Second Mac OS X Innovators Contest

O’Reilly begins its second Mac OS X Innovators contest today. (Having won in the first contest, NetNewsWire and UserCreations Spring are ineligible for the second contest.)

The article includes an interesting tip on helping you compete. It says, “As you look at your entry, don’t just think about the product you’ve produced, but also revisit the language you used to describe it. Those descriptions are very important as the judges go through the entries in the initial rounds of review.”

In case it’s useful to anyone—the text we used for entering NetNewsWire was pretty much the text from the website. I don’t have a copy of exactly what we submitted, but it was basically a trimmed-down version of the text on the left side of the page, the description and some features.

My advice: say very clearly what your application does and how it benefits users. Then list the most important features and their benefits. Remember that the people reading your description may not know much about the problem your app solves.