The API Mashup Contest, an event designed to celebrate API culture by letting developers show off their best creations, has just completed its third cycle and declared trip planning startup Tripomatic the overall winner.
Open to startups and developers from around the globe and pretty loose with the definition of an ‘API mashup’, entries were sifted through by a team of judges, including seasoned angel investor Esther Dyson, European accelerator maestro Jon Bradford, Gillian Muesig of SEOmoz, a group of leading Polish tech investors, and also, well, me.
Once the scores had been totted up, Tripomatic came out on top. With an emphasis on sightseeing and attractions, the service is designed to help you plan your holiday in 15 minutes. Enter your destination and the duration of your stay, and Tripomatic plots out an itinerary that you can print out, save as a PDF or share on Facebook and Twitter. The Czech startup had a booth at this year’s TNW Conference in Amsterdam and recently launched an iOS app, letting you carry your travel plans around with you on the go.
Second place went to Zalike, a tool designed to help businesses promote their products or services on social networks. Third place (and my personal favorite of the winning trio) was Skypicker, a map-based flight planning tool with a European focus. Prizes for the winners this time around included an Amazon Kindle Fire and a bundle of startup services worth up to $5000.
Despite the announcement of the winners, organizer (and occasional TNW contributor) Pavel Curda explains that there’s still much work to be done. “The next step is to help the registered projects get what they need – mentoring, business advice, help with getting additional team members, finance. All this in order to maximise the projects’ chances to turn into successful and viable startups.” Beyond that, look out for another run of the contest later this year.
Image credit: Pond5
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