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Last April, Knight Foundation and the Federal Communications Commission challenged developers and citizens from across the country to develop apps that deliver personalized, actionable information for the Apps for Communities Challenge. As a result, we received almost 70 entries from around the U.S., from California to Pennsylvania.

The challenge awards $100,000 in prizes to winning application developers and is intended to bring together providers of public data, developers, and traditionally underserved populations through a national contest.

Today, the FCC and the Knight Foundation are proud to announce the winners of the Apps for Communities Challenge, developers who answered the call to make local public information more usable and more actionable, making the benefits of broadband more tangible for all Americans. They’ve created apps that directly connect citizens to public information, like social services, job listings, fresh food locations, resources for the homeless and education training. Our winners inspired us with their creativity and commitment to helping communities in need across our country.

The wait is over, and the winners of the Apps for Communities Challenge include:

$30,000 — Grand Prize:

Yak.bus by Ryan Resella, San Francisco, California.

Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation challenged American citizens to develop software applications (apps) that deliver personalized, actionable information to people that are least likely to be online. Using hyper-local government and other public data, people developed apps that will enable Americans to benefit from broadband communications -- regardless of geography, race, economic status, disability, residence on Tribal land, or degree of digital or English literacy -- by providing easy access to relevant content.

This week, we’re excited to unveil the winners at a ceremony at 10 AM PST Thursday Dec. 15 in Silicon Valley and online on the Apps for Communities site.

The Apps for Communities winner celebration details are: 

Date: December 15, 2011 from 10 am to 11 am
Location: Andreessen Horowitz Offices in Silicon Valley
RSVP: appchallenge@fcc.gov

At the celebration, you’ll find out our Grand Prize winner ($30,000), Second and Third Prize winners ($20k and $10k respectively), the five Runners Up prizes ($1k each), and the bonus prize winners!

Checkout all the eligible apps: http://appsforcommunities.challenge.gov/submissions

Remember to follow @communityapps, or the Apps for Communities Facebook page for updates and news.  Hope to see you there!

As part of our Consumer Empowerment Agenda, the FCC has been taking action to ensure that consumers are getting the information they need to make informed decisions.  Our efforts to combat bill shock are one recent example, where we worked out a landmark agreement with the wireless industry to alert consumers before they are charged overage fees.  The residential broadband market is another area where consumers may be faced with decisions they don’t have adequate information to make.  Signing up for broadband—high-speed Internet—service can been a real challenge for consumers.  To be an informed shopper for any service, you have to know what will best meet your needs, and you have to know that service providers will deliver what they advertise.

When it comes to broadband, consumers are often in the dark on both counts. Many people are still puzzling out exactly how many megabits per second (Mbps) they need for web surfing, gaming, or streaming video. And, until recently, there was little information available about whether broadband providers actually delivered the speeds they promised.

The FCC has taken on this issue, beginning with the basic question: Are broadband providers delivering the speeds they promise to consumers?  For a year, we worked with an expert technical consulting group, advisers from academia and consumer organizations, and a collaborative of representatives from industry to conduct the first nationwide scientific study of home broadband service.  Almost 7,000 consumer volunteers across the country used hardware to monitor their broadband performance continuously for several months, providing close to 160 million points of data used for analysis.  This study measured the performance of 13 major broadband providers, covering 86 percent of wireline residential broadband consumers.