Net Results:  The onscreen webcam image suddenly goes wonky, fizzling from a perfect colour image of the student sitting in front of it to a gritty black and white rendition that might look rather good as album cover art, writes Karlin Lillington.

This is definitely not wanted though in a software demonstration that has so many hopes and dreams riding on it - $25,000 in first-place winnings and the chance to work with professional advisers to create a business out of a concept.

In only five hours, four judges will be eyeing up that same demonstration and looking for evidence that it isn't up to scratch.

The four lads from NUI Maynooth who form Team Ireland at Microsoft's Imagine Cup in Ireland - an international student competition whose big prize is in software development - are quietly panicking, each in his own way.

Dan Kelly opens up the code file and scans it while the other three - Cathal Coffey, Mark Clerkin and Eric McClean - alternatively pace the small hotel room, rub foreheads in despair and offer suggestions.

Maybe it's only the webcam, suggests one, and they all clutch at this small hope - because then it isn't a bug. A new webcam can be fitted in seconds; a bug could take weeks they don't have to fix. If it is a bug, the most important part of their presentation, the live demo, will be scuppered.

On goes a new webcam and - relief all around - it does the trick. They are back in business.

The four are in Seoul for the Microsoft Imagine Cup finals, having beaten off stiff competition in the Irish round and won the right to represent the country for the first time here, in the software development competition, up against formidable coding talent from powerhouse countries like India and China and Brazil.

Their project, called Signal, is an innovative approach to teaching sign language using a computerised system that, using motion capture techniques, enables a student to be shown a sign by an animated teacher, then try the sign out before a webcam on the computer.

The computer assesses the student's effort and either offers praise or asks the student to try signing again.

The program reads the sign and offers feedback in real time - no small feat for a motion capture project.

They are excited from the moment they board their Aer Lingus flight to Amsterdam. There they connect up with two more students, Marouf Azad and Mohammed Al-Tahs from DIT, who are among the six finalists in another segment of the Imagine Cup, on Web Development.

The reality - and the challenge - of it all really sinks in as they find they are surrounded by other teams on their way, too - fellow computing students from the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and elsewhere, all hoping to be the ones accepting plaudits on the stage at the end of the week.

Almost none of this delightfully enthusiastic and good-natured bunch sleeps a wink during the flight, thinking about the competition and the fact that every moment brings them closer to a small country on the other side of the planet.

More than 100,000 students from more than 100 countries competed to get to these finals, at which 112 teams compete.

These are truly a small elite and the very fact that they have made it this far will add serious clout to their CVs.

While the Maynooth men will have to go through two initial presentations to two different judging panels, hoping to make the cut to the second round, a final presentation and - hope against hope - glory - Mohammed and Marouf face a different kind of challenge.

They will work around the clock to build a new web application that extends their winning project - an online compiler that lets programmers compile or translate code from a computing language into something a machine can understand.

This essential part of programming usually requires expensive hardware and must be done on-site.

The online compiler makes code development easy and accessible on home computers based anywhere - especially appealing to developing world programmers who don't have access to more expensive hardware needed to run other larger compiler programs.

It's a bit of a cliché to say that whatever the outcome, these Irish students are all winners, but it is true - the mere fact of arriving here, after facing off against hundreds of their peers, proves that they are.

Both these teams have done work of superb quality that in each case has a life ahead of it. Deaf organisations and Enterprise Ireland have been working with the Maynooth team, interested in the program they will produce, while the DIT team has created a tool that could truly transform computing education in many places.

As the Imagine Cup clearly shows, Ireland is definitely producing computing students of the highest calibre that can hold their own on the world stage.

The Irish team from Maynooth made it through to be one of the six teams in the finals, with the winner to be announced today.

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