SYRACUSE — Smart-phone applications (apps) focused on local tourism and finding available food banks claimed the grand prizes in the AT&T Central New York Civic App Challenge.

PocketSights and TXT2EAT, each created by Ithaca developers, earned prizes of $7,500.

Other smart-phone apps, Play2Sign and Page Turner, captured second-place prizes of $1,500. 

Participants were competing for cash prizes totaling $18,000.

AT&T announced the winners during a presentation and demo day held Nov. 19 at the SUNY Oswego Metro Center in downtown Syracuse.

The company awarded first and second-place prizes in two categories, which included Existing Civic Apps and New Civic Apps.

AT&T (NYSE: T) conducted the contest with local partners that included CenterState CEO, Syracuse University, SUNY Oswego, Girls in Tech, and Hack Upstate. 

“The quality of mobile apps created through the AT&T Central New York Civic App Challenge demonstrates the vibrancy and talent of Central New York’s technology and entrepreneurial community,” Marissa Shorenstein, New York president, AT&T, said in a news release about the competition awards.

Award winners
In the Existing Civic App category, PocketSights captured the grand prize of $7,500. PocketSights is developing an interactive, mobile, self-guided tour app to boost tourism and act a catalyst for economic growth in Central New York. 

The app provides mobile users an “authentic” experience that encourages them to explore and learn about history and culture, according to the news release.

The app can replace the paper maps that tourists use while sightseeing, Allen Ward, co-founder and sales and marketing representative for PocketSights, said in speaking with reporters at the Nov. 19 awards event. 

“The money actually just helps us with additional development. We want to continue investing and growing out into additional communities across the country,” said Ward.

The app’s tag line is that it wants to help people “explore, discover, and learn” the areas around them.

The company will release the app to the public in January, Ward said. 

AT&T awarded the second place, $1,500 prize to Play2Sign, an Android application developed to help teach American Sign Language to hearing-impaired children between the ages of 4 and 10. 

It uses an “immersive” approach in a “fun, interactive” format to teach the signs of many basic words and phrases. 

The demo app teaches about 60 words, which will increase to about 250 words when the developers release it on the Google Play Store, according to the news release. 

Creators are also planning an iOS platform.

New Civic App
In the New Civic App category, AT&T awarded TXT2EAT the grand prize of $7,500. TXT2EAT provides a “simple and fast” way to find food resources. 

By sending a text to a phone number for a specific city, anyone can find an open food kitchen or food bank. 

“So whether that food resource is a pantry or a food bank, the applications can tell you where to go and what time the [facility] is open,” says Stephen Shaffer of Ithaca, a software developer who created the app. 

He spoke with the Business Journal News Network after the event.

If none are open, Shaffer says the app will notify the user when and where the next one will be open.

“I am a back-end software developer, so I need to have someone work on the front end a little bit, so I need to pay for someone else who has a better skill [in that area],” says Shaffer.

He’s also working to take the basic application and turn it into a platform that any community could start up on its own system and manage the data. 

An application called Page Turner captured the second-place prize of $1,500 in the category. 

Page Turner is a mobile-optimized web application designed to help low-literacy adults and children. The app reads to users while highlighting the copy it is reading. 

Using the HTML5 speech synthesis API, it provides a cross-platform service and can lean on this technology to support nine languages out of the box, according to the news release.

Programs like the Civic App Challenge provide an opportunity for the region’s entrepreneurs to “cultivate solutions and adapt technologies for a common good,” Seth Mulligan, vice president of innovation services at CenterState CEO, said in the news release. 

“We hope the competition’s four winners will continue on the trajectory that was initiated by the competition and will continue to innovate effective solutions to the real challenges our community faces,” said Mulligan.

The judges chose the winners, from competitive entries submitted from across Central New York, based on their execution and creativity or novelty, and for their ability to address social and civic issues in the Central New York region. 

The AT&T Central New York Civic App Challenge judges included local technology experts, community stakeholders, and elected officials, who based their decisions upon the apps’ potential impact on Central New York, execution and creativity or novelty.   

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com