Google TV Hackathon Results: Thank You Developers!

Our first Google TV Hackathon came to a close Sunday night, resulting in some really neat apps through strong participation from the developer community. As the app movement reaches for the next frontier -- the TV -- we’re encouraged by the energy, enthusiasm, and innovation we saw this weekend. Here’s how it played out.

Hacking away in Mountain View, CA

Throughout the weekend, 370+ developers from both sides of the Atlantic united for an all-out session of intense hacking, coding, collaborating, and fun. We saw 60 teams create apps in just one weekend -- everything from games to home automation to chat.

The judges had a great time reviewing the apps, but in the end, there could only be a few winners from each location. And here they are!

US:

• Deja: an app on social video channels (Best New App Built from Scratch)
• MyTV+: a media discovery app built around a novel way to aggregate social recommendations (Best New App Built from Scratch)
• Viki on Google TV: an app to watch shows and movies translated into different languages (Best Ported App)
• Quizinator: a multiplayer quiz game with a very cool user interface (Best Multi-screen App)
• Popular Choice Awards: MyPicasso, PinTV, and Chess

UK:

• MyTV: a customizable dashboard of news clips, traffic alerts, weather reports, etc. (Best in Show)
• FeedMe: an app that streams a waterfall of images from various personal sources to background music (Best User Experience)
• Remoter: an app that makes the TV your hub for family communication using Google Chat and other APIs (Best Technical Implementation)
• Honorable Mentions: Pongan and I Don’t Know (that’s their name, not our admission of amnesia)

Presentations in London, UK

All U.S. attendees received Google TVs. Additionally, the U.S. winning teams each took home two highly coveted Google I/O tickets and a new 55” Sony HDTV, while our winners in the UK will be among the first people to get their hands on the forthcoming Sony Internet Player NSZ-GS7. A huge thanks to Sony for providing these prizes. Expect to see these apps coming soon and promoted by Google, Sony, AdRise, and others. “This hackathon was a blast and we would do it again in a heartbeat,” said Jiong Shen, MyPicasso.

Time lapse video of the UK hackathon

Special thanks go to SVAndroid and Londroid for hosting this worldwide event as well as our expert lineup of judges:

• US: Blake Krikorian, co-founder of Sling Media; Frank Chen, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz; David McIntosh, CEO of Redux.
• UK: Jamillah Knowles, UK editor for The Next Web; Ralph Becker, Senior Business Producer at Sony; Suveer Kothari, Head of Global Distribution Partnerships, Google TV; Eze Vidra, Head of Campus London; Rob Kniaz, Venture Capitalist

For more information on Google TV developer resources, visit our developer website, and stay tuned on our Google TV Developer Google+ page for more information and upcoming events.

Posted by Paul Carff, Google TV Senior Developer Advocate and by Catherine Liang and Peter Sherman, Google TV Product Marketing Managers