We are all proud of our family history. But how many of us use tools to not just understand discover more about our family but also document and share this information with others, given that the keyword 'social' has crept its way across most applications. RootsTech, a conference that is focused on family history research, brings together professionals from the field of technology and genealogy has thrown open a Developer Challenge to help create these applications.

The RootsTech Developer Challenge that invites you to build top class applications that help people in managing and preserving their Family History. The challenge page provides sample projects that give a good idea of the kind of applications that you could write. For example, an app to help family historians manage the information to visualizing the genealogy data based on relationships, geography and timeline.

In case you want to participate, you need to hurry up. You have to register for the contest by January 1 (extended from what's listed on the site). You can then work on your application. The last date for submission is January 15, 2012 and the finalists will be chosen on January 22. The winners will be announced at the RootsTech conference that will be held on February 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

There are a number of genealogy APIs in the ProgrammableWeb directory. Five of them are taking part in this contest:

The entries will be judged on various criteria like finish & polish, business viability, originality, market value and effectiveness. A total of 6 entries will be chosen as finalists and will go through a public voting phase untl the final winners are announced. The top 3 winners stand to win $5K, $3K and $2K respectively. Visit the Developer Challenge page for full rules and judging criteria.

Interested in more developer contests, check out our contests page.