Who wants to be a Euro developer millionaire?
Oh god not another developer competition. Well yes, but quite a good one, as there’s 1 million Euros up for grabs in the latest Vodafone programmer challenge - and with Mobile World Congress just around the corner why the hell not right?
'
To put things in context, Vodafone is championing its new developer competition around the latest services in the Vodafone 360 ‘offering’. Simply put, this is a suite of Internet services for phone and PC/Mac heavily themed around social media and lifestyle apps. All of a user’s contacts, status updates and messaging services are brought together in one place alongside music, photos and mapping services with the option to share any of these elements with friends.
Vodafone says that the 360 service now has more than 7,000 apps available since its launch 3 months ago and it expects to have shipped more than two million devices incorporating 50 different handsets that are capable of accessing the Vodafone 360 Apps Shop.
So what was that about a competition again? Oh yes sorry – along with offering chilled bottles of San Miguel and plates of octopus tapas at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress on Monday 15th February 2010, Vodafone will launch of its €1m ‘Vodafone App Star’ prize fund to reward developers of the best app in Europe.
Gosh! Best app in Europe eh? They had better be careful what they pick. What if they are all rubbish? Will they have to give the prize out anyway? There’s very little new innovation in this space these days, so isn’t one million Euro knicker a bit much? They don’t seem to think so…
“The sheer volume of applications that have been submitted and approved to ship in our Vodafone 360 Apps Shop is testament to our continued commitment to open web standards,” said Lee Epting, director of content services at Vodafone Group.
You can check out the details here if you wish. I don’t think they have really detailed the bones of this competition enough in terms of what the app will be judged on and how it will be analysed, but perhaps that will be more evident at the show.
As for me, I hope to get out there, but accommodation will be running short now – so if you hear about an English journalist getting thrown in a Spanish jail for pitching his tent outside the Sagrada Familia then you don’t know me OK?