Media & Entertainment

New developer challenge offers Android devs a trip to TED if they can get people moving

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Obesity sucks. Unfortunately, smart phones generally don’t do much to make the problem any better. Sure, there are plenty of exercise-assistance apps, like RunKeeper, built to make exercising easier and thus more likely to happen — but for the most part, our smartphones help us to move less. Why walk to the computer downstairs, when you’ve got the web in your pocket? Why walk aimlessly around the city looking for a fun new restaurant, when there are a million review apps telling you where to go and Google Maps telling you the shortest way there?

Looking to counteract this, Snaptic has launched the “Move Your App!” developer challenge. The idea is simple: develop an Android app that gets people up and moving, and you could win an all-expense paid trip to the TED Global 2010 conference.

We don’t generally write about third-party developer challenges here on MobileCrunch, but I dig the motive of this one. Getting people to be healthy and live longer is a pretty noble goal.

The contest is free to enter, though there’s one catch: whatever your app is, it needs to make use of at least one of Snaptic’s APIs. Snaptic’s APIs are largely focused around the creation and syncing of notes — so, depending on what your app is, it might be tough to work that in.

The challenge runs until May 27th, so get crackin’. You can check out the full details for the dev challenge here. Be sure to let us know if you enter, won’t you? Good luck!

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