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Student-faculty team in Chennai develops 'Know Your Candidate' mobile app [Chennai] [Times of India](Times of India Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) CHENNAI: As polling day nears, it's time to do some quick thinking and decide on the candidate to support or ignore. A mobile app by an engineering student-faculty team gives information on candidates standing in a particular constituency in Tamil Nadu. 'Elections 2014 - Know Your Candidate,' created by Gokulvasan, a second year computer science engineering student of Hindustan University, and J Thangakumar, assistant professor in the department, was launched on Tuesday. At 750kb, the lightweight application is easily downloadable on any smartphone and rakes up the good points and the dirt on the candidates of the six major parties in each of 39 constituencies in the state. "Recently I was speaking to one of my students and the talk naturally turned to the elections. When I asked him who the candidates in his constituency were, he didn't know them. I was shocked, and I decided to do something about it," said Thangakumar. Offline, the app will list out the candidates in the constituency of choice of the mobile phone user. Using the internet, it can give more information on each candidate by listing relevant links online. The team worked on the app for a month. "It was initially created keeping the youth in mind, but after we launched it today many of my colleagues also downloaded it saying that it was very useful," Thangakumar said. The app can be downloaded from the Google Playstore. (c) 2014 Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited |