Prototypes - How to go about winning that new £20,000

As you may have noticed we launched a new strand to our competition last week - a £20,000 cash prize for people working up prototypes of people's ideas. Some of you may well be in the position that I was in a couple of weeks ago - completely enthused by the ideas, but not quite sure how to go about developing them into reality.

This is a quick post to draw some of the sites and resources I have found to your attention. It is a little skewed towards mapping (or GIS), but this reflects the majority of the ideas submitted so far.

There will invariably be useful sites I have missed from this list. Please put any new sites in the comments.

Where to start

• The Wikipedia definition of a mashup
• A programmable web HowTo
• The IBM Many Eyes tool - Contains some inspiration and ideas on presentation (as well as being a useful tool)

General development frameworks

• Google Code - Google's Homepage for web developers. Offers hosting, tools, etc
• Microsoft Popfly - Microsoft's graphical application generator
• Yahoo pipes - A Yahoo project giving similar, but slightly different functionality to popfly
• PiggyBank - A tool created by MIT Smilie project to turn firefox into a mashup platform

Useful tools

• Firefox Web Developer add-on - Simple add-on that is immensely useful when tryin to work out why sites do or don't work.
• Notepad ++ - Simple text editor that displays code in the correct colours (really useful)

Tips and tricks (worth a read even if not technical)

• http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ - Unofficial site with a wealth of interesting map 'mashups'
• http://mapperz.blogspot.com/ - Map and GIS News finding blog
• http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/ - Official Google maps blog
• http://www.programmableweb.com/ - A portal for the 'mashup' community. Contains news, examples, etc

Disclaimer: I found these sites useful, but they are not an Official endorsement by the British Government. Have a look at them, make your own mind up and give us feedback in the comments