Announcing the latest Ubuntu App Showdown

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Today we are announcing our third Ubuntu App Showdown! Contestants will have six weeks to build and publish their apps using the new Ubuntu SDK and Ubuntu platform. Both original apps and ported apps, QML and HTML 5, will qualify for this competition.

Categories and prizes

This App Showdown is going to be very special, because we will have four dedicated categories in which you can participate and win a prize.

1. QML: original apps written in QML or with a combination of QML and JavaScript/C++
2. HTML5: original apps written using web technologies, be it pure HTML (and CSS/JavaScript) or with platform access using Apache Cordova
3. Ported: apps ported from another platform, regardless of the technology used
4. Chinese apps: apps in this category will have to be original and specific to China and the Chinese culture. They will be judged by two native experts in our jury.

The set of prizes will consist of a Nexus 7 (2013) per category for QML, HTML5 and ported apps.



The top two Chinese apps will receive a Meizu device each.

Review criteria

Apps in the HTML5/QML/Ported categories will be reviewed by a jury composed by an international team of five judges:

• Jono Bacon, Ubuntu Community Manager
• Adnane Belmadiaf, Ubuntu HTML5 expert
• Lucas Romero di Benedetto, Ubuntu Community Design Team
• Nekhelesh Ramananthan, Ubuntu Core App Developer
• Joey-Elijah Sneddon, OMG!Ubuntu editor

The judges for the Chinese apps are:

1. Shuduo Sang，Software Engineer in Canonical PES
2. Joey Chan, Ubuntu Core App Developer
3. Jack Yu, Ubuntu Kylin Lead/Ubuntu Member

The jury will judge applications according to the following criteria:

• General Interest – apps that are of more interest to general phone users will be scored higher. We recommend identifying what most phone users want to see, and identifying gaps that your app could fill.
• Convergence – apps that have a convergent layout that expands to dedicated tablet mode or optionally run well on the desktop will also be scored higher.
• Features – a wide range of useful and interesting features.
• Quality – a high quality, stable, and bug-free application experience.
• Design – your app should harness the Ubuntu Design Guidelines so it looks, feels, and operates like an Ubuntu app.
• Awareness / Promotion – we will award extra points to those of you who blog, tweet, facebook, Google+, reddit, and otherwise share updates and information about your app as it progresses.
• Chinese culture – apps optionally submitted in the China category will be reviewed with the same criteria above, plus their relevance to Chinese users of the app. This can be by providing access to Chinese services, being related to Chinese culture or being generally useful to somebody in the People’s Republic of China.

Learn how to write Ubuntu apps

To make it easier for you to get started with writing apps for Ubuntu on the phone and tablets, we’ve set up a week packed with video streaming tutorials where experts from the Ubuntu community will teach you how to use Ubuntu platform technologies to write apps.
Join the Ubuntu App Developer Week! >
If you cannot join, review our app developer documentation.

How to participate

If you are not a programmer and want to share some ideas for cool apps, be sure to add and vote apps on our reddit page.
The contest is free to enter and open to everyone.
The six week period starts on the Wed 26th February and runs until Wed 9th April 2014!
Enter the Ubuntu App Showdown >

Daniel Holbach

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