More than 4,500 enthusiastic Irish entered Nokia’s Apps for Ireland competition that asked the nation to design their own mobile phone app ideas, with the winning ones being turned into real apps on the Ovi Store.
The winning apps were narrowed down from entries through Nokia’s Facebook page and spanned categories including sports, lifestyle and general.
Winner of the general category was Hilary Weldon, mother of five from Portarlington, Co Laois, whose financial management app was designed to help with household bills, monitoring the user’s financial outgoings and reminding them when bills need to be paid.
Alan Duncan (26) from Newbridge, Co Kildare, won the lifestyle category with an app to help both the colour blind and those with visual impairment to distinguish different colours.
The True Colours app scans a picture you’ve taken on your camera phone and spells out the colours.
Finally 17-year-old student, Lorcan O’ Mahoney, from the Navan Road, has come up with an app for cyclists: this app is map-based, shows the user bicycle shops in their locality, as well as tracks distance and time on cycling trips.
The entries were judged by entrepreneur and founder of Cubic Telecom and MaxRoam Pat Phelan, Shane McAllister of Mobanode, the company behind several popular apps including the Heineken Music Oxegen ’09 Planner and the Amhran na Bhfiann app. Today FM DJ and gadget fan Ray Foley and fashion blogger Laura Whiston were also on the judging panel.
Mobanode will now be creating these apps from the winning ideas.
“With Nokia Apps for Ireland, we wanted to give ordinary people a chance to dream up their own idea – useful, fun or quirky, so that we could make it a reality on our Ovi store,” said Shane O’Brien, services and Ovi Store manager for Nokia Ireland.
“The wealth of creative entries reflects the demand for Irish apps that fit with current trends and aim to enhance our lifestyles. Nokia is dedicated to providing quality apps with a localised focus, so we look forward to adding these three winning apps to the thousands already available on the Ovi store,” he added.
Photo: Alan Duncan (Apps for Ireland winner) with Today FM DJ Ray Foley
