drive of the CloudNG service right now. This is hosted on a faculty server and could be taken down in later years, but you do get to play with it. (link)

The CloudNG team imagines that in the future, we would all have a little black box at home with CloudNG installed, hooked up to the internet and streaming our files anywhere we want them.

There is still a lot the team wants to add to CloudNG. Streaming media, running third party apps, more social network functions, enabling an online document editor, etc. It will look very mature and poised to take on real world competitors soon. You can see a detailed comparison of the current functions of CloudNG versus current products here.

Contact the developers:
Wilson Chandra: admin@wilsonchandra.com
Yonatan Nugraha Toemali: ynt1993@connect.hku.hk

• About
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Donald Lam

Editor in Chief
A second year student in Computer Science at HKU. He owns a Nokia phone and is a bit of a Microsoft fanboy in denial.
dlamty@gmail.com

Latest posts by Donald Lam (see all)

• Announcing Girls4Tech @HKU2014 - September 7, 2014
• CloudNG: the ease and power of a personal server showcased - June 17, 2014
• Smartwatches: Not The Next Big Thing Yet - March 22, 2014

Alan Chiang, Paul Wong, Viki Lei, Ken Law, Eric Au Yeung, and Alex Yi; the core members of the iClass team.

iClass in action. The web app and on iOS.

We realised that these functions could be transferable to a mobile app. So we got cracking.

How did you manage to turn the project into a business?

iClass: We thought the project has a lot of commercial potential so we continued to work on it after our graduation. Half a year into the project, companies such as Ming Pao began to take interest in us. We went to the HKU Technology Transfer Office in Cyberport to set up a company and commercialize our project. By March 2012, we were able to get funding from the Cyberport Creative Micro Fund to expand.

Today, we have members working full-time and part-time on iClass. We even take HKU students in regularly, so that they could work on campus.

Advices for Startups

iClass: When you are an undergraduate, your ideas truly belong to you. You won’t be guaranteed that in a workplace. Make good use of your projects. It is important that you do not waste your projects on something that is just for passing time. There are many helpful resources you make use of at HKU.

If you want to learn about starting a businesses, you could enter entrepreneurship programs, such as those by the Technology Transfer Office. They give you weekly tutorials on theories regarding startups, and they regularly invite entrepreneurs in to give you useful advices.

If you need funding, you could look for them from Cyberport. The Cyberport Creative Micro Fund that we got for example, was up to HK$100,000 of grant. If they find your project or pitch interesting, you will also be able to enroll into their incubation program, which provides training, office space, and sponsorships for overseas exchanges.

More About iClass

How do you differentiate it with other popular systems, such as Moodle?

iClass: Moodle is more about submitting your coursework and getting your lecture notes. iClass is more about enhancing interactions during lectures. We offer better mobile support, native apps, and we are able to make use of these technologies to create quiz functions and drawing pad functions, etc., and sync them in real time.

How has iClass changed the way lecturers and students interact?

iClass: The revolution is in the speed of exchanges and interaction possible with iClass. distributing quizzes and class work is massively improved. In the past, if you were distributing a class assignment, the whole process of distribution, work, submission and marking, may take about 3 to 4 days. Now, because all those procedures are automated, it takes just 5 to 10 minutes. On top of that, lecturers can now analyse results, such as common mistakes, instantly.

What is the major selling point of iClass amongst e-learning solutions?

iClass: The user-friendliness. We even asked a group of elderlies, who did not even know how to use an iPad, to try our app and they picked up very quickly.

We try to make our systems as easy to use and as intuitive as possible. We also provide excellent support, for example holding tutorials and workshops at the HKU Centre of Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) specifically to teach teachers to use iClass.

How many people are using iClass now?

iClass: Today, we have over 70 members and 15,000 users, from overseas and Hong Kong. They are mostly primary schools, but we have secondaries and universities, too.

With the exception of HKU, which uses our service free of charge, we use a licensing system. Members purchase our service on an annual basis, and they get updates once in a while.

• About
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Tony Chiu

Tony is a second year student in History and Journalism at HKU. He also blogs at HKYOU and many other places.

Latest posts by Tony Chiu (see all)

• iClass: Turning a School Project into a Business - April 6, 2014
• Xiaomi, just another Chinese fake? - January 15, 2014
• What Separates Good from Great - November 10, 2013

Note: The interview above was originally conducted in Cantonese.