Oslo, Norway & Santa Clara, CA — (press release excerpt) — Trolltech today announced Shawn Gordon as the winner of its Qtopia Worldwide Developer Contest. His design, called Jabber, is a commercially-available instant messaging client for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D.

According to Gordon, Jabber encompasses virtually every form of Internet communication other than email, all in one system. Jabber facilitates numerous Zaurus communication functions using networking and sophisticated dialogs to easily manage multiple connections and conversations. With Jabber, users can interface to MSN Chat, AIM, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo Chat when the selected server is configured to use them.

Gordon is President of TheKompany.com, a worldwide group of advanced developers who create software for Linux. As the grand-prize winner, Shawn received $10,000 cash (USD), plus a Sharp big-screen TV, a Sharp home stereo, and a Sharp PC-UM10 laptop. Trolltech initiated the contest in December of 2001 to help encourage innovative applications for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D, the first Linux-based PDA from a major consumer electronics powerhouse. The contest, which concluded in February 2002, offered prizes to applications in five categories: games, entertainment/educational, business, system tools, and communications.

Runner up design finalists included:

• Taskman — Erik Agsjo, Sweden
• Froot — Scheuermann Thorsten, United States
• Powerchord — Camilo Mesias, United Kingdom
• SMS Suite — Nick Hingston, UK
• Korganizer — Cornelius Schumacher, Germany
• Honorary Mention: KinkattaLite — Benjamin Meyer, United States

Runner up winners in each category received a Sharp PC-UM10 Laptop.

Contest judges included editors from leading Linux publications including Linux Magazine and LinuxDevices.com as well as a lead developer from Trolltech, and were based on functionality, ease of use, documentation, performance, efficiency, and originality. Entries had to function with the Sharp Zaurus Qt Palmtop SL-5000D and be compiled with Qt/Embedded, version 2.3.2. The applications are available on www.MyZaurus.com.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.