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A competition to find mobile apps for women appears to have received received no entries, so an ex-pirate has knocked one up to help women in the third world enter similar competitions more easily.

Ridicomp is only one of Tom Scott's pair of entries, the other being an application to help those who've received billions in tax breaks decide how to spend them. The competition is sponsored by Vodafone who is stumping up $20,000 in prizes a month – presumably out of its £6bn tax break – and at the time of writing, the "mWomen BOP* App Challenge" has received no other entries, so Tom should be on his way to victory.

The good Mr Scott, as regular readers will no doubt remember, confused supporters of the (anti-copyright) Pirate Party UK by dressing as a pirate and calling for the removal of duty on rum, but now he's turned mobile app developer in search of easier loot.

We don't know there haven't been any other entries - we've asked the GSMA for confirmation - but there are none listed on the competition website and there is only a week or so until the competition closes so Tom's entries are surely in with a good chance:

The competition is part of the GSMA's programme to promote mobile phone use in "middle- and lower-income countries", which garners our respect by being backed by Cherie Blair as a way of improving the lives of women. That's despite apparently being a transparent effort by an industry body to promote its industry. The GSMA reckons women in third world countries could be spending £13bn annually on mobile phone calls, if only they could be encouraged to do so.

But enough cynicism, and on to other problems that a mobile phone app might be able to help, in the Smartphone category:

There's still a week to go before the judges have to decide to award Tom Scott the prize, but if we all restrain ourselves from entering then he can't possibly lose.

* "Base Of Pyramid", just so you know.

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