Website Hosting Contest Winner, Named by 34SP.com

Manchester, UK (The Hosting News) Creativity is never lacking with respect to website hosting contests, and one recent example of this is the Pub Mashup Competition sponsored by Manchester website hosting firm, 34SP.com.

The company, which is known for superior customer service, launched the contest with simple entry criteria: create a mashup that has anything at all to do with pubs. Any entry could win, just so long as the mashup involved a pub in some way. The term 'mashup' is used in web development to denote a web application that combines data or functionality from two or more sources into a single integrated application. A mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason for producing the raw source data.

The winner of the 34SP.com Pub Mashup Competition was Mr. Phil Ronan for his program named ''PubStop''. This mashup will find the location of Britain's best pubs close to a motor route of your choosing - and even divert you for a quick pint. Mr. Ronan's winning entry will also re-route your driving directions and include a stop at the pub with a click of the ''Recalculate route with a stopover at this pub'' button. The pubs included in the stopovers were selected by the guardian.co.uk as Britain's 200 best pubs. The winner received cash and the use of a virtual server for a year as described here: http://www.34sp.com/vps-hosting.

Mr. Ronan's entry was selected from a large field of entries including runner's up Keane Ingram and Ollie O'Brien. Their programs were respectively: The Sam Smith's Challenge (''A map showing all of the Sam Smith's pubs in London, all of which we visited as part of a challenge to ourselves'') and a Map of UK Scenicness...and Pubs (New UK scenicness data released by MySociety, with OpenStreetMap's road network and its known pubs).

According to information released by the company, 34SP.com created the Pub Mashup Competition to appeal to a technical audience. This core technology demographic composes much of the company's client base. The contest provided clever programmers with a way to mix business with pleasure. Business: as in their business is programming applications and pleasure: as in the well known national pastime in the UK, going to pubs.

Winning entries for the website hosting competition were selected by a panel made up of 34SP.com employees who enjoy going to pubs. Entries were judged on the following criteria: originality, functionality, robustness, betterment of the greater pub community, and being fun and engaging to use. The winner emerged, but not without some difficulties.

Stuart Melling, co-founder of 34SP.com described the difficult selection process for the winners, ''Deciding on the actual winner, wasn't an easy decision to make, mainly due to the fact that we'd been in the pub all day, and our vision was a bit blurry. The next day though we tried again. It was still hard though given all the entries we received. In the end we feel that the best pub mashups won.''

34SP.com offers professional website hosting services for cost conscious web developers and designers. The 34SP.com team of technical experts offers award winning support and service coupled with a money back guarantee to ensure client satisfaction. Website hosting services offered include: dedicated servers and .co.uk domains. The company is headquartered in central Manchester, England.

To learn more, please visit: www.34SP.com.