MYOB, Millipede win Ford app hackathon

Teams from MYOB and mobile app designer Millipede Creative Development won the top prizes in a hackathon run by Ford Australia to develop new apps based on the carmaker’s SYNC AppLink in-car infotainment system.

SYNC AppLink is the component of Ford’s onboard system SYNC that allows commuters to interface with their smartphones via voice controls. The technology is expected to launch in Australia in 2014.

Ahead of the debut, Ford Australia held a competition aimed at encouraging local app developers to create apps capable of using the system, and to help them gain familiarity with the AppLink API.

The team from MYOB was selected as a winner based on a tradie-focused app to allow users to access information about their next job while on the go.

“Team MYOB stood out in an area that has tremendous opportunity for tradespeople who spend a lot of time in their vehicle,” Ford Australia CEO Bob Graziano said. “If you think about it, the car is their mobile office, and providing job and customer details via SYNC’s voice control makes for a safer, smarter way to work from the car.”

A team from Millipede won an award for the best existing app to be integrated with AppLink for adding voice control to its Logbook Pro trip logging app.

Other winners and runners up included an app which sends push notifications to alert drivers where they can pick up others looking to car pool, an app that can turn a cradled smartphone into a dashboard camera and an app that uses cloud data to give drivers real-time updates about bushfires.

Pictured: Ford SYNC via Michael Sheehan under CC