One of the 2014 Saluki App Competition winners might help students find their own trails, or at least ones they never knew about.

The second annual competition concluded April 7, with the grand prize going to two student apps — SI Trails and The Gluten Free Converter. The idea behind the competition is to create an app that makes life on campus, and in the region, better. Technology transfer specialist Amy McMorrow Hunter helped organize the event.

“We’re happy to see more and more students catching the innovation bug — and getting results with their ideas and apps,” she said. “The three teams that won the judged categories in the 2014 Saluki App Competition have established or are making plans to establish their own businesses. The competitions will continue so we encourage students to get involved and get their ideas rolling.”

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SI Trails developers Jeremy Packer, Randall Brownlee and Mohammad Alabandi wanted to help the southern Illinois community become more familiar with the surrounding natural landscape. The app offers listings of single-day hiking trails as well as integrated Google Maps, trail maps, pictures, handouts and tips.

The app provides information for several hiking trails — the Arboretum, Campus Lake, Giant City, Little Grand Canyon, Cedar Lake and Panther’s Den — with more to be added in the future.

The team hopes to add locations where outdoor enthusiasts can not only hike but also offer other activities such as rope climbing, cliff diving, fishing, overnight camping, multi-day backpacking, mountain biking and swimming. They also plan to promote social and community involvement where users can organize group hikes, plan outdoor events, post user photos/videos and communicate or leave reviews about the trails.

Brownlee, a senior from Chicago studying information systems technology, said he came up with the app idea last year while working on a web design class project.

“I do a lot of hiking in my free time, and most of the time found myself only going to the same two or three trails that I knew of in the area,” he said. “Searching online I found out that there was information on dozens of more trails that were still fairly close, but some of the websites were iffy and none of them had a well formatted comprehensive list that was easy to follow.”

After doing his research, Brownlee developed an idea to create a website where one could find hiking trails, campsites and nature preserves in the area with maps, pictures and descriptions. Eventually Packer, a senior from Metropolis studying computer science, approached Brownlee about turning the site into a mobile app.

“Our goal is to make connecting with nature a more accessible experience,” Brownlee said. “We want our app to make trails in southern Illinois more accessible to the community by placing all the information in the palms of their hands.”

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Packer, who won the competition last year for his Life at Southern app, worked as SI Trails’ lead developer.

“There are many different ways to build apps,” he said. “For SI Trails, I decided to build it using a RESTful (representational state transfer) architecture, which is pretty common in many of the apps most students use.”

Packer said the team is discussing how the app will update over time. The team is looking to release an update in the beginning of the summer including additional trails, richer media integration and a website home to organize hikes and outings, he said.

“The beta version of the app is currently available on the Google Market, but is currently only supported for Android phones above 2.2,” he said. “We are working on an update that will add support.”

Brownlee said the team is also working on an offline mode that saves changes and maps when the app goes offline. The app updates itself when it finds a signal, he said.

The app is available on Google Play. More information can be found on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/sitrails.

Check in Wednesday’s Daily Egyptian for coverage of the Gluten Free Converter.

Kyle Sutton can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter @KyleSutton_DE or at 536-3311 ext. 254.