Vodacom Marathon Development Winner

Vodacom Marathon Development Winner

Vodacom’s very first “Dawn of the Living Widgets” winner, S3 Solutions, have triumphed in taking the grand prize of R50,000 in a marathon 6-hour mobile widget development competition held at Vodaworld in South Africa on Saturday, 5 September.

The 4-man team developed a 2010 Soccer World Cup widget, which counts down the days and hours left until the kick-off of the first World Cup soccer match next year.

“As a company, Vodacom is always looking to stay at the forefront of web and mobile-based applications”, says Romeo Kumalo, Executive Director, Commercial, Vodacom South Africa. “The widget competition and workshops are part of Vodacom’s innovation drive to introduce Betavine, an open development platform, to the South African mobile applications development community”, Romeo Kumalo said.

Developers were encouraged to release their creativity and experiment with widget technology in order to create a widget that is innovative, easy to use, and practical. The competition day also included a full line-up of workshops, discussing the technical aspects of widget creation. The contest was judged by expert widget enthusiasts from Vodacom, Vodafone, and other industry experts.

The first runner up, Werner Pieterson, won an X-Box, for his widget, “Flogger”, which aggregates all information from your car journey and assists in managing your car travel log. The second runner up, Mark Pearl, received an HTC smart phone, for his “Guess the number” widget, which looks set to be a great contender for the ultimate time waster.

Vodacom recently established the Vodacom Emerging Market Collaboration & Innovation (VEMCI) unit in South Africa to drive innovation in the African Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) market.

Developers can visit www.betavine.net to submit their widgets and share ideas and knowledge in the forums.

Vodacom Emerging Market Collaboration & Innovation (VEMCI)

Source(s): Vodacom