The X Prize Foundation likes to say its first $10 million prize (for successfully demonstrating a private rocket can reach space) has multiplied 100-fold, resulting in a $1 billion private space industry—not to mention the benefits of worldwide media coverage in 2004, when SpaceShipOne claimed the prize.
In recent years, it’s become increasingly clear that San Diego’s Qualcomm (NASDAQ: [[ticker:QCOM]]) has been paying attention.
As a prequel to its Uplinq developer conference set to begin in San Diego later this month, Qualcomm is now offering a total of $50,000 in cash and other prizes to mobile app developers attending a pre-conference “mobile codefest and hackathon.” The all-day event is limited to the first 300 people who sign up, and costs nothing beyond Uplinq’s regular registration fee. (Qualcomm is offering a 30 percent discount to Xconomy readers on its Uplinq registration fee, available through our event listing.)
Of course, these are Qualcomm-centric contests. As Liat Ben-Zur, a senior director of Qualcomm business development and software strategy, writes in a corporate blog, “We’ll have a lightning round of developers and teams presenting their apps based on one or more technologies from Qualcomm or Microsoft.”
The company plans to award $5,000 for the best app in each of five categories (see below), as well as a $25,000 grand prize to one of the five winners. The company also is providing a mobile device to the second-place winner in each category. The categories are:
—Best prototype app using facial processing
—Best Web app using HTML5
—Best Windows Phone app
—Best context awareness app
—Best multi-screen experience using (Qualcomm’s) AllJoyn technology
The event also features more
