10 Cool Things About The WHERE Developer Contest - Develop... Win... Meet VCs!
Written by Glenn Letham
Wednesday, 05 September 2007
Announced a couple of week's ago, The WHERE Developer Contest will offer
thousands of dollars in cash prizes. Prize winners will also receive an audience
with three top-tier venture capital firms: Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners, and
GrandBanks Capital. You don't have to be an experienced mobile developer or programmer to
take part, however, you should be knowledgeable about location technology and
you should have a good idea! Develop... Win... Meet VCs!
10 Cool Things About The WHERE Developer Contest and the dev
program:
1. Through the WHERE Developer Program, developers can build their own applications using
any programming environment (PHP, Ruby on Rails, .NET, Perl, etc.) and WHERE
will automatically port their application to J2ME and BREW GPS-capable mobile
handsets.
2. Winners will be chosen by a leading industry panel including individuals
from Frost & Sullivan, IDC, the Yankee Group, O'Reilly Radar, and
ProgrammableWeb.
3. Anyone can enter... you don't have to be a programmer. No phone needed. No
mobile development experience needed. All you need is a good idea
4. Not sure what to do or what kind of application to develop? Where has
offered up some suggestions:
Games: how about a Geo-caching app?
- Geo-caching is a very popular activity which involves hiding objects and
publishing their GPS coordinates so that other people can hunt for the
geo-cached object. The WHERE version of geo-caching would help people look for
geo-cached objects on the spur of the moment, without needing to carry around a
separate GPS unit.
- Capture the Flag: search for virtual flags and maybe
grab some weapons?
- Virtual objects game: Find virtual objects (fishing,
buried treasure, or anything else) that can be collected by traveling to a
physical location
- Commuting: If you commute, there are likely thousands of
other people who share a similar commute. Why not build an app based on your
commute?
- Finders: There's a lot of useful content buried on the Internet.
It needs to be freed for the mobile phone. Some examples are
playgrounds, bathrooms, restaurants with changing tables, historical
information, altitude level, skate parks, etc, water levels, tides,
sunrise/sunset, etc.
- Geo Web Search
- Web location bookmarking: There's
a lot of location content on the web, and it's not easy to move it to your
phone. A WHERE-capable browser toolbar would allow someone to pull a location
off of a web site and make it available to WHERE. Once that location is in
WHERE, you can view it on a map, search for businesses nearby, or get driving
directions.
- Coordinating meetings with friends: Trying to get several
people to meet at the same time and place can be challenging.
- Celebrity
finder: Use your mobile phone to get real-time information about celebrity
sightings in your area.
- Create a story that changes based on where you
are located.
- Art projects: Place a real art object in a physical place (a
sculpture, a sticker, a piece of graffiti), then publish the location virtually.
5. First place: $5,000 cash; Promotion on where.com; Meeting with Venrock,
Kodiak Venture Partners, and GrandBanks Capital
6. Final date for entering contest: October 15th, 2007
9. Even if you don't win you can still win great prizes and hook-up with some
Venture Capitalists as the second of third prize winners. 5 additional
contestants will have theo pportunity to launch app to WHERE mobile GPS
users
10. How to Enter - Register for the WHERE Developer Program. Build your WHERE
mobile GPS application. Send an email to with a link to your
completed WHERE application. This will enter your application into the
contest
Mobile Technology Feature - Top 10 Business Apps for Android - Android has become one of the most popular mobile operating systems
in the world due to advanced software, competitive manufacturers, and an
app market that is filled with exciting and useful applications. Read
on for this fine Top 10 List compiled by tech writer, Blake Sanders
The Really Big List of Mapping, Geo location Mobile developer resources, APIs and Tools - The Mobile Ecosystem... no question that mobile is huge and
the opportunity for developers, in particular, geo developers! There's
loads of developer resources on the web so to help the developer,
here's a listing of just some of the fine dev resources, blogs,
toolsets and more to consider when developing or porting your app to a
smartphone or Tablet.
ArcGIS.com Mashup Tutorial with Flickr and Foursquare data-
Here's a simple "how to" tutorial on working with the free ArcGIS.com
to easily import KML or RSS data from Flickr and foursquare into ArcGIS
to create your own custom map mashup. ArcGIS.com has some recent
updates including support for KML, be sure to check it out!
Most Users of Free Photo Apps Say Adding Cool Effects is Most Useful - Adding cool effects
to photos was rated as the most useful thing by more than halfof
consumers surveyed using free online photography services, according to
CatchFree a free
online service that helps people find the best free mobile and web applications
to perform useful tasks.
Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet Up Close - No Replacement for the iPad But Pretty Darned Sweet - As could be
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killer".
Mobile Developer Resource - MapQuest & The Mobile Worker - Facility management companies, surveyors, multi-level marketing,
insurance claims, pipeline companies, water utilities; all have field
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to work sites, but keeping a record of the work done
Flickr GPS Photo Tag Tip - Here's a tip for Flickr users who want to share their GPS information
with their photos. note, in order to do this you'll need to be
capturing photos using a GPS-enabled or GPS-aware camera (see you're
smartphone hardware settings to ensure that GPS or location sharing is
turned "ON)".
Mobile data usage in Canada to triple between 2010 and 2012 - Some interesting, yet not terribly surprising, numbers on mobile
usage coming out of Canada. According to a report summarized on
Techvibes, mobile usage is soaring, in particular, the smartphone
segment
Suggested Reading
The Underground Guide To The iPhone:
The iPhone is – if I may say so – one of the greatest mobile
revolutions of the past decade. More and more, mobile phones seem to
materialize out of our wildest dreams. Because of the tight integration
of third-party applications, you can do nearly everything with your
device — be it gaming, working, fooling around, and of course phoning.
Good Mobile Messaging: Executives and professional field forces spend an increasing amount of time on the road tending to business.
Mobile Apps - Native or Web?:
You probably have a plan to build a mobile app, but you've struggled
with the basic question - Should I build it using open web standards
such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or should I build it as a native app
for the devices I want to target?
iBike Coach App- a new “Always On” feature always gathers data
Nike+ GPS App- for sports tracking, recording and sharing
Featured Events
Content & Apps for Automotive Europe 2012 (18-19 April, Germany)
will give you key insights on how in-vehicle connectivity is being
revolutionised as OEMs integrate dynamic content to stay relevant
throughout the vehicle life cycle.
Location Intelligence for Enterprise - Europe 2012, January 16-17, London Hear from Google, Jones Lang LaSalle, Tesco, Willis, Oracle,
ESRI, Microsoft, PBBI and many more as they debate the best strategies
for business models and integration.
Consumer Telematics Show 2012 (Jan 9, Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas, USA) is the most prestigious and
dynamic consumer telematics focused meeting for the automotive industry.
Held in Las Vegas on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES),
this year's senior-level speakers will include General Motors, Audi,
Toyota, Panasonic, Continental, Hughes Telematics, Gartner, KIA,
Mercedes-Benz and many more
Esri Dev Summit - The
Esri Developer Summit (DevSummit) brings together developers and GIS
professionals from all over the globe. March 26-29, 2012, Palm Springs,
CA
