For Information Technology(IT) graduates, to be part of an innovative company and work on a ground breaking project can be a dream come true. Five local graduates had that chance recently.

Cheryl Grace Lee Wai Choo, 25, Husin Dieh Ung Teck, 25, Andrew Lim Seong Loong, 26, Lim How Wei, 25, and Lew Tuan Pok, 27, who work for Handisplay Sdn Bhd. Is working on the company's latest project called Handimail.

Handimail is a locally-produced technology that gives users the ability to receive and send e-mails via a GSM phone that does not have WAP or GPRS capabilities.

“I am interested in wireless communications and when I had the opportunity to work on Handimail I jumped at the chance, “ said Dieh.

Cheryl, is a self-confessed programming junky, who is in charge of the “front-end” aspects of the technology, is a Universiti Tenaga Malaysia (Uniten) graduate.

“Front end means how the programme looks to the end user and in the case Handimail. I liased with the User Interface designer to create the final product.” she said.

Lim, who is in charge of report generation, is responsible for the content of the information available for the Handimail user. But, his real passion lies in design, paricularly web design.

Lew, a Masters degree holder from University Malaya is involved with Digital Image Processing. He ensures the final product looks appealing to the end user.

Handisplay chief executive officer Hassan Alam said the decision to hire fresh graduates to work on such an important project was because “ sometimes having an open mind is better than experience”.

“ Fresh graduates are more willing to learn and they have not picked up the bad habits of experienced IT professionals.

“ A condition for being granted RM2.7mil under the Multimedia Grant Scheme(MGS) is that we have to conduct researches and involve local professionals , not expatriates.

“Handisplay has managed to initiate research activities and within a year has come up with a product that is not even available in Japan or other IT hubs in the Asia region,” said Alam, adding that by entrusting local graduates with important projects would give IT ideas and products from Malaysia a boost.

“At the moment, we still use a lot of imported technology. Malaysians can do equally well, if not better.”

Handimail is available free to anyone wishing to try out the technology and for free registration log on to www.handimail.com.my