A team from New Zealand is among the leading contenders for the 8th Annual Microsoft Imagine Cup. This competition is the biggest technology competition in the world and around 300,000 students from 142 countries around the world are trying to develop solutions for various problems being faced around the world.

The Kiwi team overcame a lot of competitors in numerous elimination rounds and got selected out of 4 teams after delivering a presentation in front of a panel of 7 judges. The team is known as OneBeep.

The Kiwi team developed an innovative solution to the problem of overcoming internet connectivity problem faced by One Laptop Per Child program in developing countries. The lack of internet connectivity is a serious problem in the way of getting educational content into these devices.

OneBeep offered a simple yet effective solution. It has demonstrated that by using commonly available AM/FM radio files, applications and documents can be sent, as audio through broadcast radio. The files can be received using a bog standard transistor radio which is connected to the laptop and these files can be reconverted into digital data and used on the laptop.

The team now is keenly looking forward to the final of the tournament which will be help from July 3-July 8 in Warsaw, Poland. The team is from the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

OneBeep's Team Leader, Vinny Kumar argued that most of the leading IT companies were running for profits and not much concerned in solving problems faced globally. Many experts fell that the team has bright chances of winning the Microsoft Imagine Cup.