Yesterday we announced the ten finalists in the Windows Home Server Add-in Idea Challenge ’09. Today, and for the next two weeks, you can vote for the idea you’d like to see developed into an add-in which will be released before the end of the year.
Remember, this is not just about kudos – your vote will decide how we split up over $8000 of digital home kit between the finalists. But wait, there’s an incentive for you to vote too. Simply send your email address to the email address shown following your vote and you’ll go into the draw for a fantastic digital home kit, including:
- HP MediaSmart Server LX195
- 500Gb Fujitsu Storagebird External Hard Drive
- Diskeeper for Windows Home Server
- My Movies for Windows Home Server
As a quick refresher, here are the list of finalists (full descriptions here: AIC09 Finalists – Details):
| Add-in Name | Entrant | Brief Description |
| Automatic Add-In Updater | Erik Madsen | An add-in that can automatically check for updates of add-ins and inform the user when there’s an update with a button to update the add-ins |
| Folder Monitor & Notification Scheme | Adam Swift | This add-in will give the ability to set up a list of shared folders that will be monitored for file changes (adds or deletes) and will send out a notification to a list of registered users detailing the information on what has changed on the shared folders. The notification could be set up as either an email alert or perhaps an RSS feed. |
| Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts | Jared Finkenbinder | This add-in should use universal data stores such as ical and vcards to share data to multiple productivity suites such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Entourage, etc. This does not need to serve email, it is simply a way to have a centralized database for shared, common items for the family or home office. |
| Microsoft Web Platform for WHS | Name Witheld | The Microsoft Web Platform for WHS add-in allows anyone to have easy access to some of the best website management systems on the planet (WordPress, Drupal etc). Microsoft even worries about the updates for you. |
| Photo Manager | Dan Troup | A photo app on the home server that helps you organize your photos so they are easy to sort and easy to find what you are looking for. This would include face recognition software to find all the photos for a certain person that you would have to go through all your albums to find. |
| Run TV Cards on WHS, Controlled from MCE Clients | Sven Halling | Allow the home server to run (MCE compatible) TV cards to record TV straight to the WHS storage, and be played from any client (MCE or other) connected to the network. Scheduling of recording shall be made from any MCE PC connected to the WHS. With this we get a truly networked TV function that also saves energy (as the WHS is the only machine that needs to run all the time). |
| Time Machine | Simon Needham | Total turnkey, out of the box, it just works storage support for OS X Time Machine. |
| WHS Undelete | Andrew Carr | Transfers a copy of any file deleted from the WHS into the recycle bin of the computer it was deleted on. |
| WHS Windows Update Manager | Rob Cassie | Allow users to centrally manage Windows Update for all connected PC’s from the console. |
| Windows Live Skydrive Add-in | Name Witheld | The main idea of this add-in is to provide an automated way to monitor folders on the Home Server and automatically back them up to Windows Live Skydrive which provides 25gb of free storage. |
Okay, once you’ve read through the finalists and you’re ready to vote, do so using the panel below. You only have one vote, so make it count and don’t forget to send your email address to enter the competition (the address to send it to will pop up when you vote!).
Good luck to all and a big thanks once again to everyone who submitted an idea, as well as our runners-up, finalists and competition supporters. We’re excited to hear your views so use the comments box to let us know who you’ve voted for and why, as well as how you’d build on the ideas even further.
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