Army Announces Apps for the Army Competition

Just last week the DoD changed its policy to allow troops to use social networks. Today comes word the Army will run an apps contest much like those run for the Washington DC, the US, NYC and other jurisdictions. This being the Army, the rules are a bit different - and a bit cloudy. Apps are due May 15.

Participation in A4A is limited to the first 100 Army personnel (active duty, Army Reserve and Army National Guard on active duty, and civilians) who enroll.  Teamwork is encouraged but not required.  The Army will recognize the top submissions at the LandWarNet Conference in August 2010.  Winners will receive monetary awards; the total cash pool is $30,000.
A4A applications may tackle any aspect of Army IT - distributed training, battle command, career management, continuing education, or news and information distribution, for example.  A4A will further deviate from traditional development practices by utilizing the latest in collaborative development media. 
“Apps for the Army features an innovative cloud computing service for participants to use during software creation,” Sorenson noted.  “This is key because it eliminates the constraints of hardware provisioning prior to prototype evaluation.”
The service, provided by the Defense Information Systems Agency and known as the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), offers access to on-demand virtual Windows and Linux development environments.  Participants will be able to pursue Web application development using all available programming languages supported by Windows Server and the Linux, Apache, MYSQL and PHP (LAMP) frameworks.  They also will be able to build emulated Blackberry, iPhone and Android applications. 
Forge.mil will serve as the collaborative software repository for competing teams.  The tools inherent in milBook and AKO will facilitate the cross-pollination of ideas, problems and solutions relevant to the Apps for the Army initiative.

- Registration/rules/etc.
- press release and other goodies from iStrategyLabs, who is running it