Exclusive: Winners of Microsoft's Mediaroom Application Contest Revealed

[itvt] can today reveal the winners of the Mediaroom Application Contest that Microsoft held at its 3rd Annual Mediaroom Developers Conference last month (note: Mediaroom is Microsoft's IPTV platform, which the company says has now been deployed in over 4 million subscriber households worldwide, by a customer base that includes AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telekom, Swisscom and Portugal Telecom, among others).

The contest saw conference attendees voting for three winners from a shortlist of finalists that had been chosen by a panel of five expert judges. The judges were Dale Herigstad, chief creative officer of Schematic; G.W. Shaw, executive director of product marketing management at AT&T; Rahul Chakkara, controller of TV platforms at the BBC; Enrique Rodriguez, corporate VP of Microsoft's TV, video and music business; and [itvt]'s founder and editor-in-chief, Tracy Swedlow.

First Prize was awarded to Toronto-based ES3 for its application, "Interactive Workout." The application allows Mediaroom end-users to create a personal workout routine and follow videos that demonstrate each exercise. Users can also set reminder times to exercise and receive a daily healthy recipe. "Mediaroom offers a fantastic developer environment for TV applications and this contest was a great opportunity to show how creative we could be in designing new and exciting TV experiences," ES3 CEO, Doug Edwards, said in his acceptance comments. "The competition attracted a lot of really interesting and innovative entries and so we are delighted to be awarded first prize for the Interactive Workout application."

Second prize went to London-based Pushbutton for its "Time Capsules" application, which provides users with a navigational tool for exploring time-based video content. According to the company, it can be used to present archive material of historic events, or as a time-stamped record of a live and unfolding event, such as the Olympic Games or a major breaking news story.

Third prize went to Stockholm-based Accedo Broadband for its "ZapClub" application, a social TV app that features live tweets and Wikipedia information on any show, and that allows viewers to rate and share shows.

The first prize winner received $25,000 and free admission for two to the Developers Conference; the second prize winner received $10,000 and free admission for two; and the third prize winner received $5,000 and free admission for one. "The first Mediaroom Application Contest was a huge success," Shari Barnett, marketing director of applications for Microsoft Mediaroom, said in a prepared statement. "Mediaroom has a large and growing developer community and I was thrilled with the quality and variety of contest entries. Consumers want more from their TV service and applications like these will play an increasingly important role in enabling our Mediaroom customers to differentiate their service and grow their TV businesses."

According to Microsoft, this year's Mediaroom Developers Conference was attended by over 120 developers and operators from around a dozen countries. The two-day conference, which focused on the Mediaroom Presentation Framework development platform, featured 14 sessions, ranging from basic overviews of Mediaroom technologies to technical presentations on features of the platform's Application Developers Kit.