Google I/O winners

It seems like only yesterday that we announced our Last Call for Google I/O contest. We’ve been keeping busy, judging Round 2 submissions for all 10 of our challenges. The winners have been notified via email and will receive a pass to this year’s sold-out Google I/O. Also, all of the Round 1 answers, as well as Round 2 prompts have been posted to the contest site.

We were really impressed with the quality of the submissions–especially with less than 24 hours to turn the code around! Check out screenshots of some of the winning entries below, along with notes from members of each Google Developer Relations group, and stay tuned for more surprises from the I/O team.

Android

Judging was easy for the Android challenge, because our first run through the apps produced a total of exactly 10 places where the reviewer said “Nice!”. Above you see a screenshot of the “Party mode” in Charles Vaughn’s “Bounce Clock”. Read about the details on our Android Developers Blog.

– Tim Bray, Android Developer Advocate

Chrome

(Click a doodle to go to its site and interact.)

We received a lot of nifty doodles and it was tough to pick only ten winners. Some of the particularly fun doodles were interactive or involved a game of some sort (like Pong, or Simon with the Chrome logo). We definitely appreciated being able to view the source code of the web page to see how developers took advantage of the latest HTML, CSS, and JS technologies.

– Jeffrey Chang, Chrome Product Manager

Games

(Click a screen shot to play a game.)

Congratulations to everyone who knew the Konami code and somehow managed to recall that Kuribo’s Shoe is only found on one stage of World Five in Super Mario Bros. 3…and after remembering all that, were still able to write a game in only 24 hours. Apparently playing video games as a kid doesn’t rot your brain as much as our moms said it would.

Almost all of our submissions were fun, technically impressive, or both. The judges were video game industry veterans, so we weren’t wowed by flashy graphics alone. We tried to reward a balance of fun gameplay and technical prowess. Some of the games were actually pretty addictive!

– Ian Lewis, Games Developer Advocate

YouTube

We saw some great submissions that put the new iframe Player API through its paces! The winning submissions offered a mix of cross-browser compatibility, stylish user interface, and the ability to reuse the player for arbitrary sequences anywhere on the web.

– Jeffrey Posnick, YouTube Developer Advocate

Apps

Our Google Apps challenge was built around Google Apps Script, a JavaScript cloud scripting language that allows developers to automate tasks across Google products and interact with 3rd-party APIs. In round 1, we asked contestants to find the median stock price of stock symbols. Round 2 was a fairly open challenge, and the winning submissions performed tasks such as predicting future traffic accidents on Google Maps, producing a daily meeting agenda using Google Calendar and LinkedIn, and sharing Flickr pictures via e-mail to friends and family.

– Ryan Boyd, Google Apps Developer Advocate

Accessibility

We enjoyed seeing how much the ten top entries were able to achieve in such a short time in developing a caption rating app for YouTube (at least one dedicated tweeter pulled an all-nighter). Our top picks really impressed us with the accessibility and polish of their UI. All of them have TalkBack speech support through the Android Accessibility API. Most of the winners have already published and open sourced their work. If these apps inspire you, take a look at the source and contribute!

– Naomi Black, Accessibility Technical Program Manager

Commerce

They say that great minds think alike, and in the case of Google Commerce, our developers created similar mashups. A simple store based on Google Product Search and Google Checkout could be a powerful tool for mom and pop shops. We hope our developers had fun learning about the commerce products that Google offers.

– Ossama Alami, Commerce/Geo Developer Relations

Geo

We asked developers to create a mobile web application to discover interesting walks around San Francisco. We had some really impressive entries, especially given they were developed in a very short timeframe.

– Ossama Alami, Commerce/Geo Developer Relations

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

We were very impressed with the creativity and performance of the I/O countdown entries. All of the submissions were great examples of what is possible with GWT and HTML5/CSS3. It was an extremely tight competition that came down to tough decisions based on originality, visual appeal, and the size of the resulting JavaScript.

– Chris Ramsdale, GWT/Developer Tools Program Engineer

App Engine

Developers submitted a simple Fibonacci web app in Round 1, where the key was to demonstrate that you correctly handled bad input. We were amazed at the apps that were submitted for Round 2, where we asked developers to create an interesting app using one or more of several App Engine APIs. From making book recommendations to visualizing author impact on PubMed (a favorite of mine, my wife being an academic in medicine), we found many apps useful, well designed, and often quite elaborate.

– Patrick Chanezon, App Engine Developer Relations

Congratulations from the entire Google I/O team to the winners of all the challenges. The bar was quite high and even if you didn’t win, we hope you learned something while building your applications. We encourage you to hone your skills for challenges to come!

Capturing Full Screen Search Result Screenshots

I just upgraded to Firefox 4 and was offered the opportunity to try Awesome Screenshot. It solves several problems that I frequently deal with when writing this blog and communicating with clients – capturing a full screen of a Google search result (or any web page for that matter) and easily annotating it (see sample of output to the right – click for larger size).

This Firefox plugin (also available for Chrome and Safari 5) does just that as well as providing quick upload to a public URL for online storage of the image and the opportunity to easily share the image via Twitter, Facebook, Buzz and email clients. It passed the “Mike Test” with flying colors. The “Mike Test” is the ability for me to try, learn and use a piece of software productively in 10 minutes or less.

