Opera Widgets blog

The winner of the Second Weekly X-Challenge Prize is .... (drum rolls please ... ) ... (yes I know, the "Oscar" type effect doesn't work quite perfectly here ... but what the heck) ...

Winner widget: WebChat
Author: Devyatkin Gleb a.k.a. SovGVD
Prize: $300 Amazon gift card and some goodies

Congratulations !! Now we know why you were so nervous all this while Clearly SovGVD has put in some good work into his widget and impressed us enough to grab the prize. You should be getting a mail from us soon as a confirmation, and we'll send across your prize right away. Oh yes, and do remember to send us your t-shirt size

So guys, there's still one week left to go and still quite a few prizes to win. The three mega prizes, a weekly prize and there's still space for the 20 early bird prizes . You can read all about the competition rules here.

So, till next week ... G'luk !!!

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Are you up to the challenge?

Opera is challenging developers to create cross-device widgets or “X-Widgets” that can be used on both mobile phones and PC/Mac computers.

An example of an X-Widget might be a shopping list you keep both on your computer and mobile phone. That way you can update it whenever and never lose track of what you need to pick up at the store. Another could be a simple game that you can play on your computer, then pause it, and continue on your mobile phone – perfect when you are going for a high score. One more could be an online auction widget, where you could follow an auction both at home and on the go, and bid right up to the last minute!

Cash prizes galore!

Opera is stepping up and awarding generous cash prizes for the best overall X-Widgets submitted.

• 1st prize: $5000
• 2nd prize $2000
• 3rd prize $1000

In addition you can win t-shirts and $50 Amazon gift cards if you're one of the first 20 qualified entrants. The best weekly widget will be rewarded with a $300 Amazon gift card.

If your X-Widget is among our top picks, we will promote it on widgets.opera.com and you might also find it bundled in our next widget product release!

Yes! How do I get started?

Check out our Opera Widget SDK which has an emulator and access to the Opera Widget manager on Windows Mobile and Symbian phones to help you test and play with your creation.

Rules

Have a read through these rules before you roll up your sleeves:

1. X-Widget submissions must be able to run on both the widget emulator included in the SDK and on your desktop.
2. On the emulator, the submission must support QVGA (portrait and landscape) and desktop.
3. You can upload newer versions of your widget, but remember, only the latest approved version will be judged (be careful when adding or removing features).
4. You are allowed to submit a maximum of 3 widgets, and are encouraged to focus on quality over quantity.
5. Coding standards are to use a separate markup for styling and scripting.

Submitting your X-Widget

To submit and participate in the challenge you have to:

1. Become a registered member of the My Opera community (sign up).
2. Upload your widget to http://widgets.opera.com/.
3. Send us a link to your submission using our contest form.

Judging

All X-Widget entries will be judged by a panel of developers and marketers at Opera. X-Widgets will be judged on:

• Usefulness across mobile and desktop
• Addictiveness
• Coding quality
• Design quality
• Overall quality

Dates to remember

Weekly prize deadlines:

• November 2nd, 2008
• November 9th, 2008
• November 16th, 2008

Final deadline: November 23rd, 2008.

The Final winners will be announced December 15, 2008 in this blog.

Tips and tricks!

• Don’t wait until the last minute to send in your X-Widget.
• You can ask for tips and hints from our developers in forums.

It's been a long time since our last competition (and we've had too many excellent widgets go by without any rewards), so we're giving away goodie bags weekly to the two best widgets submitted and approved. There's no specific time-frame for this contest. It will go on for as long as there is interest.

Goodie-bags!?

That's right! We got brand new Opera t-shirts and a pile of good stuff we think you'll enjoy!

Let's get on with the contest!

The rules are simple:

• Develop any Widget you'd like (note: scroll down for secret information on how to acquire bonus points).
• The Widget must be approved and publicly available on widgets.opera.com.
• Widgets must be submitted before midnight on Sunday to be eligible for that week.

How do you pick a winner?

We'll use the following judgement criteria:

The Widgets will be judged by Opera employees of the Web Applications team, looking at the following (listed in no particular order) items:

• Code quality
• Innovation
• Usability
• Value for the user
• Graphic design

Bonus points will be awarded for widgets that have a local aspect, e.g. widgets that have more value for someone living in a particular city. A good example are the existing widgets offering public transportation information for Oslo.

We will announce the names of this week's goodie-bag winners next Tuesday (November 27th)!

After serious consideration, we've decided on the winner of our Travel Widget Contest. Without further ado, I'd like to congratulate aditya.internet (Aditya Raj) for creating the winning Widget: Travel Mate!

The competition was very tight, and I especially need to mention the fabulous watchTheRoad Widget by johnnysaucepn (our early-bird winner) as well as FlightTracker by ja002h

Overall, we received a great crop of useful, fun, and technically impressive Widgets. Travel Mate won for numerous reasons, some of which include great ratings, very positive user comments, being really easy to use, easy on the eye, and genuinely useful in multiple ways. It was also Aditya's first submitted Widget. We certainly look forward to Travel Mate updates and new Widgets from this promising developer. As the grand prize winner, he will receive a Windows Mobile phone that runs Opera. ja002h, our second place winner, will receive a Nintendo DS Lite with the Opera browser.

Here are the final results.

Grand prize winner:
Travel Mate
Prize: Windows Mobile phone that runs Opera

Early bird winner:
watchTheRoad
Prize: Nintendo DS Lite with Opera browser

2nd Place:
FlightTracker
Prize: Nintendo DS Lite with Opera browser

Runner-ups:

TripAdvisor
Travel
Free HotSpot Search
Yahoo! trips
Sheep Count

Prizes: Opera goodie bags