'Apps for Development,' a World Bank Competition

In case you missed it, submissions have now closed and voting has just begun--hopefully including yours--for the World Bank-sponsored 'Apps for Development' competition. I am sure that electronics-literate readers should be familiar with apps--an abbreviation for applications common to devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and tablets. In this competition, apps must be developmentally relevant through the use of World Bank statistics and deal with at least one of the ten Millennium Development Goals. There is also serious prize money at stake, with a cool $15,000 going to the prizewinner, with a total of $45,000 at stake for various prizes.

Being a true pedant and browsing through the submissions, the competition is actually open to all software applications--such as those running on PCs. In the interest of fairness, perhaps the competition judges should factor in that laptop or desktop machines have more computing power. For instance, iPhones iPod Touches, and iPads do not quite match up to the iBook in hardware horsepower.

At any rate, it's certainly interesting to flip through the submissions. Since my particular interest is migration, for example, there's an interesting app which geographically displays from where workers' remittances come from and go to internationally.

Check them out and vote! My only qualm is that we can't actually download and try out these apps and must rely on the concept and video clips to form our minds.