New competititon scours the earth for innovative location apps

The mission: One week to build a cool location-based application. The prize: $2,500, an iPad and, according to the Location Wild competition organizers, mad publicity.

The London, UK-based competition kicks off for the first time ever on Saturday May 29, and is open to anyone in the world who has skills to build an app which leverages users’ location information to build a creative service. However, entrants don’t have to build everything from scratch in such a short period of time. Developers must use the services of either open-source-based augmented reality and location search service NakdReality or location-data service SimpleGeo. Both offer plug-and-play technology which enable developers like the Location Wild participants to build their applications quickly.

Developers and entrepreneurs have until Saturday, June 5 to submit their applications online to locationwild.com. The entries will be judged by a panel of tech journos, consisting of TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld, Slashdot’s Rob Malda, Direction Magazine’s Adena Schutzberg and The Next Web’s Chad Catacchio.

The organizers are hoping to see some real innovation come out of the competition.

“We’d love to see something as wildly popular as [location-based gaming app] Foursquare come out of this competition,” says Paula Abrahamson, CEO of NakdReality and co-ordinator of Location Wild. We’ll keep an eye out in case that happens.

Don’t miss MobileBeat 2010, VentureBeat’s conference on the future of mobile. The theme: “The year of the superphone and who will profit.” Now expanded to two days, MobileBeat 2010 will take place on July 12-13 at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Early-bird pricing is available until May 15. For complete conference details, or to apply for the MobileBeat Startup Competition, click here.