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2008 August 6th

WhitePages Announces Winners in Developer API Contest

Developers challenged to create useful applications for social networks and the iPhone

SEATTLE—August 6, 2008

WhitePages.com, the popular Web site that provides people a simple way to find each other and connect with confidence, today announced the winners in their developer API contest. The company recently made its data available for free in a beta Web services API and challenged developers to create useful applications for social networks and the iPhone™

“We wanted to give people-centered developers the opportunity to integrate our high quality data into applications that support our goal of making the Internet a more connected place,” said Scott Ruthfield, vice president of engineering and technology at WhitePages. “We received a number of high quality entries and it was difficult to choose just two winners.”

The first prize in the iPhone category was awarded to Adam Leonard, an experienced Cocoa developer. Leonard created “People,’ an application that enables users to look up people via a phone number, address or name and general location. Results can also be saved directly into an address book added to an existing contact. During its first week of release, Leonard’s application was in the top 100 downloads in the iPhone App Store.

“WhitePages has set the bar high in terms of ease of use, quality, performance, and service,” said Leonard. “I was able to integrate the API into my application very quickly, allowing me to focus on what iPhone users care most about: an intuitive, beautiful user interface and powerful features.”

The first prize in the social networking category was awarded to Trevor Hall who built an application leveraging the Facebook development platform. Hall’s application, Visual Directory, allows users to visualize where their friends might be located. By clicking on a Facebook contact, the app provides a map of everyone in the WhitePages.com database with the same name and location of that contact. A click on a balloon will reveal the contact information associated with that particular listing.

“The WhitePages API was by far and beyond the simplest, most intuitive and the most stable API I worked with on this project,” said Hall. “I wanted to consolidate all the information WhitePages and Facebook could bring into a single page all without reinventing the wheel, while at the same time providing users a more intuitive experience than the average search and result set they might find on the Web.”

For more information, or to download ‘People,’ visit the Caffeinated Cocoa site. For more information, or to add the Visual Directory application to your Facebook page, visit the application’s Facebook page.


About WhitePages.com
WhitePages.com, a privately held company based in Seattle, Wash., is the most trusted and comprehensive connectory source for consumers to quickly find each other and connect with confidence. The company’s network of sites include WhitePages.com (www.whitepages.com), WhitePages.ca (www.whitepages.ca), 411.com (www.411.com), Address.com (www.address.com), PhoneNumber.com (www.phonenumber.com), and its 1,300 partner sites including including Superpages.com and YellowPages.com.  The on-the-go user can also access contact information via cell phone, smart phones and other Web-enabled mobile devices. For more information about WhitePages.com, visit the WhitePages.com Blog: http://blog.whitepages.com/

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John Lusk
WhitePages

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