NYC Media Lab Announces Winners of Media Mash 2012

BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- NYC Media Lab today announced the winners of Media Mash 2012, its first challenge to developers to transform data from the city's leading digital media companies into innovative applications. The first-of-its-kind challenge was designed to increase collaboration among NYC's digital media companies and developers.

Media Mash 2012 provided developers with open feeds and APIs, or application programming interfaces, which offer ready access to content and functionality and enable interesting "mash ups" of features and functionality. The competition highlighted more than 50 APIs including those from The New York Times, CBS Sports Fantasy, tumblr and NewsCred.

Each app was evaluated by a panel of judges based on the uniqueness and quality of the idea and the impact of the app on media innovation. Participants competed for a prize pool of $10,000.

"Open APIs are increasingly important to digital media innovation, allowing the developer community to unlock new features and functionality," said Roger Neal, Executive Director of NYC Media Lab. "The winning apps demonstrate fresh approaches to content aggregation, social commerce and mobility."

The winners of Media Mash 2012 are:

Best Overall Mashup – Grand Prize: InOur.name.  InOur.name offers the user two search boxes. One asks, "What issue is important to you?" and the other, "What is your zip code?"  The search results reveal the user's elected representatives' activity on the topic.  The simple and enlightening tool was developed by Jason Wright, Cornell University graduate engineering student and a hackNY fellow. (API used:  NewsCred).

Best Overall Mashup – Second Prize: CityMaps. CityMaps transforms a city map into a hub for social commerce, aggregating tweets and deals from merchants and integrating with local commerce services such as OpenTable and Fandango. (APIs used: FourSquare, OpenTable and Fandango).

Popular Choice Award: New York Mapper. The popular choice award winner was determined by visitors to the Media Mash Challenge site. New York Mapper creates a Facebook overlay on Google Maps, enabling map users to discover and share places with their Facebook friends.

Student Prize:  InOur.name

"With this inaugural Media Mash, the NYC Media Lab wanted to mix it up among developers and New York City's progressive digital media companies," said Neal. "Some media companies such as The New York Times and CBS Sports have created robust open data platforms, and we wanted to create greater awareness of their efforts. The challenge was highly successful in demonstrating the value of media APIs."  

Media Mash entries were judged by prominent members of New York City's tech, startup and academic communities. Ken Bronfin, President of Hearst Interactive Media, said, "It was a truly impressive group of apps in this year's challenge. The developers demonstrated both creativity and technical skill – and were able to come up with apps that will be useful to consumers."

Andy Weissman, a partner at Union Square Ventures, said of the finalists, "The winners built something that lets users engage more fully with our government and our city, in ways that could make our lives better."

Media Mash 2012 featured APIs from Amex Open Forum, AOL, Associated Press, Bitly, Blip, Bloomberg LP, Boxee, CBS News, CBS Sports Fantasy, CNET, CNN, Conde Nast Traveler, Etsy, Facebook, FanFeedr, foursquare, GetGlue, Gilt Groupe, Glamour magazine, Google, Guardian US, Huffington Post, hunch, Instapaper, Magma, NBCUniversal, The New York Times, New Yorker, Newsblur, NewsCred, NPR, NY Magazine, Patch, PBS, Pearson, People Magazine, Popular Science, Reuters, Rolling Stone, Seventeen magazine, Style.com, Teen Vogue, thumbplay, TIME magazine, trulia, tumblr, Univision, Vimeo, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED magazine and Zemanta.

The winning Media Mash 2012 apps may be viewed at http://mediamash.challengepost.com via ChallengePost, the global marketplace for community-driven innovation that powered this year's competition.

About NYC Media Lab

NYC Media Lab (www.nycmedialab.org) connects companies seeking to advance new media technologies with academic institutions, in order to drive collaborative innovation. Launched by the City (NYCEDC), Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) and Columbia University, NYC Media Lab is a public-private partnership encompassing all the universities of NYC. The Lab tackles the big questions facing the media industry today, with the goal of generating research, knowledge transfer, talent development, R&D and new business models.

About ChallengePost

ChallengePost is a web platform that enables government agencies, corporations, non-profits and individuals to challenge the public to solve problems. Challenge sponsors receive innovative solutions and increased awareness around important initiatives. Members of the public receive recognition and rewards. ChallengePost has powered over 200 challenges on behalf of some of the world's largest organizations. http://ChallengePost.com

For more information, please visit www.nycmedialab.org

SOURCE NYC Media Lab