SINGAPORE: Mr Hoon Thien Rong was working on one of the computers in the school laboratory when the janitor reminded students to leave, as it was inching towards closing time.

The third-year undergraduate at Nanyang Technological University had to pain-stakingly save and close every application on his desktop.

“(The janitor) was waiting behind me, and I was trying to close all my applications, but it took so long,” said Mr Hoon, 24.

Mr Hoon sought to develop a solution to the problem, together with classmate Chua Khim Teck, also 24.

What resulted is a software solution they named Hibernater that allows you to save your files and Web pages on a computer with one click.

You can then launch your saved files on another computer equipped with the Hibernater application.

There’s no need to save individual files via email or on a portable device, which takes a longer time.

All that is required is a Windows PC with an Internet connection.

Hibernater saves the documents and web addresses that users are working on to a secured server hosted at a local data centre.

“It’s very fast. A rough estimate would be 30 seconds to save 10 Web pages and five documents of about 100KB each, depending on the Internet connection,” said Mr Chua, who added that Hibernater is especially useful for people who use shared computers and are always on the move.

The project has attracted funding from Azione Capital and the two computer science undergraduates are now working on Hibernater full-time as part of their academic requirements of completing a six-month internship programme.

Said Mr Nicholas Chan, executive director of Azione Capital: “I found the concept intriguing, particularly when every other start-up is going the way of the Internet and making Web-based software alternatives such as Google Docs and Flickr.”

Hibernater currently supports Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer. The founders plan to include more applications like Mozilla Firefox, MSN messenger and Skype soon.

The software is in its beta, or testing, stages and Mr Chua said that users would be able to download a free version from its website (www.hibernater.com) by next month.

There will also be paid versions of the software, which come with enhanced features like multi-user support. Pricing details are being worked out. - TODAY/sh