The 2009 GeoSmart Location Innovation Awards have been a huge success and culminated in a standing room only event at Sale St in Auckland City.

We were delighted with the wide range of ideas that people came up with and the quality of their entries. The Awards were held at the same venue and at the same time as the 2009 Agency Awards which was a wonderful coincidence as many people at the other event were able to take the opportunity to pop in and see what was happening at our Prize Giving event.

The judging proved to be quite difficult because of the high calibre of the entries, especially for the Grand Prize. But ultimately a winner was selected. Matt Weston is a student at Auckland University and won the grand prize a week before his 21st birthday. His application, called Get Somewhere, is a mobile phone application designed to make the use of public transport more user friendly and had some wonderful features including working out your route, showing it on a map and providing walking directions, with GeoSmart’s SmartFIND API’s and Web Services. It lets you know how far away the bus is and if you need to walk faster to get to the bus stop in time. It even allows you to purchase a bus ticket on your mobile so that you don’t need to worry about whether you have any cash. As well as making life much easier for commuters, in doing so it can help reduce the number of cars on the road. We hope to see the application developed.

As the Grand Prize winner Matt is heading to the San Jose in May to attend the Where 2.0 Conference. As winner of the Proximity Based Marketing category, he was also the recipient of a TomTom Go720 Car Navigation device, a Sony Ericsson GPS Mobile, A Bluetooth Hands Free Kit and a 6 month subscription to MyMobile Magazine.

There were several great concepts amongst the entries and a number of these are now being worked through and pitched to potential clients or sponsors.

The Other Winners:

Best Domestic Tourism Entry

TomTom Tour Guide by Michael Gold Thorpe & Tamryn Baumgarten of TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\

An application designed to add rich content to a car navigation device

AA Maps Widget Category

House Mouse by Neil McCallum

An application to put the search of criteria for buying a house in the hands of the buyer, rather than the real estate agent, as well as optimising the order to see them.

Social Networking Category

Facebook Carpool by Michael Gold Thorpe & Tamryn Baumgarten of TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\

Using the social network viral marketing capability and features of Facebook this application has cool factor and could reduce the number of cars on NZ roads.

LBS Games Category

ADIpush by Michael Gold Thorpe & Tamryn Baumgarten of TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\

Combining exercise, entertainment and marketing, this application has legs.

Proximity Based Marketing Category

Get Somewhere by Matt Weston won this and the Grand Prize and Matt is certainly going to Get Somewhere with this application.

Outstanding Student Entry (3 winners)

• Mahmoud S. Mahmoud for Bargain Buddy
• Kathryn Mac Callum for SMS Car Navigation
• Filipe Maragfo’ou for GPS-SSH

FINALISTS

• Jenny Wilmshurst – Instant Meet-up
• Steven Morey – Meeting Manager
• Chris Hooker – Turf
• Max Flanigan (The Hyperfactory) – Food Delivery Service
• Oliver Scott-Dye – Carpool Network
• Adam Taylor & Antony Bell (TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\ ) – Ping Me
• Kabas Albakry – SMS Car Navigation
• Michael Gold Thorpe & Tamryn Baumgarten (TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\) – Ten Grand Txt
• Michael Gold Thorpe & Tamryn Baumgarten (TBWA\WHYBIN TEQUILA\) – Hunt the Thimble

So what comes next?

Given the success of the awards, we are already planning the 2010 GeoSmart Location Innovation Awards, so please bookmark this website for information about the next competition. If you would like to speak to someone about sponsorship or entering the awards, please email info@geosmart.co.nz. Please note we do plan to start the Awards earlier this year, especially to give students more time.

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