U of T student earns entrepreneurial plaudits.
University of Toronto Ph.D candidate in computer engineering Vincent Cheung was voted 2010 Student Entrepreneur Ontario Champion for his Shape Collage software.
Courtesy photo
University of Toronto student Vincent Cheung has found a picture-perfect way to make a name for himself.
Cheung is the creator of Shape Collage, a downloadable software program that can take hundreds of photos and automatically arrange them into collages of virtually any shape or size.
Cheung devised and programmed the software himself, mostly to manage his own massive photo collection in an easier way.
"I have a lot of photos - everyone has a digital camera these days - and I wanted a means of sharing my photos instead of having people look through 200 photos in a slide show," he said.
Working toward his PhD in computer engineering, Cheung began toying around with algorithms and codes to find a way to make collages automatically.
At first, Shape Collage was used mostly by himself and a few others, but when he emailed a number of technology and software websites and blogs to promote his idea last February, demand at his own website (www.vincentcheung.ca) spiked.
"I went from zero traffic to about 90,000 downloads a month," he said. "After that, I thought, 'Wow, maybe I should file the patent.'"
He incorporated Shape Collage Inc. in March of last year, and since that time Shape Collage has been downloaded more than a million times. The software has been used by everyone from professional photographers and web designers to proud grandparents looking for unique ways to keep photos of their grandchildren.
The program has even been translated into various languages and has been used in some 200 countries around the world.
"(Translating Shape Collage) is not something I thought about at first, but I had some users of the software contact me and say, 'I'd really like to use this program in Czech, so do you want me to translate it for you?'" Cheung said.
The Annex resident said the ease, quickness and versatility of the program has helped make it a success, but he acknowledged he never imagined it would take off the way it did.
"I really just made it for myself and thought it would be good to share it with other people," he said.
While a basic version of Shape Collage is available free on Cheung's website, more advanced versions are available for sale, with enough people purchasing the software to allow the Annex area resident to pay himself a salary.
He is already looking at new ways to expand the scope of Shape Collage Inc.
"There are a lot of opportunities right now to form business partnerships, and (companies) are interested in incorporating it into their own websites or existing products," he said.
Cheung's hard work earned him the title of 2010 Student Entrepreneur Ontario Champion by the charitable organization Advancing Canadian Entrepreneurship (ACE).
Shape Collage Inc. will be vie for ACE's regional title against other winning entrepreneurial ventures on Monday, March 8, with the winning entry earning a $1,000 prize and entry into the national finals in May.