May the Best App Win

Coming up at the end of this week is the deadline for the Binary Battle. Mendeley and PLoS got together to hold this contest to encourage the development of apps that science more open using Mendely or PLoS Application Programming Interfaces. And why participate? "The most important reason to build a science app, even if not with Mendeley or PLoS's APIs, is to do something awesome for the world instead of just the next music app," writes Jason Hoyt at Mendeley's blog. "Boosting the number of tools available to researchers using accessible data is the entire raison d'être." In addition, Mendeley's webpage says there is $16,000 in award money to be had. The deadline is September 30.