The Mozilla Labs Game On competition is over.  The web game development competition spawn a lot of creative and amazing games.  I can say one thing for sure, I sure am glad I didn’t have to decide who was the best of the best.  The best overall winner was Marble Run – but there were a lot of other awards handed out.

So who are the big winners? Here is a quick rundown:

• BEST OVERALL: MARBLE RUN
• BEST TECHNOLOGY: FAR 7
• BEST WEB-INESS: MARBLE RUN
• BEST AESTHETICS: SKETCHOUT
• MOST ORIGINAL: FAVIMON
• MOST POLISHED: WEBSNOOKER
• MOST FUN: ROBOTS ARE PEOPLE TOO
• COMMUNITY CHOICE: Z-TYPE

Go check out all the winners on the Mozilla Labs website, and let me know which one was your favorite.  For myself, I would have to say Favimon takes the cake for me.  It is simple, strange and very fun to play.

Back in October I told you about the Mozilla Labs Game On competition. The guys at Mozilla now have selected 35 finalists in their game development competition and they are all online and ready for you to play. These games were the top qualified entries in the competition and are being evaluated for the prize awards. 

If you want to go check them out, you can do so on the Game On website. Here are a few of my favorites:

• A to B

  A physics based game where the goal is simply to get the ball from point A to B. Each level, you get a set of modifiers.

• Dave’s Galaxy

  4x MMO Strategy game on top of a google maps style interface. Instead of sending bitmap tiles, the map is built client side with Javascript and SVG.

• DrunkenWeb

  A game to test your mixology skills and help you learn how to bartend.

• Favimon

  Favimon is a web-based game in which you battle your favorite websites, building a collection of icons as you attempt to conquer the web.

• Grave Danger

  GraveDanger is an action puzzle game based on chaining color groups together to race against the clock. Created by two friends in about one month.

• Mad Tanks TD

  Tower Defense game. Mad tanks attacks your base, you have to defend it. Please read in-game help for keyboard shortcuts.

Go check out the rest of the submissions and let me know which ones you liked playing. The winners of the Mozilla Labs Game On competition will be announced on Thursday, February 3. 

Mozilla Labs has started it’s first international gaming competition, Game On 2010.  All developers of all experience levels are invited to take part in the fun, to create games for the Web.  Game developers have until January 11, 2011 to get their entries in.

It looks like several prizes will be awarded, so there is plenty of goals to shoot for:

• Best Overall – the best overall score
• Best Technology – the highest technology score
• Best Web-iness – the highest web-iness score
• Best Aesthetics – the highest aesthetics score
• Most Original – the highest originality score
• Best Polish – the highest polish score
• Most Fun – the highest fun score
• Community Choice- the entry with the highest official average score

Also, I would not be surprised to see Mozilla Labs add more entries, depending on the number of entries.  The grand prize will be a trip for to to GOC, the Game Developers Conference.

For more details on the contest – be sure to check out gaming.mozillalabs.com.

Winners will be announced January 31, 2010. So if you are an indy game developer, with some time to spare – I’d highly encourage you to check out Mozilla’s contest here.  It should be really interesting and fun to see what games are developed out of the Mozilla fan base too.

As many of you know, I also host a twice a month podcast on and about the web hosting and web development industry called the Web Hosting Show.  This month, in conjunction with Ping! Zine we are giving away an Apple TV to one lucky listener.  All you have to do is subscribe (for free) to Ping! Zine, the best web hosting industry magazine out there today.

Want a chance to win? Just check out the Web Hosting Show’s contest page about the special giveaway.  Even if you do not win the Apple TV, you still get your free subscription to the best web development and web hosting related magazine out there today.  So, it is a win/win situation either way.

The Mozilla Labs Design Challenge based around redesigning the home tab is just about over.  This contest was put together by the Mozilla Labs team to inspire some new discussion and creativity on how a new home tab might look and feel in future versions of Firefox, such as Firefox 4. 

Now that the contest is coming close to the conclusion, we can all check out the top 10 designs that were voted on the most by the Mozilla fan base.  Here are the top 10 voted on submissions in the first round of voting for this specific challenge.

