Shaderlight Winter Wonderland winners announced

Our friends at Shaderlight have just wrapped up their Winter Wonderland rendering competition; the winning entries are delightful:

First Place: Luke Holdmann, Milwaukee, USA
Second Place: Abedallah, Christchurch, New Zealand
Third Place: Zoungy, USA

Kate from ArtVPS (makers of Shaderlight) tells me that the Mac version is on schedule for release in March. Can’t wait!

World Bank mashup competition

A new mashup competition has been just announced by the World Bank, with prizes ranging from U$15,000 for the winning submission to U$2,000 for honourable mention. All entries must be submitted by 10 January 2011 and winners will be announced in April, 2011.

One of the preconditions of participation is use of World Bank’s free data, launched under its Open Data Initiative in April, 2010. “The Apps for Development Competition aims to bring together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data… All entrants will retain all intellectual property ownership in their submissions.”