Get Ready for the Apps of the Future
The Mozilla Ignite open innovation contest has entered a fascinating new phase following the announcement of eight winning ideas for apps for the future.
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Mozilla, the challenge is an invitation to build apps that are too big for today’s Internet.
The brainstorming round received more than 300 submissions and the eight winning teams were awarded prizes ranging from $1,000 to $5,000. Next comes three development rounds where developers from all over the world have the opportunity to turn the concepts into reality.
Mozilla Ignite is part of US Ignite, the Administration’s project to spark the next generation of public sector applications.
During the brainstorming round participants were asked to imagine that the limitations of today’s Internet no longer apply (such as slow transfer speeds and computers that aren’t fast enough) and to design their apps as if they had up to one gigabit per second to play with.
“After the challenge was announced, the response was exciting and encouraging, not just in terms of the number of submissions but in quality and creativity and impact embodied in each,” said Will Barkis, project manager of Mozilla Ignite. “We were blown away by the visionary ideas that were truly outside of the bounds of what is possible today.”
Among the winning ideas were:
A service for real-time emergency response observation and supervision – an app that could allow you to comprehensively assess any emergency – such as hurricane or flood – from locations miles away by integrating high quality data such as video from multiple feeds and sensor readings such as heat and smoke levels.
Long-term monitoring and crisis management system – an app that would let patients and doctors pull together a patient’s own healthcare data in real-time.
A total of $485,000 is being made available for the development rounds and the first disbursements will be made in November.
Add your Comment
[LOGIN FIRST] if you're already a member.fields are required.