PedNav wins Android Developer Challenge award
Fremont, CA (May 12, 2008) -- RouteMe² Technologies, Inc. is proud to announce today that its submission to the Google Android Developer Challenge application contest has won one of fifty coveted awards, each worth $25,000 USD. RouteMe²'s application, PedNav, a portmanteau for Pedestrian Navigator, is a mobile application that helps users plan their activities efficiently when moving around and interacting with an urban environment.
The Android Developer Challenge is a contest hosted by Google, in which developers compete for cash grants to develop mobile phone applications on the new Android platform. The contest is split up into two parts, with $10 million allocated for awards. The first half of the fund is to be awarded before actual handsets are released, and the latter half awarded after devices are available on the market. The number two GSM operator in the United States, T-Mobile USA, has announced that they will be the first service provider to offer a phone for the Android platform possibly later this year.
"We are thrilled that PedNav was among the winning applications. It proves that what we are trying to accomplish is something new in the LBS arena, a concept, that we hope people will appreciate and find useful in their daily lives," says co-founder & CTO Amir Malik.
PedNav began as part of an undergraduate senior design project at UC Santa Cruz called Universal Real-time Navigational Assistance (URNA). It was designed to assist the visually impaired in crossing busy traffic intersections using Bluetooth transponders and text-to-speech software on mobile phones. Since then, the idea has been further developed into a generic real-time location-based services (LBS) platform.
"We are excited to be a part of the revolution in location-based services," says co-founder & CEO Shawn Bohonos, "We are also looking forward to improving the application for Round 2 of the ADC." The awards for Round 2 of the Andriod Developer Challenge will go out to twenty of the fifty first round winners. The top ten submissions will each receive $275,000 in grants, and the following ten will each receive $100,000 awards.
For more information about RouteMe² Technologies, Inc. and PedNav, visit http://www.routeme2.com/
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