The grand finale of Nokia Developer Summit 2009 began

The grand finale of Nokia Developer Summit 2009 began this afternoon, when the fruits of 'round-the-clock coding from developers creating Web Runtime (WRT) widgets for use on the Nokia N97 multimedia device came before the judges. 'The quality, creativity, and innovation coming from all the developers competing in the Calling All Innovators Hackathon was extraordinary', noted Srikanth Raju, Head of Marketing for Forum Nokia. Of the widgets submitted for evaluation, three were selected as finalists, and one ultimately won the grand prize of 15,000 euros plus four weeks of spotlight promotion in the Ovi Store. The Ovi Store opens for consumer sales in May.

The Social Location Widget created by Plusmo, named 'Rocket', won the grand prize. The widget, originally proposed in the consumer contest, presents a mini view of the locations of a user's friends. Plusmo created that view by extracting information from users' existing social networks or allowing them to create new networks within the widget environment. Plusmo developers took the concept further. Their application adds information about what a person's friends are doing and allows a user to gift their friends with virtual goods, including a bouquet of flowers sent during the live demo.

Inova IT won first runner-up for the company's Shoppy widget, based on the consumer's idea for a shopping list. The developer innovated on top of the idea by allowing the consumer to share shopping lists with friends and locating and navigating to shops offering the item for sale.

PavingWays won second runner-up for the company's Travel Planner. PavingWays took the basic concept of a widget that would track a person's progress through a trip and added a Twitter feed associated with the location of the destination. During the live demo the destination selected was Monaco, and the Twitter feed was from someone attending Nokia Developer Summit 2009.

Congratulations to the Hackathon winners, and to all the developers skilled enough to be invited to compete in this prestigious — and tiring — 24-hour event!

See videos of the three finalists.

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