Wacom today presented the winners of the first Wacom Inkathon software developer challenge. Twenty thousand US Dollars were taken home by LearnCube for the win. The jury stated that the Virtual Classroom (Wacom WILL edition) app uses digital ink to make teaching, training or collaborating in virtual classrooms easier and more intuitive. Jury member and Wacom President & CEO Masahiko Yamada pointed out that the overall results of the Inkathon have given proof of the vast variety of opportunities within digital ink and digital stationery. The prizes were awarded during the Connected Ink Event at the Keep Memory Alive Center in Las Vegas, where industry leaders met to discuss standards for digital ink. As part of the event the industry leaders agreed to announce the Digital Stationery Consortium to be established in May.
First Place: Virtual Classroom by Learn Cube (DEMO VERSION)
Five prizes in total have been awarded to new ink based apps. Second place fell to Noureddine Amri from Morocco and the Collaborative Mind app. The app focuses on ink-based mind maps and was particularly chosen by the jury because it can easily be used by both individuals as well as groups and teams. Second place won10,000 US Dollars. Closely following, LogToMobile was awarded third place. Their Interactive Sketches app appealed to the jury as it lets the user create interactive sketches and app prototypes with a pen in just minutes. Third place won a total sum of 5,000 US Dollars. The winner of the Popular Choice award is Dragon Story! by Pawel Kwiatkowski. He proudly received 5,000 US Dollars and promised to go on developing apps that speak to the public.
2nd Place: Collaborative Mind
3rd Place: Interactive Sketches from http://www.logtomobile.com/
“We are more than happy with the results of this first Wacom Inkathon,” confirmed Faik Karaoglu, Senior Vice President of the Wacom Platform & Apps Business Unit. As a newcomer in this kind of developer challenge, Faik and his team had not expected to gain such a broad acceptance for digital ink and WILL. “We received applications from all over the world stretching from gaming to education. We will definitely consider a second round of our Inkathon for next year.” It wasn’t only the number of app submissions that was satisfying. Faik: “Also the quality was just great! We had to struggle to come to our final verdict.”
All Inkathon submissions integrated the WILL SDK to add digital ink capabilities to the new or existing application. Submissions covered an array of operating systems. Android accounted for the most entries, with more than half of all applications based on that operating system. Submissions were rounded out with iOS (4) and web (5).
“We need the power of digital ink! It is flexible, collaborative, ubiquitous and expressive. It is the best answer to the demands of creative thinkers in the 21st century,” says Wacom President & CEO Masahiko Yamada.
