Sport & Recreation
-
"Family Places", by Julius Spencer
Family Places is a mobile application for those out and about needing Council or other facilities; maybe an emergency bathroom stop or an idea of where to go nearby as the weather changes (eg. it's going to rain let's go to the pool/library). Current categories of data from the Auckland City Council include: Playgrounds Pools Libraries Lavatories (including gender) We've only had time to include data from Auckland City Council but hope to include data from other councils. We planned to make it a simple to use application, especially for young families, to encourage getting out and about. Unfortunately the quality of the data could not be verified as there was no feed to work from but it is mostly accurate. This app is mainly catered towards parents to give them information to feel freer to get them out and about! We haven't seen anything like this yet. Video of app in action: http://www.juliusspencer.co.nz/family_places_rec1.mov
Selected judges' comments
"Application looks quite well thought through and easy to use, i.e. the use of filters, getting directions/centre on map functionality as well as some additional info such as opening hours. Use of original materials provides a regional data layer beyond what is available on Google maps"
"Targeted at young families with real-time landmarks suggestions for what to do, high value as a 'where should we go now', or 'need a toilet, where are they?'. The council data is limited but the concept is very useful to families with young kids needing some fast answers. It has a good map and quality lists associated with the maps and ability to filter data. All useful features. Should be very useful to the family in a rush for fast answers and this simple layout of functional data (low interest normally, but can answer a real time question in a hurry) may be exactly the quality that is needed when the rain starts falling."
"The app is very practical and has wide application.It shows a very good understanding of the practical aspects of helping young families get out and about, and there was obviously a lot of thought put into catering for the users' information needs. I suspect there's a strong market for such a service."
https://market.android.com/details?id=nz.co.juliusspencer.android.mixmash
-
"KiwiGolf", by Richard Foster
Being a keen golfer I was most excited about how to use golf courses data as supplied by linz. I have created a Flex/Flash based application that allows people to see where golf courses in NZ are via a map. During the development of the application it became evident that there are a number of unnamed courses in the data set. I intend to use the application so the the data set can also be made more complete. The application has the ability for the user to save courses to their list of favorites for future access and easy reference. Mobile versions of the application also exist for both Android and Apple devices including the iPhone and iPad. Links to the Android and Apple market places for the applications are present with the web version of the application. The best part of this is that although I have produced 3 applications it has all being achieved with a single code base via the use of Adobe Flash Builder version 4.5.1 Going forward with the application I wish to introduce the ability for golfers to upload pictures and video of a course. Other users of the application would then have the ability to view uploaded videos and pictures as well. Other functions to be introduced over time is to expand the data set to included the web site and contact details of each course. I also have some ideas for golfer to be able to enter reviews of courses as well. Not only does this application encourage resident NZ golfers to get out and play more courses around the country but could also encourage golfing tourists as well. The iPhone / iPad application has been available for a number of days now there have been around 200 downloads per day. A majority of these downloads have been from overseas which is why I think there could be a possible link to tourism here. There are a lot of directions in which this application could go and so over the next few months I shall be putting more time and effort into delivering even more features.
Selected judges' comments
"The real power of this app is the developers ideas around future data mash-ups (ratings, course contours, tournament records etc). A great concept (interactive community around golf-courses) but the development so far is very Beta and not sure what will actually be implemented in future. There is a usefulness to this app if more data is mashed to this."
"While the app is basic at present, we recognise its potential. Golf is a sport popular with tourists (Kiwis and those from overseas) so the app could prove very helpful. We look forward to seeing further development."
-
"Wellington Sculptures: Walking tours of the public sculptures of Wellington", by Squizlers and friends
Wellington Sculptures won the Sport and Recreation category sponsored by SPARC
Though we are under no illusions that our site will change the world, we do believe our entry is awesome. We have aimed to produce a reliable, simple, functional and quality application that celebrates the great public art that Wellington has to offer. Our site takes an old idea (walking tours) and executes it with the best of what the web has to offer. Our site employs "responsive design". Responsive design ensures that the exact same content will customise itself to fit the shape of the device you choose to use it on. This means our site is not device specific. We think building iPhone specific apps OR Android specific apps is often kind of a dumb idea. The web is the universal medium and smart design should let your sites display on any device. Our site encourages people to get off their bums. We recognise that most websites are consumed by users sitting on their bums at a desktop computer. We think that smart phones can be used to make the world more fun and interesting. Our site contains some audio and links to some video. We wanted to include more, but ran out of time. We think that if someone is enjoying a sculpture, they shouldn't be looking at their phone (this is why audio is a great medium). We intend to add more audio in the future. We would also like to give artists the opportunity to provide narratives for their own pieces; digital plaques with no space or time limit. Our site is extensible. In the future, as new datasets become available we would like to add more tours, and more types of things to the tours such as historic buildings and historic locations. In the future we would like to offer others the ability to create their own tours in other cities. Our site adds to the dataset. The dataset we used seeded our site, and then we put in effort to flesh it out, research content, and bang it all together, creating narratives that would make the data more engaging. Our site [in the future] will be available offline. We're still working on this. For more info about the technologies we've used, see http://www.sculptures.org.nz/#/thanks -
"Where were you at New Zealand sports scene in 2010?", by Tong Liu
This entry won a Lead Judges' Special Award sponsored by Department of Conservation
The survey date and report from the New Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council are big, complicated and need to have excel to open it. I mixed and mashed those data and present them in a pretty and easy understandable way to students. People want to find others who are in a similar situation. Students will get encouraged once they visit my website. My program let a student know: If she/he spend more or less less time on exercise and sport compared to other New Zealander. Number of students in New Zealand, in a same region, of the same gender in a same region, of the same gender in a same region were actively involved in sports, of the same gender in a same region were actively involved in the same sports, number of coaches and the changes of the number of participants in a same sport from 2009-2010.... I visited New Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council and SPARC website. Both sites don’t have user friendly event calendar. I developed a event calendar which is easy to view, add and change the events. I will give my code to New Zealand Secondary Schools Sports Council, SPARC or Mix & Mash. The web hosting I am using is a free one. I recorded some of the activities of my site and published on You Tube ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qqz5tU7ReZQ ) just in case the free web hosting server gets very busy. Thanks!