Great innovation starts with great problems, and there is no shortage of great problems in healthcare.

One of those problems is couch potatodom.

Earlier this year Jamie Oliver challenged us to help him create a movement to fight obesity. We responded by partnering with HopeLab to challenge mobile software developers: Can you build an Android app that burns calories?

We called the developer challenge “Move Your App!”

In Phase 1, Peter Ma was selected by a panel of judges for “Pickup Sports” among a very competitive field with some great finalists. Peter was invited to TED Oxford where he showed his app.

We then expanded the challenge with Health 2.0 to allow teams of developers who missed the first round to enter their ideas. The winner was just announced this week at Health 2.0.

When Anthony Lai and James Yang got an email about Move Your App from the Stanford Computer Science department, they responded by dropping the class project the were working on, and started building Happy Feet, location-based exercise tracker with built in incentives and social connections.

To download and try out Happy Feet, the Health 2.0 challenge winning app, click here.

On Thursday, May 27, Snaptic hosted its first Developer Conference. You can find the Flickr photo set embedded above.

120 mobile developers from around San Francisco gathered at Mighty to hear a fantastic lineup of speakers at Snaptic’s conference “by developers and for developers.” The topics ranged from practical tools and techniques to new ways of thinking for mobile developer entrepreneurs seeking to change the world.

We also announced the winners of the Move Your App! developer challenge. Here is the schedule:

Snaptic Welcome

• 11:00 Doors Open
• 11:15 Steve Brown & Andreas Schobel, “Welcome to Snaptic’s First Developer Conference and Move Your App! Developer Challenge”

Opening Your Mind

• 11:30 Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus and former CEO of MySQL, “Scaling and Succeeding with an Open-Source-Mind”
• 11:50 Cindy Alvarez of KISS Metrics, “Analytics: Getting to Paid”
• 12:05 LUNCH

Using Apps to Solve New Problems

• 1:15 Marko Gargenta, Marakana, “Deep Dive into Android Developement”
• 1:45 Clay Graham, ServiceTattler, “Our Experiment”
• 1:50 Zhao Lu, OrangeLabs, “Bringing User Presence To The Voice World”
• 2:00 BREAK

New Core Tools for Developers

• 2:15 Jamie Taylor, Metaweb, “Semantic + Location”
• 2:35 Marius Eriksen, Twitter, “geo @ Twitter”
• 2:55 Adam Schwen, GravityMobile, “Interface in Your Face: 11 Ways to Break Your Heart”
• 3:15 Geoffrey Clapp, “Developing with the Snaptic API”
• 3:30 BREAK

Building a Business Around Your App

• 3:45 Charles Yim, Google AdMob division, “Latest mobile data and best monetization practices”
• 4:00 Ashish Toshniwal, CEO of Y Media Labs , “Goto Market Strategy”
• 4:15 Brian Chen, WiRED, “Hacking the Press”
• 4:45 BREAK

Developing with a Vision

• 5:00 Juan Enriquez, “We Know What is Now, But What’s Next”

Developer Challenge Fun

• 5:30 Richard Tate, HopeLab, and Steve Brown, Snaptic, “Why Move Your App”
• 5:45 Jamis MacNiven, Buck’s of Woodside, Neil Izenberg, KidsHealth.org, Juan Enriquez, Excel Ventures, “Judges Discuss the Finalists”
• 6:00 Move Your App! winners
• 6:15 Dinner, drinks, mingle, hacking

At the SF New Tech Mobile event in San Francisco on May 5, Andreas Schobel and I had another chance to present the Snaptic notes technology and some of the developers we are working with in the Android market.

When we presented at SF New Tech the first time in 2009, we were a simple notepad app for Android smartphones. Then we found a way to add value to dozens of other Android apps as a note-taking function that developers easily could call and integrate using three lines of code. We used our 15 minute presentation at SXSW 2010 to highlight some of the top developers in the Android market that are working with us.

Three million active installs later, we have published our API and are becoming a notes platform, in the cloud and on smartphones, designed to make it easy to capture information that is important to you personally. Where Twitter is for content you want to promote to the world, Snaptic is a more personal space for information and data that you want use to improve yourself in some way. We make easy to capture what matters and make that information more useful by innovating in how we use context and semantics.

At SF New Tech this time around, we introduced our Move Your App! Android Developer Challenge. We brought together partners like the TED Prize, HopeLab, and KidsHealth to make it really worthwhile for developers to come up with Android apps that promote and track physical activity. The developer who can convince the judges that his or her app will get people off the couch and burn the most calories could win a trip to TED Global 2010 in Oxford.

