By Andrew Chen, Betsy Scherzer, and Kristy Sundjaja

On October 11, 2011, at a star-studded New York Tech Meetup headlined by Mayor Bloomberg himself, New York City launched the NYC BigApps 3.0 Competition. Entering its third year, the BigApps competition promotes government transparency and innovative new technologies by challenging mobile and web developers to create cool, free apps for New Yorkers using publically released NYC data. With more data, prizes and resources this year than ever before, we're really excited to see some of the best apps and startups ever come out of the NYC BigApps 3.0 Competition.

This year, in conjunction with DoITT, and in partnership with BMW iVentures, we are excited to make the following announcements:

• NYC Open Data's dynamic new platform now contains nearly 750 datasets from over 60 NYC agencies, commissions and BIDs, including over 230 new datasets added this year.

We're offering $50,000 in cash prizes, $10,000 more than last year, with additional non-monetary awards including:

• Two spots to present at New York Tech Meetup
• Two NYC TechStars finalist slots
• Membership in the inaugural NYC BigApps Founders Network, which provides winners with mentorship, networking, and business support services to help them launch or build their startups.

We've added 5 new award categories this year that promote NYC priorities, including:

• Best Green App
• Best Education App
• Best Health App
• Best Mobility App
• Best NYC Mashup App (using City data and the API of participating NYC startups)

We're hosting an all weekend Hackathon from November 11th-13th at Pivotal Labs to help jump-start developer efforts. Come join fellow developers, designers, hackers and entrepreneurs in a creative and collaborative space to build awesome apps to enter into the competition.

We've invited two new judges, David Tisch, Managing Director of NYC TechStars and Charlie Kim, CEO of Next Jump, to join our panel. Don't miss the chance for once in a lifetime exposure to this prestigious group of judges:

• Dawn Barber, Co-founder, New York Tech Meetup
• John Borthwick, CEO, Betaworks
• Alex Diehl, Managing Director, BMW iVentures
• Chris Dixon, CEO & Co-founder, Hunch
• Esther Dyson, Chairman, Edventure
• Stuart Ellman, Co-founder & General Partner, RRE Ventures
• Charlie Kim, CEO Next Jump
• Lawrence Lenihan, Founder, CEO, and Managing Director, FirstMark Capital
• Carole Post, Commissioner, NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications
• Danny Schultz, Co-founder & Managing Director, DFJ Gotham Ventures
• Naveen Selvadurai, Co-founder, Foursquare
• Kristy Sundjaja, Senior Director, Center for Economic Transformation, NYCEDC
• Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, All Things Digital
• David Tisch, Managing Director TechStars
• Fred Wilson, Managing Partner, Union Square Ventures.

We're including APIs from the NYC startups listed below. (New APIs can be suggested and added until Oct. 25, 2011.)

• Aviary
• Bit.ly
• DonorsChoose.org
• Etsy
• Foursquare
• GetGlue
• Hunch
• Mag.ma
• Meetup
• Min.us
• NewsBlur
• Readability
• RecordSetter
• Tumblr
• Yipit

NYC BigApps 3.0 is just one more example of the City's ongoing efforts to empower NYC's amazing developers and entrepreneurs by awarding generous cash prizes; offering invaluable startup support, such as the BigApps Founders Network; and granting participants complete IP ownership of their apps.

Submissions for NYC BigApps 3.0 are due by 5pm EST on January 25, 2012 – so start coding!

And help us promote BigApps by tweeting:

Announcing NYC BigApps 3.0! NYC challenges software developers to create cool apps that use city data: http://2011.nycbigapps.com/ @nycbigapps