Media Releases

XTouch wins Top App title

April 22, 2014

Mobile app that turns any surface tap-sensitive takes $1,000 prize

TORONTO, ON—An app that can turn any sur­face into a tap-sen­si­tive inter­face was named Top App at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s 2014 Mobile App Lab Demo Night. The win comes with $1,000 in prize mon­ey.

Amin Hei­dari demon­strat­ed the XTouch app to a crowd of indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives, pro­fes­sors and stu­dents, includ­ing three judges: Dar­rell Ether­ing­ton from TechCrunch, Lenny Freilich from Ontario Cen­tres of Excel­lence and Arshia Tabrizi, tech­nol­o­gy lawyer and founder of the social video plat­form Vidoyen.

“Two taps in dif­fer­ent spots act as two dif­fer­ent but­tons on the table,” said Hei­dari. “XTouch extends the tac­tile envi­ron­ment beyond the sur­face of that mobile device.”

XTouch tech­nol­o­gy is already in use in two games avail­able on the App Store, with more com­ing soon.

Ten apps, care­ful­ly select­ed from more than 100 devel­oped over the past year, did bat­tle Thurs­day night for the title Top App. When the dust set­tled and the judges weighed in, the top six teams were sep­a­rat­ed by less than one point.

The run­ner-up app, called Sur­gi­cal Train­er and Nav­i­ga­tor, or STAN, helps sur­geons in train­ing get empir­i­cal feed­back about their pro­fi­cien­cy in the oper­at­ing room by track­ing hand motions dur­ing surgery.

“This com­pe­ti­tion was fierce,” said Pro­fes­sor Parham Aara­bi, one of the event’s hosts, along­side Pro­fes­sor Jonathan Rose. “I think you’ll hear more from these teams and the Mobile App Lab in the near future—the poten­tial of mobile is just begin­ning to be real­ized, but there’s much more to come.”

See a video of XTouch in action: http://xtouch.io

More infor­ma­tion, con­tact:

Mar­it Mitchell
Senior Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Depart­ment of Elec­tri­cal & Com­put­er Engi­neer­ing
Tel: 416–978-7997
marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca