BlackBerry Partners Fund contest winners named

The BlackBerry Partners Fund announced the grand prize winners of its developer challenge. The fund--a $150 million venture capital effort formed to focus on applications and services for Research In Motion's BlackBerry and other mobile platforms--awarded top honors to three applications:

  • Poynt (Developed by Multiplied Media): A free location-based search tool that connects users to nearby businesses, movie theatres and retailers and includes such features like target site browsing, interactive maps, driving directions, GPS compatibility, show times, movie railers and ticket purchase.
  • Strands Social Player (Developed by Strands Inc.): An integrated, social-networking themed music player that enables users to discover new music, connect with fellow listeners and share their tastes with friends in addition to providing cover art, artist info and song recommendations from a catalog spanning 6 million tracks.
  • Nobex Radio Companion (Developed by Nobex Technologies): Another music application, this one showing you which song is playing on any of 2700 radio stations--if listeners discovers a song they like, they may click the "Get It!" button, which transmits an email with a link to purchase the track.

All three winners will receive a $150,000 investment from the BlackBerry Partners Fund and are entered into its "Jump Start" early-stage program. The grand prize winners were selected from a pool of 15 finalists.

For more on the BlackBerry Partners Fund grand prize winners:
- read this release
- See screenshots of the winners