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

7. Winners announced: November, 2007

8. The WHERE Developer Contest will run until October 15, 2007. For more information see www.where.com/contest.

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