NYC Media Lab has awarded winners in it’s first Media Mash 2012 challenge, which encourages developers to create innovative apps using data from the New York’s leading digital media companies. Providing developers with open feeds and APIs, Media Mash 2012 highlighted more than 50 APIs including those from The New York Times, CBS Sports Fantasy, tumblr and NewsCred. A panel of judges from New York City’s tech, startup and academic communities determined winners of the $10,000 prize pool based on the distinctiveness of the idea and the apps contribution to the media space.

Roger Neal, Executive Director of NYC Media Lab stated: “Open APIs are increasingly important to digital media innovation, allowing the developer community to unlock new features and functionality. The winning apps demonstrate fresh approaches to content aggregation, social commerce and mobility.”

Media Mash 2012 winners are:

Best Overall Mashup – Grand Prize: InOur.name.  When a user visits InOur.name, they are presented with two  search boxes asking “What issue is important to you?” and “What is your zip code?” Search results reveal the user’s elected representatives’ activity on the topic. InOur.name was developed by Jason Wright, Cornell University graduate engineering student and a hackNY fellow. (API used:  NewsCred). InOur.name also won the student prize.

Best Overall Mashup – Second Prize: CityMaps. CityMaps combines tweets and deals from merchants and local commerce services such as OpenTable and Fandango to transform city maps into hubs for social commerce. (APIs used: FourSquare, OpenTable and Fandango).

Popular Choice Award: New York Mapper. New York Mapper was deemed the popular choice award winner by visitors to the Media Mash Challenge site. Creating a Facebook overlay on Google Maps, New York Mapper allows map users to discover and share places with their Facebook friends.

Media Mash 2012 also featured APIs from AOL, Associated Press, Bitly, CBS News, CBS Sports Fantasy, CNET, CNN, Conde Nast Traveler, Etsy, Facebook, FanFeedr, foursquare, GetGlue, Gilt Groupe, Glamour magazine, Google, Guardian US, Huffington Post, The New York Times, New Yorker, Newsblur, NewsCred, NPR, NY Magazine, PBS, People Magazine, Reuters, Rolling Stone, Seventeen magazine, Style.com, Teen Vogue, TIME magazine, tumblr, Univision, Vimeo, The Wall Street Journal, WIRED magazine, Zemanta and more.

Commenting on the finalists work, Andy Weissman, partner at Union Square Ventures, stated: “The winners built something that lets users engage more fully with our government and our city, in ways that could make our lives better.”

Neal concludes: “With this inaugural Media Mash, the NYC Media Lab wanted to mix it up among developers and New York City’s progressive digital media companies. Some media companies such as The New York Times and CBS Sports have created robust open data platforms, and we wanted to create greater awareness of their efforts. The challenge was highly successful in demonstrating the value of media APIs.”

View the winning Media Mash 2012 apps at http://mediamash.challengepost.com.