Boxee announces 'app dev challenge' (get coding, people)

boxee-app-challengeIt seems like everybody and their dog wants to be a platform these days, and media center software Boxee is no exception. (That’s a good thing by the way.) However, providing the hooks needed to write third-party applications is probably the easy part (relatively speaking), while attracting developers to the platform can be a little harder. Build it and they will come hardly ever applies.

On that note, Boxee have announced the ‘Boxee app challenge‘ in an attempt to provide a little extra incentive for developers. Not only are a bunch of prizes up for grabs for the best apps created up, but the Internet TV startup also promises to shine a little light on entrants along the way.

From the official Boxee blog:

the boxee dev challenge will have 3 categories: Video, Music and Photos.
in each category we will have a People’s Choice award and a Judge’s Choice award:

People’s Choice Award: Drobo
Judge’s Choice Award: Sony Bravia XBR9 46″

the deadline for submitting your application is June 14th at 11:59pm PT, but we encourage you to submit early and often as we’ll be talking up cool applications as they come in.
voting will take place between June 15th – June 22nd.

The judging panel includes Veronica Belmont (Tekzilla, Qore), Ryan Block (GDGT, former Editor-In-Chief Engadget) and the company’s own CEO Avner Ronen. The winning apps will be announced on June 23rd at a Boxee event in San Francisco.

See also: Hulu blocks Boxee, could Firefox, IE and Safari be next?

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

2 Responses to “Boxee announces 'app dev challenge' (get coding, people)”

  1. Jim says:

    I think it’s great that Boxee is trying to create an open platform. Makes the software so much more appealing if others can innovate on top. Even better when Boxee appears on more set-top boxes / hardware other than a Mac/PC or hacked Apple TV.

    • Dan C. says:

      It kinda sucks that Apple doesn’t open up the AppleTV to developers i.e. the iPhone app store. Then we’d see some really cool widgets come to the TV.

Leave a Reply to Dan C.