The Municipality of Thessaloniki organized for the 2nd year the "Apps for Thessaloniki" competition, this time aiming to activate the city's potential for the development of innovative Web and mobile applications in the Tourism sector.
These applications will offer new possibilities in terms of digital storytelling and the creation of new experiences for visitors to the city. It also aims to make open data from the city's tourism-related bodies available for use by application creators. The Municipality also invites the citizens of Thessaloniki to contribute their ideas for potential applications, serving as a source of inspiration for application creators.
The "Apps4Thessaloniki – Tourism Edition" competition is a continuation of the two successful innovative actions of the Municipality of Thessaloniki, "Apps4Thessaloniki" and "Hackathess"! You can see more about the competition here
The awards ceremony took place on January 29th at 6:30 PM at the Public store on Tsimiski Street in Thessaloniki!
The prize for the first two winners was 5,000 euros each, kindly sponsored by Public!
The HotCity team with the HotΘess application won first prize!
The HotThess harnesses the power of the crowd to offer innovative services to visitors and residents of Thessaloniki. It is based on the check-in data made by FourSquare users in the city center, to discover and visualize not only the most popular spots but also the wider areas (neighborhoods) where one encounters intense activity. By storing this data, we have the ability to allow the user to plan their outing in the city not only at the current time, but for any day and time of the week they wish. The service offers, among others, some unique features not offered by other services: – Automatic planning of thematic routes (e.g. city museums) – Automatic planning of routes that lead the user through the most vibrant neighborhoods of the city, depending on the day and time – Visualization of the vibrant areas of the city in web and mobile applications – Possibility of hybrid visualization via augmented reality on simple, printed maps Augmented Reality for Thessaloniki No matter how much technology has advanced in mobile phones, the simple printed map will remain a very useful tool, as its use is free, it does not consume energy or data, the user can make notes on it, it covers large areas with sufficient detail and finally it is easy for two or more users to collaborate on a common map instead of the small screen of a mobile phone.
Second place went to the Lark application, which was also highlighted and featured in SecNews. See here:
https://www.secnews.gr/100530/lark-%CE%B5%CF%86%CE%B1%CF%81%CE%BC%CE%BF%CE%B3%CE%AE-%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%85-%CE%BE%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%BB%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%B4%CF%8E%CE%BD%CE%B5%CE%B9-%CE%BC%CF%85%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AC-%CE%B8%CE%B5/Lark: The application that unlocks the secrets of Thessaloniki!
Third place was won by the ThessOpenTrip application from the ΙΠΤΙΛ team. The 3rd place prize was 1000 euros, 500 euros sponsorship from Get and another 500 euros from dotsoft
ThessOpenTrip and their browsing of the city's attractions in various ways. The application uses crowdsourcing techniques to generate data from users and contributes to the open data community by allowing anonymous access to this data through a freely accessible Application Programming Interface (API). ThessOpenTrip allows users to create, rate and interact with points of interest, as well as send real-time reports, related to various incidents taking place on the city's streets, which are then displayed on the map (ThessOpenTrip uses the OpenStreetMaps map system). More specifically, the incidents supported are related either to cultural events taking place on the streets (e.g. festivals), or to events related to traffic in the city (e.g. traffic on the streets).
