O’Reilly & Associates has announced the winners of the second round in its Mac OS X Innovators Contest at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention.
The contest, which is sponsored by Apple Developer Connection (ADC), rewards innovative Mac OS X applications, plug-ins, user interface widgets, or other creative original software. Entries are judged on “innovation, ease of use, adherence to the Mac OS X Human Interface Guidelines, and use of Mac OS X technologies.”
The CodingMonkeys from Bavaria, Germany won first place in the new International category thanks to Hydra, a collaborative document tool that uses Mac OS X 10.2’s Rendezvous technology to allow multiple users to create and edit a document in real time by clicking the share button and typing. The “donation-ware” application also takes advantage of other Apple technologies such as the Core Foundation Network API (application programming interface), the Cocoa framework, ATSUI, Quartz, Address Book, and Apple Help.
Austria’s Norbert Heger claimed second place in the International division with LaunchBar for Mac OS X. The US$39 program provides access to of files, Web bookmarks, email addresses, and applications by entering short abbreviations. The set of items and their corresponding abbreviations don’t need to be configured manually. LaunchBar uses an adaptive abbreviation search algorithm that allows you to enter any thinkable abbreviation of the searched item. LaunchBar analyzes your behavior and adapts rating criteria dynamically. Search results become more accurate as LaunchBar “learns” how to serve the user.
August Mueller’s $10 VooDooPad took home first place winner in the US category. This “new type of notebook” lets you create a personal WikiWikiWeb like page on the fly; the page automatically links handwritten notes, URLs, images, and other data. The info can be exported as RTF, HTML, or XML. VooDooPad notes can also be exported to an Apple iPod. You can type in your notes, and highlight important words or phrases to create new pages — or drag and drop folders, images, applications, or URLs into VoodooPad. They’re linked up whenever the word representing it is found. And since it’s scriptable, you can customize VooDooPad to suit your particular needs.
Second place winner in the US division was Paul Kafasis’s Audio Hijack Pro, which lets you enhance and record the audio output of any application on your Mac. It’s an audio grabber/enhancer featuring MP3 recording, timers, and the ability to, well, “hijack” running applications — anything from Internet radio streams to DVD audio. You can apply industry-standard VST and AudioUnit audio effects, as well as fifteen custom DSPs written specifically for Audio Hijack Pro, which costs $30.