Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert K. Steel, New York City Economic Development Corporation President Seth W. Pinsky and New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Carole Post yesterday announced the ten winning ideas of the NYC BigApps Ideas Challenge, a competition for the public to submit new ideas for web, desktop, or mobile applications that would benefit New York City residents, businesses, and visitors.

There were over 600 ideas submitted to the NYC BigApps Ideas Challenge and over 1,600 votes were cast for people's favorite idea. The top 25 application ideas with the most votes were named as finalists, and each was awarded $100. The 25 finalists were then evaluated by a panel of judges, who selected the ten best overall ideas, each of which will receive an additional $250 for their winning idea.

The ten winning ideas (with the name of the submitter in parentheses) include NYC apps that:

Let you 'like' or rate any street or block in the 5 boroughs (Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena);

Create networks of citizens who can chime in about their borough, district and neighborhood issues with local government (Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena);

Provide an open API to all MTA transit information, schedules, delays, and current locations of trains and buses;

Aggregate bike accident data to make/help petition for safer bike routes (Trev Eld);

Allow residents to rate their building's owner, management co., landlord, even brokers and lets interested renters browse those ratings (Bud Caddell);

Aggregate all the volunteer initiatives available, its cause and allows someone to register/participate (Christopher Bian);

Tell someone when the next subway car is to arrive at their station, before they go underground (Stephen Mellert);

Has a visual, color coded map of all street parking rules, regulations and street cleaning schedules (Will Turnage);

For each borough gives the location of nearest public restrooms with A, B, C, D type ratings for their cleanliness and the level of safety (Sheryl Commodore);

Tells someone their options during an emergency based on where they are and what their status is (Kelly Thompson).

Originally launched in 2009 by Mayor Bloomberg, the first NYC BigApps Competition made more than 170 official City datasets available and received 85 eligible submissions. The Grand Prize for Best Overall Application was awarded to WayFinder NYC, an application designed to help locate the nearest subway, bus or train station. Other winners included Taxihack, Big Apple Ed, NYC Way, and Bookzee.

In 2010, NYC BigApps 2.0 was launched, making available nearly 400 datasets and led to the selection of fourteen winning applications from a pool of 58 submissions. The Grand Prize was awarded to the Roadify iPhone App, which alerts users to the latest subway, bus, or driving conditions by using official transit data and real-time updates from commuters. Other winners included Sportaneous and Parking Finder.