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.
15. June 2009 at 10:07 am
Jings…. I would have voted for one in the top 11-20…..
– Folder replication to another WHS for me!
(Sorry)
15. June 2009 at 4:48 pm
Well – One can only hope it is picked up and developed by someone in the community
15. June 2009 at 5:02 pm
Hey, so did I… I want to buy my mother a WHS and sync my WHS with it just so I can have off-site backup for my data to somewhere I can control vs. a pay per gigabyte cloud storage.
15. June 2009 at 12:03 pm
Well for a Windows Update manager, you could probably just use WSUS and add the WSUS console to the WHS console.
15. June 2009 at 6:40 pm
I have already voted and refreshed this page and I can vote again… This should not be possible!
15. June 2009 at 7:39 pm
Have just switched on a bit of extra security, so this shouldn't happen again.
16. June 2009 at 10:31 am
It's still possible for me.
I'm using Firefox 3.0.11 with Noscript but I have allowed everything on this page except doubleclick.net.
15. June 2009 at 8:39 pm
Great concept, this competition! Thanks on behalf of all of us for running it!
15. June 2009 at 11:12 pm
Hi all. I voted and my browser then crashed, and I didn't get the email address to send my details in for the comp. Can someone ping me the address as I can't vote again to get it. By the way, all the ideas are great, hopefully some will get developed, should make WHS even better.
16. June 2009 at 7:10 am
Thanks – it's well worth it – great fun!
16. June 2009 at 5:37 pm
I voted for the undelete. It's a great idea and something that should have been implemented by Microsoft anyways.
16. June 2009 at 10:24 pm
I just want to say that this contest is a great idea. I really hope some other developers might pick up the reins on a few of the add-ins that don't win this. My idea is the Folder Monitoring one up there and I can see I'm up against some tough competition. Best of luck to everyone!
17. June 2009 at 6:45 am
I hope so too, Adam – good luck in the competition!
17. June 2009 at 3:21 am
I voted, saw no address, and can't revote even in a different browser… IDisposable at gmail dot com
17. June 2009 at 6:45 am
Okay Marc, we'll include you at this end….
17. June 2009 at 5:29 pm
The option entitled "Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts" … can this be achieved today via Sharepoint (either WSS or the full-blown SharePoint Server)?
Not directly related, but I would love an add-in that lets me mount a shared folder from another host as a network drive in WHS. This would be something that is accessible without being logged into WHS (i.e., "mounted" via a service, if you will).
19. June 2009 at 2:09 pm
Doesn't sound so much like the full WSS/MOSS would be required, but maybe Sharepoint Workspaces … which I believe Groove will be converted to in Office 2010 (beta out next month). Hopefully they integrate Outlook into it very closely.
19. June 2009 at 3:24 pm
You could probably achieve something similar with sharepoint, but the point is not to have another server (Exchange or SharePoint), and installing WSS on the WHS is not an easy plugin affair as this add-in could be.
The other point of Home Calendar, Tasks, Contacts is to make the data as generic and platform agnostic as possible so you could access it wether you had Outlook on a PC, Entourage or Ical on a MAC, or Gmail on a Linux box.
19. June 2009 at 8:16 pm
Jared you have some really awesome ideas and you make us think with our minds. Keep up the great work to making our lives easyer. Hope you win. Jennifer SageB)
1. July 2009 at 5:15 pm
So when do the results get posted? I couldn't sleep last night. I'm excited about the competition, and honored to be included in the finalists. Thank you so very much for the opportunity!
26. July 2009 at 3:12 pm
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.