For Phill Miller's friends, the 20-hour car ride home from a Colorado ski trip meant a very long nap. But during the drive back to Muncie, Phill Miller wrote a software program that could change international communication.
Miller, a Ball State Honors College and computer science graduate, developed a Web-based language translation service that works with Internet-accessible computers, cellular phones or personal digital assistants.
The program, part of his Honors College thesis project, won Miller the 2002 Indiana Student Software Awards Competition Award for the most outstanding undergraduate software.
The program was also a top finalist in Microsoft's Best of the .NET Awards and earned an honorable mention in an Association of Information Technology Professionals competition.
The foundation of Miller's software is what he has coined "flexible services architecture," which enables compatibility with an array of electronic devices.
"The significant difference between my product and existing services is that it is not just for Web pages," he said. "Other translation services are available on the Internet, but they typically don't include audio features and aren't compatible with some portable electronic devices."
What's new and different about this software is that audio accompanies the text, and pictures of the words' pronunciation appear when a word is translated, said Fred Kitchens, Miller's thesis adviser and director of the College of Business' Cluster Computing Research Project.
The new technology can also access online databases, catalogs and E-commerce Web sites, which appear not only in text format, but also in features previously not available to portable electronic devices without installing software.
Users don't have to buy a separate electronic translator, because it works with existing equipment, Kitchens said.
The software can be updated frequently without inconveniencing users, Miller said, because the system operates not from a mobile device's own memory, but instead from a remote server.
Miller, Kitchens and Sushil Sharma, another management professor, will travel to Lyon, France at the end of July to present a co-authored paper that explains the "flexible services architecture" technology concept.
"It should be well received at the conference in France," Kitchens said. "This will open the door for more applications and services to use his design."
Kitchens said he expects the tech-savvy attendants to be enthusiastic about Miller's work.
While Miller is considering selling his idea for no less than $75,000, he said he is also interested in entering a long-term agreement with a wireless service provider, such as Cingular, where customers would pay a monthly fee for use of the service.
He said many other companies are embracing his idea as well.
Indianapolis' Made2Manage Systems, is aiding Miller in marketing his product to other companies. Miller worked as a developer for the company during his last two years at Ball State.
Later this summer, Miller will leave for Costa Rica where he will work as a missionary while continuing work on software development. He said the service, which is capable of translating any language, might be a tool in breaking the language barrier many tourists and business travelers face.
For additional information about Miller's translator web service, visit http://www.phillmiller.com. A web application and cell phone interface links are available at http://www.phillmiller.com/wordweb.
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