Applications Created for the BlackBerry® Storm™ Smartphone Showcase Creativity and Value.
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. — Verizon said that Abyss, developed by Mobigloo, is the Grand Prize-winning application in its inaugural Apply Your Ideas mobile applications contest.
Abyss is a new action-puzzle game relying on an original concept. Exclusively designed for the BlackBerry® Storm™ smartphone, Abyss uses the touch screen and accelerometer to provide fun and innovative game play. The goal of the game is to rearrange colored pieces by sliding them so that the pearls do not fall in the Abyss of the ocean.
North Carolina-based Mobigloo, which develops games and lifestyle applications for mobile devices, will receive $50,000; 200 percent of the application’s revenue for a year (to a maximum of actual revenue plus $100,000); plus other prizes for the winning application. The Grand Prize winner was chosen from the five category winners by an elite panel of expert judges based on originality and innovation; quality of product; visual and user experience; product or service appeal; technical execution and value proposition.
”We’re delighted to be recognized by Verizon,” said Sylvain Dufour, chief executive officer of Mobigloo. “With Verizon’s support of BlackBerry® devices and the upcoming launch of the V CAST Apps store, so many doors are open to developers to create innovative applications. We hope our new game, Abyss, will entertain many users.”
VDC Members Chose Category and People’s Choice Winners
Developers were encouraged to submit apps for the contest in five different categories – Connect, Entertain, Guide, Save Time, and Enhance Living – which highlighted a wide range of activities, information, entertainment and other cool things developers can bring to mobile phones. A full set of criteria and contest rules can be found at:
www.applyyourideas.com/official_rules.aspx.
Members of the Verizon Developer Community (VDC) chose the winning applications in each of the five contest categories based upon innovation, quality and consumer appeal. Category winners, who will each receive $10,000, were:
ENTERTAIN
•Abyss – See the description of the Grand-Prize winner above.
CONNECT
•Vaayoo SocialBox© – Vaayoo SocialBox combines social networking, media (pictures, video and voice), sync, multimedia messaging and private communities in an easy-to-use mobile application. Vaayoo, based in Silicon Valley, was founded by a team of professionals with wide telecom experience, with a goal of innovating and simplifying mobile technology for everyday use.
“We are honored to win in a very competitive ‘Connect’ category and are thankful to the community of users and developers that have validated our work. Thanks to Verizon for giving us this opportunity and a platform for innovating for consumers. Our team worked very hard to develop innovative features delivering a great mobile user experience,” said Ranjit R. Sawant, founder and chief executive officer of Vaayoo.
GUIDE
•Berryminder – Berryminder is also the winner of the People’s Choice Award, having garnered the highest total of votes during the contest. The developer of the People’s Choice winner will receive $25,000 among other prizes. Berryminder is an application that allows users to set alerts based on their GPS-determined locations. Users can set a detailed alert and attach a location to it so that whenever he or she enters the specified region, the alert appears. Berryminder also contains standard alarm features and date-based alerts that aren’t location-dependent. It was created by Berrymad, a small but innovative company founded in 2009 by two recent grads from the University of California at San Diego.
“We saw this contest as a great opportunity to showcase what Berrymad has to offer. All of the positive feedback and public interest has inspired Berrymad to start developing more great apps for the upcoming V CAST Apps store. It is a great honor to have been chosen for the People’s Choice Award and we look forward to working more with Verizon in the near future,” said Tom Maneri, president of Berrymad.
SAVE TIME
•Call Control Lite – Call Control, created by the Kedlin Company of Seattle, Wash., blocks telemarketers that appear on a user-generated Community Blacklist at EveryCall.us, effectively reducing or eliminating unwanted spam telephone calls to your BlackBerry. It works better than traditional call-blocking applications because Call Control has identified more than 2.5 million spam callers and is continuously updated based on user and Government Do-Not-Call complaints.
“Verizon’s contest had a ton of great apps submitted, and we’re thrilled that Call Control was voted the winner in the ‘Save Time’ category. We’ve spent months in development of Call Control, and it’s a lot of fun to launch our product in conjunction with a win in Verizon’s prestigious contest,” said Ben Sharpe, chief executive officer of Kedlin Company.
ENHANCE LIVING
•craigslist mobile by Movela – craigslist mobile is a full-featured client application for BlackBerry devices that allows users to browse and search craigslist postings, bookmark and reply to posts, save searches and more. The application supports all categories and all countries supported by www.craigslist.org. The application was created by Movela and uses technology from Pyxis Mobile, whose solutions are used by mobile professionals to extend critical business data from internal systems to the mobile space.
“We are excited that craigslist mobile has been given recognition as a leading life enhancement application,” said Jeff Yeakley, manager at Pyxis Mobile and Movela’s lead designer. “We believe that we, along with our friends at craigslist.org, have created a differentiated application that is rich with features. Our thanks to Verizon and its team of judges.”
Verizon’s Apply Your Ideas contest – designed to spur development of the freshest and most appealing applications for smartphone customers – was announced at the first-ever VDC Conference last July, where the company introduced its developer portal (http://developer.verizon.com). Verizon created the community to help developers bring mobile applications to market and address developer demands for speed and transparency.
For more information about the VDC, visit http://developer.verizon.com.
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