Here are some sample screen shots of the process using Awesome Screenshot:

Related posts:

  1. What are the implications for SMBS of Google Integrated Local Search Result Tests?
  2. New Universal Local Search Result Type: Branded Local OneBox
  3. How Much Traffic Do Local Sites Get from Google?

GetListed University Spokane- New All Day Agenda

GetListed.org Local UniversityI am traveling and speaking in the Pacific Northwest this week. Get Listed Portland on Tuesday, Searchfest on Wednesday and Getlisted University Spokane on Friday. Needless to say it will be a light posting week.

I am particularly excited about GetListed University Spokane for two reasons. It celebrates GetListed University’s first year anniversary. It has been an exciting year of great conferences, making great new friends and learning the ins and outs of putting on truly local marketing events in local markets.

Equally exciting is the fact that this year in Spokane we are rolling a new, all day event. In the past events, while we manage to cover lots of material, a common recommendation was to expand the event to an all day format. (To see every comment, like and dislike about previous events read the Local U feedback page.)

To sign up for the event use the discount mb2011 for a $30 dscount off the full day price of $149.

If you are an agency and wish to bring your clients we are offering a “7-Pack” of tickets for $699. To get the agency pricing it is necessary to reserve Your 7-Pack via email. If you are planning on attending the event, please let me know and be sure to introduce yourself!

During the morning, we cover the big picture background that every small business needs to understand. In the afternoon we dig into the tactical details and provide real world examples of successful practices that any SMB can implement. Here is the full day agenda:

Agenda

Time Session Topic
7:30am – 8:30am Check-In and Caffeine
8:30 – 8:40 Kick-Off and Conference Introduction

Spokane’s own Ed Reese will introduce the 2011 edition of Local University, dispel some of the widespread myths about optimizing your website, and bring attendees up-to-speed on some basic terminology that will be used throughout the seminar.

8:40 – 9:00 Introduction to the Search Engines

Aaron Weiche will walk you through the basics of how search engine results are generated and some of the major opportunities for small businesses to improve their visibility online.

9:00 – 9:40 The ABCs of Local Search

In this session, Mike Blumenthal will dive into how to rank well for searches in the Inland Northwest.

9:40 – 10:00 Q&A

By this point, your head will probably spinning with some questions. Take the opportunity to ask specific questions to the presenters.

10:00 – 10:20 Break / Site Review Clinic I

Re-charge with some coffee, take some time to meet your fellow presenters, or pop into our first Site Clinic of the day, hosted by Mike Ramsey & Aaron Weiche, and get some personal recommendations for how to improve your company’s online presence.

10:20 – 10:25 SEO Myths and Pitfalls

David Mihm will dispel some of the common myths and misconceptions about optimizing your website for the search engines.

10:25 – 10:50 Website Optimization Basics

Mary Bowling will explain some of the REAL signals that your website can send the search engines in order to rank better.

10:50 – 11:20 Getting Social Online

Matt McGee will take us through the world of social internet marketing, including strategies to engage with customers and prospective customers using the most popular social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

11:20 – 11:40 Got More Questions? Get More Answers!

The second Q&A panel of the day will again give you a chance to ask questions to the presenters.

11:40 – 12:00 Break / Site Review Clinic II

Network some more, take some time to return voice mails and emails from the morning session, get your company some personalized advice in our second Site Clinic of the day, or just grab lunch a little early.

12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
1:00 – 1:30 Workshop I: Building Your Keyword Matrix

Mary Bowling will walk attendees through the step-by-step process of keyword research in our first workshop of the afternoon.

1:30 – 2:00 Workshop II: Analytics

Ed Reese will walk attendees through step-by-step how Google Analytics works, and how to interpret the data that it provides you about your website users and customer prospects.

2:00 – 2:30 Workshop III: Local Search Listings + Links

David Mihm walks you through how to ensure comprehensive coverage for your local business listings, and offers a few ideas for how to get locally-relevant links as well.

2:30 – 2:50 Break / Site Review Clinic III

The last chance to get your business some personalized advice (without missing one of our panels of course!) in our Site Clinic.

2:50 – 3:30 Workshop IV: Creating Your Social Media Campaign

Mike Blumenthal and Matt McGee go through how to create a sustainable review process for your business, how to gain new followers and fans in social media, and how to leverage them for higher search rankings.

3:30 – 3:50 Workshop V: Getting Started in Paid Search

Learn some basic Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter techniques for maximizing your budget for a local audience, and also get introduced to Facebook’s demographic targeting platform.

3:50 – 4:10 Workshop VI: Marketing Plans and Time Management

Tieing the entire day together, learn how to set your company’s priorities and where to focus your internal marketing resources going forwards.

4:10 – 4:40 Local Search Success Stories

Hear straight from Spokane-area companies (some of whom attended our seminar last year) about how they improved their bottom lines in 2010 via Local Search marketing.

4:40 – 5:00 Final Questions & Answers

Take this last formal opportunity to ask any remaining questions to our presenters.

5:00 – 6:30 Networking Happy Hour

Time to blow off a little steam! Join the presenters and your fellow attendees for a networking event right at the Northern Quest.

I hope to meet you in Spokane!

Related posts:

  1. GetListed Local University Portland
  2. GetListed.org Local University Inaugural Event in Spokane
  3. Come to GetListed Spokane – And See Ed Reese in Action