The votes have been tallied for the 1st SMART Mobile Developer Competition featuring Android and we have the top 2 winners!

DisasterAlert! from GeoSpatial Solutions Inc. comprised of Diane Kristine Campos and Gabriel S. Ricalde

RemoteDroid from Blue Chip Designs Inc. comprised of Noel Patron, Nikka Baterina, and Jovilyn Fajardo

Both teams will represent the Philippines at the CONEXUS Android Showcase at the 3GSM Mobile Conference on November 17, 2009.

Although both applications effectively exploited Android’s capabilities, I personally was impressed by DisasterAlert!. The GeoMob team clearly threaded together an inspired technology and use-case framework made more relevant by events of recent times.

Here’s a video of the app in action. A slideshare preso is available here too.

Roofcamp #4 started with a good discussion about the local startup experience with regard to the availability of skilled people, a clueless VC community, and the difficulties of setting up a local startup business.

Franklin Naval of Quadraforte giving a sneak peek of Project Hawaii

Terence Pua, formerly the country manager of Friendster PH and now the founder and CEO of XACKUP, explained that US based VCs are often off-put by locally incorporated companies. This is due to their (the VCs) lack of awareness of local business practices, intellectual property matters, and local political dynamics which fails to to provide a comfort level conducive to investments.

However, Jojo Flores, VP Operations for startup accelerator Plug and Play Tech Center, has a self imposed mission to bring deserving filipino startups to the attention of US VCs. Being well entrenched in the community, Jojo is in a good position to allay any kind of apprehensions VCs may have about getting in bed with philippine startups.

Terence and former Google engineer Franklin Naval of Quadraforte are two of a growing stream of filipino-american valley veterans that have found a strong desire to pursue their startup efforts in the Philippines instead of the US. They cite giving back to their filipino roots and the surprising high level of competencies that pinoy tech professionals posses.

The night was capped by demos of (previously) under-the-radar startup apps by Terence, Franklin, and Jay Fajardo of Proudcloud.

Codename Hawaii, Quadraforte (Franklin Naval)
A cloud based application that manages online advertising assets and propagates them throughout multiple ad networks while providing consolidated performance analytics.

Insync, Xackup (Terence Pua)
A file sharing and collaboration application with key features of value to enterprise users such as access permission control and automatic syncing to local folders. The app includes desktop clients for major operating systems including Windows, OS X, and Linux. check it out

Convoflow, Proudcloud (Jay Fajardo)
A real-time search engine that harvests social media content such as micro-blogs, blogs, video, and photos. Users can immediately view video and photos without leaving the site while social sharing options allow immediate re-tweets and Facebook posting of interesting content. check it out

We hope to see you at Roofcamp #5!

The first official Android developers conference was held last  Friday at the SM Mall of Asia. The event, called the SMART Mobile Developer Conference and supported by HTC, was well attended by the local developer community and highlighted by a hands-on coding session.

Ran into the usual suspects such as Paul Pajo and Franklin Naval of Quadraforte.

Tony and I braved the journey from Libis to Roxas Boulevard at the invite of   Jim Ayson and Edwin Soriano of SMART to join a panel on “How Can We Help the Android Developer Community?”. I primed myself with that topic in mind and headed off to MOA. Unfortunately, when I sat down for the panel, someone pulled the old switcheroo on me and I found myself sitting at the “What makes a killer Android app?” panel.

"What makes a killer Android App?" (L-R) Mark Sergio of HTC, myself, Migs Paraz of SMART, and Jojo Almirante of SMART

The first question asked was “What makes a killer app?” (natch). Migs Paraz focused on the need for a robust back-end with tight and bullet proof code. Coming from the agile and social computing school of thought, I added that today’s apps require a social feature set that enables the user not just to consume the content, but to rate it, shape it, and share it. Particularly with the personal nature a mobile device bears.

When asked on what advise to give to the budding developer population that pretty much comprised the audience, I made sure to point out that today’s killer apps are so not by design, but because the users determined their function and value leading them to embrace and adopt them.

I personally would have preferred a longer panel discussion moderated by someone in the know, but i guess that’s now an opportunity for more discussion elsewhere.

Props to the MOBDEV team for making it happen.