Whoever says Hong Kong is not innovative obviously missed out on the Chamber's study mission on September 23 to the Innovation and Technology Fair, organised by the Chinese University of Hong Kong's (CUHK) Faculty of Engineering.

The 36-members who joined the day trip were very impressed not so much by the level of technology on display, but more by the commercial potential of the applications developed by students. Everything from blood pressure measuring devices to stock trend prediction programs to one-touch digital photo enhancement software was on display.

Prof Wong Kam-fei, Director of the Centre for Innovation and Technology, Faculty of Engineering, told the delegation, led by the Chamber's Industry and Technology Committee Chairman, Oscar Chow, that the aim of the IT fair was to act as a bridge between businesses and the university.

"Creative ideas from our academics and marketing insights from the industry can lead to imaginative, yet practical, innovative applications," he said.

Some of the technologies on display went way over this writer's head, while others were as much fun to play around with as they were to learn about. One interesting application was PhotoRite, an advanced automatic image processing software for digital cameras. Student Jason Ho, demonstrating the application, explained that with basic digital cameras increasingly being incorporated into personal electronic devices, a lot of users have been disappointed at the poor quality images that these simple cameras produce. His program, which is small enough to be installed on a mobile phone, provides one-touch lighting and colour enhancement.

Another fun application was a PC pointing device that could be worn as a ring, the advantages and applications of which could be huge. Likewise for the "Multilingual Virtual Performer" which is a virtual woman that is able to read any letter, article or text and more amazingly synchronise her lips to the words. As if that were not enough, it can also sing with almost perfect lip synchronisation in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and English. The developer said it can also be programmed for other languages.

Another project on display was a server-less video streaming technology. With streaming video now becoming increasingly common on businesses' Web sites, servers often cannot keep pace with growing bandwidth demand. Interestingly, the technology uses clusters of users' computers to produce formidable computing power, which ironically is even more reliable than dedicated high-end video servers.

A number of members who visited the fair said that the products on display had given them a few ideas for possible business ventures, but obviously they could not tell The Bulletin exactly what those were.