Welcome to the Google East Africa Gadget Competition website. Here you will find all the information and links you need to start building gadgets, and a submission form to enter your gadget into the competition.
What is a Google Gadget?
Gadgets are applications that live inside web pages. Practically anyone can add a gadget to a website they have built, but many are used on iGoogle, a personalized homepage that allows users to customize what they see whenever they open a browser. Millions of people worldwide use iGoogle every day.
Anything you can do inside a web page, you can do inside a gadget. A good gadget provides something that a user will want to return to every day - be it useful information, like the latest news; a particularly cool game; or an action, like a currency converter. The most popular gadgets on iGoogle get millions of views every week.
Find out more about how gadgets work here, or take a look at some examples of good gadgets. If you haven't used iGoogle before, give it try.
What is the Google East Africa Gadget Competition?
We're looking for the next generation of gadget developers in East Africa! Interested students should register for the competition and submit their ideas for what they think will make a great gadget. Each proposal should explain what the gadget does, who would use it, and why it will be successful, as well as adding some details about how the gadget will work. In March, we'll review the registered gadget ideas and give feedback to the developer so that they can continue creating a fully functioning version of their gadget in time for the contest deadline in July. The overall winner plus some runners up will win prizes.
If you have some technical skills, and are enrolled in a Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD course in 2008 in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, or Burundi, we would love to hear your gadget ideas. Find more information about the competition as well as the submission form on our competition page.