San Francisco, CA — Snaptic , a developer of smartphone and web applications that capture, organize, and share information has partnered with HopeLab, a non-profit focused on improving the quality of life for young people with chronic illness, to sponsor the “Move Your App” developer challenge in response to the 2010 TED Prize Wish.

It is widely recognized that the obesity epidemic and sedentary behavior are catastrophic to global health. Today’s smartphone platforms, such as Android and software APIs like those offered by Snaptic, offer new tools for developers to create apps that give individuals more power and control to improve their health.

“Onboard smartphone sensors, the growth of large online social networks, and mass adoption of mobile software offer fertile ground for a new breed of apps that encourage and measure movement,” said Steve Brown, CEO of Snaptic. “We are excited to work with HopeLab and the Android developer community to help everyone reach a higher state of health and well being.”

HopeLab has joined with Snaptic on this challenge to help advance one of its key initiatives which is focused on addressing the obesity epidemic and sedentary behavior among young people. HopeLab is keenly interested in how mobile technology and mobile apps can inspire people to move more.

“Partnering with Snaptic on this Developer Challenge is a fantastic way to explore how these new tools might reach more people faster and ignite movement in unique and innovative ways” noted Pat Christen, President and CEO of HopeLab.

The World Health Organization’s latest global projections indicate that in 2005 approximately 1.6 billion adults were overweight and projects that by 2015, that figure will rise to 2.3 billion. In the United States, over one-third of Americans are currently overweight or obese, a figure projected to grow to 43 percent, or 103 million people by 2018 if current trends continue. This will translate to an estimated $344 billion in medical-related expenses, consuming 21% of U.S. healthcare spending annually.

The need for change is urgent, and the time is now for new ways to combat this growing epidemic.

The challenge calls on Android developers to create apps that get people to move, are fun to use, and are innovative in their approach to encouraging physical activity. Snaptic will be providing resources for developers to draw from to build their apps and the winners will be selected and awarded at its upcoming developer conference on May 27, 2010 in San Francisco, California .

The Move Your App conference also affords developers the opportunity to learn about what it takes to move an app to market, with numerous expert speakers presenting on a range of subjects, such as: running and financing a startup, marketing and promoting apps, tips and tricks for Android programming, and much more.

Developers can register for the challenge starting Thursday April 22, 2010 and must complete and submit their application by Friday, May 21, 2010. The top finalists will be given an opportunity to showcase their applications at the Snaptic developer conference and the winners will be announced live at the event by a panel of expert judges.

The panel of judges features luminaries and experts such as Juan Enriquez, Author, Futurist, & Partner at Excel Venture Management; Marten Mickos, CEO of Eucalyptus Systems & former CEO MySQL; Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director; Pam Omidyar, Founder and Board Chair, HopeLab; George Zachary, Partner at Charles River Ventures, and others.

The first place winner’s travel and accommodations to TED Global 2010 in Oxford will be sponsored by HopeLab, and TED will extend an invitation for the winner to attend the conference. The Move Your App prize was inspired in part by Jamie Oliver, who was awarded the 2010 TED Prize for his tireless fight to improve the health of young people everywhere and turn the tide on unhealthy diets. Jamie’s wish states, “I wish for everyone to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

Amy Novogratz, TED Prize Director, said “Challenging thousands of app developers to make people move is a fantastic way to promote a healthier lifestyle.” She continued, “The Move Your App challenge embodies the self-organizing principle of the TED Prize and the spirit of Jamie’s wish in the fight against obesity.”

Complete contest rules and conference information can be found at http://snaptic.com/events

About HopeLab
HopeLab is a nonprofit organization that combines rigorous research with innovative solutions to improve the health and quality of life of young people with chronic illness. HopeLab works closely with young people themselves to understand their needs and to incorporate their critical and ongoing input into product development. HopeLab is committed to the scientific study of their interventions to ensure their products are effective. More information can be found at http://hopelab.org.

About Snaptic
Snaptic develops web and mobile applications that make it simple to capture, organize, and share information on the go and keep it connected in the cloud. Snaptic is the leader in note-taking and geo-tagging applications in the Android Market with over 2.5 million active installs and numerous integrations with many of the market’s top applications. For more information, please visit http://snaptic.com.

About TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, NgoziOkonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The annual TED Conference takes place in Long Beach, California; TEDGlobal is held each year in Oxford, UK. TED’s media initiatives include TED.com, where new TEDTalks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TEDTalk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where three exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action, and TEDx, which offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world. Follow TED on Twitter, twitter.com/tedtalks, or on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/TED