Posted: August 4, 2008
Filed Under: Products
Contest Yields 93 Innovative New Video Search Applications Based on Truveo API
Glastonbury, Conn. – August 4, 2008 – TopCoder®, Inc., the leader in online programming competition, skills assessment and competitive software development, today announced the winners of the Truveo Developer Challenge. Competing for a prize pool of $100,000, developers were set loose to build custom applications that use Truveo’s open API, http://developer.truveo.com, to build the next great video search application. Competitors leveraged Truveo, the world’s leading video search engine with a continuously-updated index of more than 200 million Web videos, to create 93 powerful new applications in just over two months of competition.
Unleashing their creativity, developers introduced new applications ranging from a 3D elliptical orbit display for finding and sharing online videos, to a free new tool for creating animated .GIF images from online videos. All 93 applications are immediately available to the public through the main competition website, where the full gallery of free applications can be viewed and downloaded: http://www.topcoder.com/truveo. Competitors also posted their new widgets, gadgets, mashups and web applications to social media sites like Facebook and MySpace for real-world use and evaluation. The judging criteria included five equally weighted categories: Download and usage statistics; innovation; best use of the Truveo API and functionality; Truveo favorites; and popularity in peer review judging by the global TopCoder community.
“Developers around the world are using AOL's open services and APIs to add value to their own applications and products,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. ”We’re thrilled that so many top-notch developers have found creative and innovative ways to utilize the Truveo API during this TopCoder Challenge and are impressed by the breadth and depth of the applications that have emerged from the competition.”
“From simply incorporating video search results into a Website to advanced and complex new video search applications, we’ve been impressed by how well TopCoder developers have chosen to implement the Truveo API,” said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. “We expect that these new applications and developers will help continue to spread the word and we’re delighted to see such an outpouring of creativity from this contest. Congratulations to all the winners.”
Applying the skills of TopCoder’s global community of top-ranked software designers and developers, the resulting applications delivered upon the challenge to extend the rich functionality of Truveo’s open APIs by creating powerful solutions that turn websites and social networks into dynamic destinations for online video. Developers were also encouraged to use the Truveo API with different AOL open APIs to create new applications, such as Open AIM, for which the TopCoder community built 53 new applications in a successful Open AIM Developer Challenge, http://www.topcoder.com/openaim, earlier this year.
“By harnessing the collective talent and creativity of the world’s top developers, and putting the cutting-edge technology and rich content of Truveo at their disposal, the TopCoder members over-delivered with such a surplus of great new applications that we never could have selected the best without the help of the peer review process,” said Denis Horgan, Vice President of Community Development for TopCoder. “We’re excited to watch how the new apps are adopted and used across the Web and social networks as well, in effect letting the general public continue the judging process in their own use.”
Truveo is the leading video search engine on the Web, and powers many of the Web’s most popular video destinations, from AOL, Microsoft Corporation, CNET’s Search.com, to hundreds of other websites and applications worldwide. Across the network of websites it powers, Truveo reaches an audience of over 75 million users every month.
Truveo Developer Challenge Winners
The $100,000 in prize money was broken out to award $10,000 each to the nine top winning applications. An additional 20 secondary winners were also awarded $500 each. Full details on all the creative, successful and ingenious winning applications, as well as the members who built them, are showcased online at http://www.topcoder.com/truveo, and are also featured on the AOL Developer Network website at http://dev.aol.com. A Podcast featuring interviews with a number of contestants is also available on the AOL Developer Network site. The top nine winning applications, available for direct online use and download, are:
• MapOfVideo: A map-based Truveo search that links video search results to specific locations.
http://mapofvideo.com/
• SVid: A revolutionary new web user experience for searching, seeing and sharing videos online with 3D elliptical orbit display and much more.
http://cyb3r.in/svid
• 3Styler for Facebook: Find and share favorite movies directly in Facebook with Truveo search and video player plugin.
http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=14558787347
• TechVideoBytes: A dynamic new web portal highlighting the latest technology videos streamed from around the world.
http://www.developersnippets.com/techvideobytes/
• GIF Creator: A desktop application for creating animated .GIF images and adding new effects to frames captured from Truveo video search results.
http://www.windowsultra.com/gif
• VideoWall: An engaging interactive 3D wall screensaver incorporating videos powered by Truveo search.
http://vinaymenon.50webs.com/videowall.html
• ejeboo: A visual search engine powered by Truveo for finding online videos, including tracking and notification of new videos by email, Twitter and RSS feeds.
http://ejeboo.com/
• Sporty: A totally visual interface for exploring the latest sports videos, featuring baseball, basketball, American football and the 28 Olympic disciplines.
http://sporty.somethingisaid.com/
• VeoSearch: A Firefox extension allowing direct video search from any text highlighted within the browser.
http://www.assembla.com/spaces/veosearch
Posts
