IQPrize winner: Decisions for what?

Alas the time has come and gone ... as per my previous post I didn't win the €10k. prize in this competition run by a Dublin I.T. consultancy firm. The whole idea, just to re-cap, was that someone would forward an idea which would "kick start the economy".

The winning idea, 'Decisions for Heroes', amounts to glorified Excel. It has innovations, but no one thing that I can see which is truly outstanding ( other than the fact that it's a noble thing to do - probably not lost on the founder when entering the competition ) Even the name is a rip - off of 'Help for Heroes', a British charity founded in 2007.

Of the other 8 shortlisted 'ideas' we had 'Our Writers Bloc'. This idea cuts out the middleman in online publishing: the writer publishes via this site, and readers pay to read it. Only one problem: IDG launched exactly the same thing a couple of years ago ( blurb.com).

Myhotel.ie was apparently an amazing way to book hotels, but no detail was given so I will have to fall back on the default position of assuming it's more of the same. The other entries comprised of stockmarket investing online, mental games for the mentally challenged, paperless bills filing service, and 'Plink'.

The idea behind Plink is a bit confusing, but it does sound exciting. It has to do with mashups, and garnering information to link to, for example, a photograph taken ( pertaining to the subject ). Sounds very interesting, but would probably cost a fortune to develop, not to mention the possibility of legal action from Plink.com - a social networking site parked since 2006. It always pays to check these things!

In a nutshell, as I said before judges in some of these competitions set out with a rough idea of what they want before anyone even enters. I also suspect that this competition had more to do with personalities and gloss than real ideas. I didn't think that I had the best idea - I didn't think I would win either to be honest - but I would have fancied my chances against a data entry product which relies on the goodwill of users to build a database!

I was keen on the idea of some feedback on my site - www.deadpc.net - from the people who ran the competition, but now I'm not so keen. I got an email telling me to register by the 24th. if I wanted 15 minutes of opinion. As an added bonus, the founder of 'Decisions for Heroes' will also be on hand to give advice. I feel that taking advice from someone who can't think of an original name is beneath me.