Flickr Blog: Announcing the World Photography Day 2021 contest winners!. “Thank you to the 14,418 Flickr members that participated in the World Photography Day contest. Together, you submitted 33,214 photos in our first multi-category photo contest, celebrating the themes of nature, objects and structures, animals, and people in your photography. We’re thrilled to announce the winners!”
BBC: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2021 finalists revealed. “A seal that appears to be giggling, a baboon that looks like it’s singing and a very angry starling – this year’s finalists show animals in comedy moments snapped by photographers from around the world. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards were founded by Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, both professional photographers and passionate conservationists.”
CNET: Twitter AI bias contest shows beauty filters hoodwink the algorithm. “A researcher at Switzerland’s EPFL technical university won a $3,500 prize for determining that a key Twitter algorithm favors faces that look slim and young and with skin that is lighter-colored or with warmer tones. Twitter announced on Sunday it awarded the prize to Bogdan Kulynych, a graduate student examining privacy, security, AI and society.”
Smithsonian: Cooper Hewitt’s Interaction Lab Launches Seven Prototypes to Experience the Smithsonian Open Access Collection. “The Interaction Lab at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum has announced the launch of seven prototypes commissioned under the Activating Smithsonian Open Access program. The selected teams each received $10,000 to create new digital interactions and innovative tools that enable play and discovery with 2D and 3D digitized assets from the Smithsonian’s Open Access collections. The teams retain ownership of the intellectual property developed from the program.”
Google Blog: Cheer on the finalists of our Indie Games Festival. “On September 4, we’re celebrating some of the best indie talent on Google Play during the Indie Games Festival finals for Europe, Japan and South Korea. This year the three festivals are virtual, so you can join us to discover the games, meet the developers who created them, cheer them on and be the first to hear who the winners are.”
The Register: UK’s National Museum of Computing asks tunesmiths to recreate bleeps, bloops, and parps of retro game music. “The UK’s National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is running a competition aimed at recreating the bleeps, whistles, and flatulent squawks of video game music from years gone by. It’s all in honour of the 40th anniversary of the BBC Micro, which, if memory serves, was not really a ball of fire in the sound department when put up against the Commodore 64 Sound Interface Device (SID) chip.”
CNN: The Biden administration launches a $500,000 contest to improve face mask designs. “If you have a unique idea that follows required safety guidelines, you can submit your idea here by 5 p.m. ET on April 21. You must be a US citizen or legal resident to receive a prize. Up to 10 winners will be chosen in the first phase of the challenge and will split a $100,000 prize, with each person taking home up to $10,000.”
Techdirt: Announcing The Winners Of The 3rd Annual Public Domain Game Jam!. “It’s that time again — the judges’ scores and comments are in, and we’ve selected the winners of our third annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1925! As you know, we asked game designers of all stripes to submit new creations based on works published in 1925 that entered the public domain in the US this year — and just as in the past two jams, people got very creative in terms of choosing source material and deciding what to do with it.”
Arizona State University: ASU student team’s fog-free mask design wins $1 million international competition. “A student team from Arizona State University has won the million-dollar XPRIZE Next-Gen Mask Challenge to redesign the face masks used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 by making them more comfortable, functional and affordable. The contest drew nearly 1,000 entries from young innovators in more than 70 countries around the world. The ASU team made the top five in early December; the grand prize was announced Tuesday.”
Europeana Pro: GIF IT UP – inspiring students to engage with digital cultural heritage. “With this year’s GIF IT UP competition currently taking place, Cristina Roiu talks to teenager Anamaria Şune about her experience of making GIFs and how the competition inspires educational engagement with digital cultural heritage.”
BBC: Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2020 finalists revealed. “A fish that appears to smile, a bear giving a friendly wave from afar and a very grumpy sea turtle – this year’s finalists show animals in relatable comedy moments. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards were founded by Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, both professional photographers and passionate conservationists.”
CNET: Astronomy Photographer of the Year winners revel in the beauty of space. “If you want a reminder of just how gorgeous our universe is, then take some time to browse the winners of the 2020 Insight Investment Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. From an artful aurora to the surface of the sun, these images capture the enduring beauty of the cosmos.”
Google Blog: The Indie Game Festival announces its nine winners. “The talent of independent and small game developers shines this year at Google Play’s Indie Games Festival, a celebration of the creativity of game developers. We received hundreds of submissions for the three competitions in Europe, Japan and South Korea. This year’s winning games have something for everyone, from a food-themed puzzle game with cats to a Mars Survival Project.”
BBC: Coronavirus: Records broken at socially distanced hot dog contest. “Coney Island in the US has hosted a special socially-distanced version of an annual hot dog eating contest amid the coronavirus pandemic. New records were set in both the men’s and women’s categories at the climate-controlled indoor event in Brooklyn, New York City, on Saturday.”
Techdirt: Announcing The Winners Of The 2nd Annual Public Domain Game Jam!. “The judges have had their fun, the votes are in, and now it’s time: we’ve got the winners of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1924! We had some amazing entries this year, and we’ve even got a couple returning winners. Plus, we noticed a really exciting pattern: several of the games didn’t just make use of newly-copyright-free works from 1924, they actually found ways to embody the spirit of the game jam — a celebration of the public domain and the creative power of remixing and reimagining — within their themes and mechanics as well.”
