In March, the platform-agnostic research management tool, Mendeley, announced an API Battle, held in conjunction with the Public Library of Science. The goal was to spur the community into developing neat apps that use the database that powers Mendeley. Apps were judged by a panel that included Tim O'Reilly (of O'Reilly Media) and Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, based on the following criteria: API key usage, whether or not it goes viral, how much the app contributes to collaboration and transparency, and general coolness.

Late last week (December 1st) the winners were announced, and 1st place went to openSNP, a community-driven project for publicly sharing personal genetic data (such as an individual's 23andMe results). You can read an interview with the winners over at Mendeley's blog. PaperCritic and rOpenSci were the runners-up.