World Bank Announces Winners of First “Apps for Development” Competition

Last year (in April, 2010), the World Bank issued a challenge to software developers from across the globe to take on some of the world’s most pressing development problems by creating digital apps using the Bank’s freely available data. The response was overwhelming, with 107 entries from 36 countries across six continents, and nearly a third from Africa. A total of $55,000 was awarded in cash prizes to competition winners.

The three winning apps all feature unique approaches to pressing development challenges:

First Prize Winner $15,000 USD- StatPlanet World Bank (Australia):  With this powerful app, you can visualize and compare country and regional performance over time.

Live demo: http://www.statplanet.org/wb/statplanet.html?y=1990-2010

Second Prize Winner
$10,000 USD- Development Timelines (France): Development Timelines lets you put global development data into historical context and better understand how events such as war, education reforms, or economic booms and busts, affect progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.
Live demo: http://devtimelines.appspot.com/#

Third Prize Winner $5,000 USD- Yourtopia - Development beyond GDP (Germany): This interactive app allows you to sum up human development according to your own criteria and, through a short quiz, choose how important different dimensions of development are to you.
Live demo: http://www.yourtopia.net/

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e-Atlas of Global Development

The World Bank today launched the e-Atlas of Global Development, a free, online, interactive tool, which maps and graphs more than 175 indicators from the World Bank’s development database.

Development of the e-Atlas of Global Development allows users to easily and quickly map and chart economic and social indicators and compare country outcomes. Users can export customized, professional quality, full color maps and graphs. Other features include scalable maps, timeline graphing, ranking tables, and import and export functions for sharing data and graphics. Critical issues such as poverty, food production, population growth, climate change, international trade, and foreign direct investment are covered.

You can see live e-atlas at http://www.data.worldbank.org/atlas-global

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Auditing the World Bank

Developing countries around the world depend on assistance from the World Bank to help support their often fragile economies. We have highlighted the regional recipients and respective outlays, as well as the nine largest donor countries contributing to the Fund's efforts to fight poverty around the globe.

via awesome.good.is

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