ULocate awards Where GPS widget contest winners

For geeks interested in building mobile GPS applications, it was sort on an "American Idol" type of competition.

Only instead of a song-and-dance talent search, this contest sought out the best GPS applications, and instead of record contracts, winners were promised audiences with venture capital firms.

Sponsoring the so-called "Where Developer" contest was uLocate Communications, a Boston company that has developed a service called Where based on its mobile platform for GPS widgets. (Widgets are interactive items that can be embedded in someone else's mobile Web page.)

Among the contest's winners were applications called Yokel and Cell Soul.

Yokel is a location-enabled shopping portal that helps consumers find products and their prices in nearby retail stores based on the consumers' locations, uLocate said.

Cell Soul, meanwhile, calculates the precise timing of five daily Muslim prayers based on a user's current GPS coordinates, uLocate said.
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)