A Twitter ticker, social TV guides and a drawing game are among the finalists announced today in a $500,000 contest to create the best new apps for Samsung TVs.
A couple of our favorites, TV Twicker (above) and Guroo TV, made the cut in the “Free the TV Challenge” contest. TV Twicker displays tweets as they’re published along the bottom of your TV set, and Guroo TV shows trending shows based on social media. The winners will be announced at CES early next month.
“We are very excited to see the level of creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that resulted from the Challenge,” says Samsung’s Eric Anderson. “The participating developers truly took the time to customize their apps for the SmartTV and 3D.”
The contest was created to spur more app development on Samsung, which has a few solid hits (Pandora, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Facebook, Twitter) but needs greater depth and diversity of TV apps. And just like the iPhone and iPad, which are unique user experiences, you never know what apps will emerge that are truly customized for the TV platform.