Alberto Moreno Alecsandru Grigoriu Amine Zafri Chad Pommiss Daniel Goodwin

Manu Kumar Maurice Lam NorCal Design Council Sam Horne Yatrik Solanki

Be sure to check out more (including video tours for each winner) here:

• Mozilla Labs Design Challenge: The Home Tab

Remember to check back on the design challenge site March 15th to see who wins the best in class honors.  I also want to give my own pat on the back to all the designers who submitted their entries and that made it into the top ten.  All of the submissions I checked out were top notch, and I am sure they will all help Mozilla decide on the best new home tab for Firefox 4.

I know I have a lot of creative and opinionated readers here, so I thought this challenge would be right up your alley.  Last week, Mozilla Labs announced the Winter ‘09 Design Challenge.  What is at stake?  You might get to help design how Firefox 4’s home tab looks.

In the future release of Firefox, it seems the home tab will replace your default homepage as the big starting point for the browser.  Rather than having something like MyYahoo or iGoogle, you will have your own personalized home, served locally, just for you.  This page will have access to a lot more of your information since it never leaves the browser — history, add-ons, bookmarks, and pretty much anything you can see in Firefox at the moment.

Here is a little more about the project from Mozilla:

To participate in this Design Challenge you need to create a short video explaining your idea(s), presenting the mockup and showing how your idea works. Your video can contain anything from a napkin drawing, a wireframe, to a polished graphic/prototype.

Here are the important dates you should make note of, if you want to participate:

• December 2009 – Launch of The Home Tab – Winter ’09 Design Challenge
• February 14th, 2010 – Submission Deadline
• February 15th, 2010 – People’s Choice Voting starts
• March 1st, 2010 – People’s Choice Voting ends
• March 15th, 2010 – Best in Class honors are announced

Good luck to all those who get involved with this challenge.  To learn more about it, be sure to visit the design challenge page over at the Mozilla Labs web site. You can also get updates via Twitter, @mozconcept.

What are the prizes this time around?  Here are just a few:

• Development gear, including a brand new 15" MacBook Pro
• A license for the TextMate IDE by MacroMates
• A license for the Versions SVN client by Sofa
• A license for ExpanDrive by ExpanDrive
• Firefox Ogio Metro Backpack stuffed with t-shirts, stickers, and more

Sure, I got passed up for being a judge again this year, but hey… can’t argue the fact they do have a nice selection of judges to choose from.

Last year’s contest received over 100 add-on submissions, which will be a hard record to beat.  However, with some hard work I think that record can be broken.  Extend Firefox 3.5 is open now and runs through October 2nd, 2009.  Good luck to all that enter!

Best New Firefox Add-ons

• Pencil
• Tagmarks
• HandyTag

Best New Firefox Add-on (the Runners Up)

• Webchunks
• Badges on Favicons
• Devo
• Close ‘N Forget
• Callout
• Reasy

Best Updated Firefox Add-on

• Read it Later 
• TagSifter
• Bookmark Previews

Best Music Firefox Add-on

• Fire.fm

Big congratulations to all of these winners, runners up and everybody who entered.  I am sure the Mozilla judges had a hard time picking the best of the best.  Which is your favorite?

Have a hidden talent of being able to walk people through something?  Coming from the web hosting world, screencast tutorials are nothing new to me – see them used every day.  Now there is a new contest from Mozilla that will get you involved with sharing knowledge via your own desktop tutorial.

Here are a few more details about the contest:

Get ready to participate in the Firefox Screencasts contest! This is your chance to use your talents and passion for Firefox to create screencast support videos for the Firefox Support (SUMO) knowledge base.  We have prepared a list of the top 100 most popular support articles from the SUMO knowledge base and ask YOU to create screencasts for one, two, three, or all of them!  You can enter as many screencasts as you like.

Help your fellow Firefox fans and participate today!

Big congratulations to Tracie Andrews, the winner of the Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest!  I have to say this wasn’t on my radar much (the contest that is) but this design is really awesome.  I would wear it, that is for sure!  If you want to see the other t-shirt designs – check them out at Flickr.  You have to join the group (yes, that even confused me) but there were a lot of cool designs to choose from.