We had a really hard time picking out the winners from so many great entrants. It's clear that our developer community has some really talented and creative members. And so, without further ado...

The Winners

Runners Up - Each runner-up will receive a new Squeezebox with Graphics Display

• Automata, by Greg Stumph
• SqueezeboxG Fonts, by Bob
• iTunes Update, by James Craig
• NetFlix Plugin, by J. Stout
• XUL interface, by Jacob Potter

First Place - Winner will receive two new Squeezeboxen with Graphics Display

• AlienBBC, by Jules Taplin

Grand Prize - Winner receives a collector's item: the one and only hand-made, working SLIMP3, serial #00000001, signed with a soldering iron by the assembly technician, PLUS his choice of either a new 12" iBook or a Tektronix TDS1002 oscilloscope.

• Tiny Little PacMan, by Felix Mueller

In addition, each contestant will receive a stylish Squeezebox T-shirt.

Community Service Awards

Finally, we'd like to recognize two members of the Slim Devices community who have have made substantial contributions to the community in the past year:

• Kevin Deane-Freeman, the prolific author of a number of plugins, fixer of many and various bugs in the SlimServer software and tireless contributor to the Slim Devices discussion forums.
• Richard Titmuss, author of the incredible SoftSqueeze Squeezebox Emulator. Richard's terrific software has extended the Squeezebox experience to the desktops and laptops of thousands of SlimServer users.

Richard and Kevin will each receive a 12" Apple iBook in gratitude for their extraordinary efforts.

A huge "thank you" goes out to everyone who submitted items for the Plugins contest and to all of the members of the Slim Devices community!

The Contestants

Entry	Author	Description
AlienBBC	Jules Taplin	AlienBBC is a plugin for slimserver, the software platform used by the Slim Devices line of networked music players. It is designed to allow the user to listen to (mainly) BBC Radio streams. Currently, it is capable of parsing and listening to the following resources: All the main BBC Radio 'Live' streams The BBC 'Listen Again' Audio on Demand content All Available BBC Radio 4 Content The BBC7 Audio Archive The Available BBC Local Radio Stations Radio 5 Live Audio Archive In addition, the code will also parse any 'AlienStream' playlists available, and provides a more robust environment for the playing of those streams.
Automata	Greg Stumph	Automata is a screen saver plug-in that generates one-dimensional cellular automata on the new graphical Squeezebox display. You have the option of setting specific cellular automata rules and seed values, or using random values. See here  for some background info on cellular automata.
AutoVolume, PluginDBI	Richard Purdie	AutoVolume is a plugin that sets the playback volume to the level it was at when the track was last played. No more adjusting the volume up for those quiet tracks or down for the loud ones! PluginDBI is an interface written to allow Plugins to access the DBI (DataBase Interface) in the new SQL branch of SlimServer (currently under development). It was developed in conjunction with AutoVolume but is designed to enable access to the databases for any plugin. Web UI - This is a proof of concept (and illustration) of my thoughts on how the web UI could take advantage of the new SQL backend. These have been documented on the Developers list but I felt this code might put across my ideas better than words. In summary, the idea is to allow any field in the database to be browseable using user defined trees. AutoVolume and PluginDBI are in the sql6.* files. The original version of the web UI proof of concept code is in the sql7.* files. A revised and much more complete version has since been developed and is in sql8.*. All the code has been described in detail in posts to the Developers list.
Cricket Test Match	Waldy	I've released a new plugin to get the latest score & place it on the sb display. Its my first attempt at this & indeed perl, so any help ironing out the creases would be appreciated.
iTunes Update	James Craig	With this you can automatically update play counts and dates, rate tracks and save client playlists from SlimServer clients to iTunes (Windows only at the moment, sorry).
NetFlix Plugin	jstout	This is a NetFlix plugin. Get the modules listed below setup and drop the pm in the plugins directory. You'll see a NetFlix anchor show up under the Plugins tab on the web pager. Just click on it and set your login/password. If no one has one just drop me a line and I'll give you mine. The worst thing that can happened is someone changes the order of stuff in my queue. :) You can then look at your NetFlix queue on the squeezebox. I had to install ActivePerl and the Crypt::SSLeay module. There is a url in the pm file for the Crypt::SSLeay Windows module.
SlimControl	Harald Walker	SlimControl is a simple remote control MacOS 10.4 Gadget for any Squeezebox or SLIMP3 player in your house. It gives you a fast and easy access to your players without the necessity to start a web-browser first and go to the SlimServer web-interface. It allows you to start, pause or stop the current song, scan forward and backward and adjust its volume or position with a slider. You can also go to the next or previous track in your playlist. Because of the nature of Dashboard Gadgets, it is unfortunately not possible to use this Gadget with other systems than the preview release of Tiger. This Gadget could be extended with extra features like playlist control. A module for sending text messages to a selected player is already functional. Your feedback would be appreciated. Click here to see a screenshot of the plugin.
Squeezebox Case(1, 2)	BigHam	Custom high-end Squeezebox case.
SqueezeboxG Fonts	bob	Custom large fonts for Squeezebox Graphics display.
PowerSave	Jason Holtzapple	PowerSave is an "energy-saver" type plugin that will turn your players off after a specified amount of idle time.
SlimRemote for PocketPC	Alexander Baron Lash	SlimRemote is a PocketPC application for controlling SlimServer. Included is a readme describing in detail the features and goals of the app. The application currently provides full transport control with current song data and a graphical slider to change position, a simple playlist management interface, an embedded browser that serves as a temporary library viewer (until I write a better way) and a basic control panel to select which server and player to muck with.
Tiny Little Pacman	Felix Mueller	Tiny Little PacMan is a playable screensaver.
WebLogger	Danny Rego	Let everyone know what music you are listening to on your squeezebox by displaying it on your personal website! WebLogger is a plugin for your squeezebox that puts a "what I am listening to" box on your website. Whenever you listen to your squeezebox, it will automatically update your website with the currently playing song/album so that people visiting your page(s) can see what you are listening to. Download, and install WebLogger (below), and let the world know what YOU are listening to on YOUR squeezebox! Features include: Updating website using HTTP GET/POST, FTP, XML, or a local file. Uploads, and displays album art. Customizable templates. Configurable through slim server web interface. Automatic/manual updates.
XUL interface	Jacob Potter	Here's my entry to the plugin contest, a Mozilla XUL interface for SlimServer that works like a "skin". It's a bit sparse on features yet, but as of version 0.01 it allows: Current song display Player selection Transport and repeat/shuffle control Playlist and removal of songs from playlist Browse by genre, artist, and album, and play or add any browse item The interface should run in any recent Mozilla or Netscape browser; I developed it with Firefox 0.9.3. No installation is needed on the client. Just extract it in SlimServer's HTML directory and navigate to http://slimserver:9000/xul/ in your browser. You will also need to add a line to types.conf: xul xul application/vnd.mozilla.xul+xml - Communication is done with XMLHttp and a modified version of the XML skin. For some operations, such as playlist manipulation, the result is predicted on the client-side for even faster operation. Browse data is also cached on the client.

