By Min Li
Chan, Google Developer Programs - APACIt's cold and
cloudy in Hong Kong and Taiwan this week, as our trusty
weather gadgets indicate. At
the Googleplex, where a quintessentially Californian winter is holding up, we had the distinct
honor of hosting our Taiwan and Hong Kong gadget developer contest winners -- Hu Chih-Pao flew
in from Taipei to tour our campus in December (see photos from his visit on his
blog),
while Alex Ng and Liu Chun-Yu visited us from Hong Kong two weeks ago.
Of the 190 submissions for the gadget contest in Taiwan, Chih-Pao produced a whopping
43
entries, including a real-time
Taiwan Train
Timetable gadget and a gadget for the
Taiwanese
traditional worship of the Buddha of Mercy:
Alex and Chun-Yu's innovative use of gadget technology caught our eye, with their
real-time
local
Hong Kong TV program guide with keyword-activated YouTube views, as well as their
Feng
Shui gadget:
Japan's
gadget awards
last year also showcased great gadgets from a pool of 178 submissions, including:
The
Earthquake
information gadget:
The
QR code
generator gadget from our Grand Prix winner,
kilo:
(QR codes are widely used in Japan to store and display information,
particularly URLs, which can be scanned and launched from a browser-enabled camera phone
equipped with QR reader software).
We hosted our illustrious Japanese
gadget contest winners last year at our office in Tokyo -- check out our interviews with them
here.
We're thrilled to experience the creative, inspired, and locally relevant ways that
developers are using gadgets and Google APIs here in Asia. As a quick sampler, take a look at
the submitted contest gadgets for
Japan,
Taiwan, and
Hong Kong on iGoogle in
Japan,
Taiwan, and
Hong Kong.
