We had a very exciting few weeks here watching the entries for the Presdo Contest roll in.  After the contest ended, we were thrilled by the amount of interest we received!  All told, we got 11 entries for the contest, almost all of which were working applications built using the Presdo API!

Last week, the judges met and debated the merits of each entry, and the winners were decided.  First of all, thanks to all of you who entered the contest.  This contest was a great success because of your involvement and the creativity you brought to our challenge.  It is clear that many made their own Olympian efforts on their applications, and we are very pleased to announce and award the three people who won the iPhone 3Gs prizes.

First Prize: Firefox Extension for Presdo

Our first prize goes to Dean Mao.  Dean is software engineer and self-described entrepreneur looking for new ways to bring the ubiquity of computing to consumers and businesses.  Currently, he is involved in a startup that helps small businesses with accountable direct marketing and advertising, but enjoys working on a plethora of side projects that all aim to improve a user’s experience with computing.  We are glad for Dean’s interest in Presdo!

There could have been a million ways for him to write a Firefox Extension for Presdo, but the reason this project was awarded the first prize winner was how useful and insightful the spin he put on it.  After a simple installation, Dean’s Firefox Extension is invisible except when it activates on certain sites with information about events, such as Facebook, MySpace, Zvents, Upcoming.org, Eventful and even OpenTable.

On these event pages, the Firefox Extension adds a “Create a Presdo Event” button.  See an event that you’re possibly interested in and want some friends to join you?  Just click the button, and this extension creates a Presdo event for you to invite others to the event and work out its details.

Dean’s extension recognizes the event information from these pages and fills in as much as possible from the event, making it a snap to coordinate with your friends.  Additionally, Dean was able to pull a user’s upcoming events off of Presdo and shows them on the desktop using a tool called Growl without requiring the user to go to Presdo.

That’s already pretty slick.  But there’s more.  There’s one more site that this Firefox Extension integrates with, and it’s Gmail.  What’s that got to do with events?  Gmail is probably the most interesting “event” site of all.  How many times have you had an exchange or invitation in email that eventually culminates in a meeting or get together?  These are the best kinds of events because they are most relevant to the group of people involved.

Dean’s Firefox Extension adds a simple “Create a Presdo Event” button next to Gmail’s Reply and Forward buttons, so that when it comes time to organize that get together as a result of an email thread, one click is all it takes to start the planning process.  This last feature most impressed the judges because it puts Presdo right in the spot where Presdo can help users the most.

Overall, it’s a very cool idea.  Congratulations, Dean!

First Runner-Up Prize: iPhone Application for Presdo

Our first runner-up prize goes to Jerry Luk, a senior software engineer at LinkedIn and leads LinkedIn’s mobile software projects.

Jerry’s entry was an inspired native iPhone app that allows people to “do” Presdo entirely from the iPhone.  How often have you just gotten out of a meeting and had some “scheduling” to dos?  Before forgetting, wouldn’t it be great to do them with your iPhone?  Jerry’s iPhone app enables users to create events directly from the iPhone, reply and reschedule events, and see upcoming events without having to return to the website.  When scheduling, Jerry’s application included a feature that lets you see events in and around the time suggested for the new event, making it convenient to quickly decide whether the suggested time is good or not.

And what about taking advantage of the iPhone’s unique capabilities?  Jerry had some good ideas here.  First, the iPhone app lets you add contacts from the iPhone’s address book (no more hunting around for email addresses).  Similar to Loopt (except better!), this Presdo iPhone app shows where your guests are and will be by using the iPhone’s GPS and locations associated with Presdo events, and if they will be available in the near future according to their upcoming events on Presdo.  This makes it possible to plan more instant get togethers happening within the next hour or two, something Jerry says he often likes to do.

The judges thought this iPhone app held great potential for users.  We think so too!

Second Runner-Up Prize: Microsoft Outlook Plugin for Presdo

Our second runner-up prize goes to David Hernando Bello Ladino, a software engineer in Colombia. This winning application highlights a possibility that many of you have us asked about, which is the potential of integrating Presdo with Outlook.

David’s working Outlook plugin provides a smooth installation process, after which it re-purposes Outlook’s native user interface for creating appointments to enable users to create Presdo events directly within Outlook.  One of the benefits of this plugin is that users can use contacts from their Outlook address book as guests for Presdo events.

Check out David’s integration with Outlook:

Since it’s not so easy to build an Outlook plugin, the judges were impressed by the effort put into this project by David.

Some of the judges noted that Outlook already has scheduling functions for internal users, which is true.  But the judges saw the potential of people using Presdo to coordinate events with others outside their company.  They also saw that David’s plugin showed potential to suggest times that would not conflict with people’s existing appointments in their Outlook calendars.  We think that’s very appealing.

