AOL gives out $100,000 in prizes to AIM plugin coders
AOL is getting serious about opening up its popular instant messenger application. A few months ago the company launched the Open AIM initiative, making available the APIs and documentation developers need to add AIM features to third party applications or to develop third party plugins for AIM. Now AOL, which happens to be this blog's parent company, has announced the winners of a $100,000 design competition. Winning entries included applications that let you:
- Instantly translate messages from one language to another
- Preview an URL in an IM by hovering your mouse over it
- Manage your RSS feeds from within AIM
- Share your desktop with another AIM user
- Convert text-based instant messages to speech
Nine winners scored $10,000, while 20 more winners got $500 prizes. You can check out a list of winner and see all the submissions at the TopCoder contest page.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
