Google awarded a Romanian company for creating one of the best 10 applications for Android system phones

Romanian company iQuest ranked 1st in the „tourism” category in a global competition initiated by Google to award the best applications developed for Android operation system phones. The Company has sofware centres in Cluj (Central-West) and in Brasov (Central) and it won one of the ten categories of the competition, getting in front of another 19 firms which had subscribed at the „applications for tourism” section. The award was 100,000 dollars. The software developed in Cluj allows the following of routes through GPS and visualising position on Google Maps, stocking coordinates and taking photographs with notes, the company announced in a communiqué.

This is the second annual Android Developer Challenge edition and it aims to encourage software developers to create applications for Google’s Android operation system, functional with the latest generation mobile gadgets. 200 applications made it through to the last phase, namely 20 in each of the 10 categories.

iQuest won the Travel category with the Trip Journal application, thus becoming one of the world’s 10 best applications developed in 2009 for the Android system phones.

By using Trip Journal application, users can keep their holiday memories, sending friends and family updated information from the places they visit. The software allows for route following through GPS and visualising position on Google Maps, memorises coordinates and takes photos with notes. Recordings can be exported for Google Earth visualisation and photos can be uploaded on to Picasa web albums.

TripJournal can be installed on terminals using Android systems and iPhone starting next week. The product will soon be available for download for 0.79 euros on the Internet Android Market web page. Plus, iTunes Store Apple will sell it in the virtual space in 100 countries, including Romania.

The jury was made of users and top specialists representing companies such as Google, T-mobile, AEOLab and Twitter. The Romanian soft was created in roughly five months by a team made up of programmers, designers and testers.

iQuest company was set up 11 years ago, employs 260 people and owns software developing centres in Cluj-Napoca and Brasov. The headquarters is in Frankfurt am Main and consultancy offices are located in Bucharest, Budapest, Paris and Goteborg.