Honorable Mentions

Among the submissions, there were others definitely worth mentioning, and we honorably mention them here:

SMS-based access.  This entry was submitted by Patrice Coupe, a software engineer from France Telecom, who came up with a creative way to create Presdo events through SMS using dedicated phone numbers.  Since Presdo’s simple text-based interface easily lends itself to SMS, this possibility instantly increases the audience for Presdo.  While the iPhone apps enjoys the spotlight as the coolest gadget these days, there are already billions of mobile phones in the world with SMS capabilities whose users can take advantage of Presdo.  We think Patrice’s idea may be the most important, underrated contest entry of them all.

Another iPhone app.  An entry that was worth mentioning is one by Ben Djibi.  Though not as slick as Jerry’s iPhone app, it still offers a very convenient way see upcoming events and to use Presdo’s convenient text-based input for creating events.  We actually received many entries which were iPhone apps, making it the most popular type of submission we received.

Much to “Do”

We were impressed by the ambitiousness some people took in going beyond the capabilities of the Presdo API to create wonderful, useful experiences.  When we first released the Presdo API a couple months ago, we recognized the importance of enabling Presdo to integrate into the existing ways that people work.  What we learned from the entries and subsequent discussions were some key insights about how the integrations should happen.  We also learned the important ways in which the Presdo API needs to progress to enable the experiences people want.

The ideas contained in these Presdo applications inspired us enough that they should become features in the future.  The contest will definitely have an impact on not only the Presdo API but also the features of Presdo.

Thanks!

So, our congratulations to the winners, Dean, Jerry and David, who helped us innovate and push Presdo a little farther.  And we hope they enjoy their new iPhone 3Gs.

Our genuine thanks to all the contestants who collectively devoted hundreds of hours to create the innovations that show how Presdo can making the lives of people even better.

And a very big thanks to our judges, Ben, Allen, Bob and Mike, who applied their perspectives and insights to help us discover the potential behind each of these ideas.

Now that you know what the experts thought, what are your favorite ideas?  What would you have liked to see that no one came up with?  Tell us in the comments!

One of our users recently wrote in to tell us that he didn’t have an easy way to figure out which events still needed replies from guests.  We love reports like this because they tell us how to make the product better to everybody’s benefit.  And we’d like to be responsive to users as much as we can.

So we added an enhancement to the upcoming events page showing status next to each event whenever action is needed.

This status shows you when an event you have created is still in need of one or more replies from guests.  If you created an event and have not sent it out yet–perhaps because you are still figuring out details–Presdo also reminds you that invites still need to be sent out.  Of course, Presdo already reminds guests to reply to an event if they are still undecided on an event.

By the way, if you haven’t checked out the upcoming events page, it’s worth a closer look.  This page shows you all the, well, upcoming events you are a part of, whether created by you or invited to by someone else.  Whenever you have an upcoming event, go to this page by clicking the link in the header at the upper right.

To the user who gave us this feedback and enabled us to improve the product, thank you.  We’d love to hear more such suggestions.  To tell us about the gripe that will makes the most difference to you, tell us here.

You might have noticed that we have been adding many small enhancements to Presdo here and there to smooth the user experience.  The latest is the ability to save events to the calendar of Google Apps.

Any time you click the “Save to Calendar” button on an event, you’ll see a new fifth button, which allows you to save the event to Google Apps.  This function uses the same email address with which you signed up for Presdo to identify you to Google Apps. If you used another email address to sign up for Presdo, you can sign up for Presdo again or just let us know you want your email address on your Presdo account changed.

We received quite a lot of requests for this one, so we hope you find it useful!

The contest entries are in, and the judging for the Presdo iPhone 3G Contest begins.

Several weeks ago, we launched the Presdo API and began a contest around our APIs with iPhone 3Gs as prizes.  In the weeks since, we’ve received contest entries from many users.  We’ve gotten entries from as far away as Japan, Colombia and India.  Some of you really thought “out of the box” and submitted mashups that went way beyond what the Presdo API can do.  We love it, for we are truly excited by your creativity and passion to help us innovate at Presdo.  Clearly, we’re going to learn from you and enhance the APIs to enable people to do the kinds of things you dreamed of.

And now, it’s time for the judges to take a serious look at the contest entries and decide the winners.

In the coming weeks, we’ll be featuring some of the really impressive ideas on this blog so that the people who worked hard to enter their ideas get some deserving recognition.

The iPhone 3Gs are waiting to get into the hands of their rightful owners.  Thank you to those who participated in our contest.  The winners will be announced August 22 as promised.

Eric Ly
Founder/CEO, Presdo