And, of course, there are plenty of other great plugins, add-ons, hacks and projects to check out on our Third Party Contribution page.

The original contest announcement is below:

We have always been amazed by the ideas our customers have come up with, given the limitations of the original 40x2 character display. Now that the Squeezebox is capable of bitmapped graphics and fast animation, we thought it would be fun to do a contest.

While we're calling this the "Plugins Contest", any sort of software or hardware hack is welcome, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Font sets
• Games
• Information tools (news readers, etc.)
• Visualizers
• Animations and/or movies
• Web skins
• Screensavers
• Hardware and case modifications
• Add a language or localization

Check out our existing Third Party Contribution page for more ideas. Developer documentation can be found in the SlimServer online help area under Technical Information. Also, feel free to post to our Developers List if you need some help getting started. Submissions and/or questions should be sent to plugins@slimdevices.com. The prizes will be as follows:

Grand prize: collector's item: the one and only hand-made, working SLIMP3, serial #00000001 out of 80, signed with a soldering iron by the assembly technician, PLUS your choice of either a new 12" iBook or a Tektronix TDS1002 oscilloscope.

First place prize: two new graphic, wireless Squeezeboxen

Five runners-up prizes: a new graphic, wireless Squeezebox

Contest rules:

• The deadline for entries is 23:59 PST on Monday, September 6th, 2004.
• No purchase necessary. If you do not have a Squeezebox, you may test your submission using Richard Titmuss' Softsqueeze.
• Slim Devices will judge the contest entries, and will have final say in deciding the winners. All submissions must be available for public review on or before the contest deadline. Winners will be announced one week thereafter, and we encourage everyone to test the submissions and send us their recommendations during that time.
• Judging criteria: submissions will be judged based on the following merits, in no particular order.
  • Impressiveness or usefulness
  • Completeness
  • Best use of new graphic display capabilities
  • Cross-platform compatibility: Windows, Mac, Linux
  • License - may we include it with SlimServer under the GPL?
  • Ease of use
  • Ease of installation
  • Accessibility - can anyone build/buy/download and use it?
• With respect to the "completeness" criteria: we realize that the time frame for this contest is too short for a large endeavor. We do NOT want to rule out big projects with longer development time frames. Therefore, the completeness of a project will be judged with consideration for the magnitude of the project. If it's not 100% done, but it's significant progress towards a big project, we will consider it just as "complete" as a smaller project which is really complete.
• Team entries are welcome. For team entries, a single recipient for the prize must be stipulated, but that recipient is free to distribute prizes among the team as he/she wishes.
• Submissions must be newly developed or be significant improvements to existing software.
• Only one submission per team or per developer will be accepted.