And lo, from every field and foundry they came.  They – heroes of their own time – answered a clarion call of competition and sallied forth onto the pitch to win honor, glory and some sweet, sweet hardware.  Writing poetry in code and bending the boundaries of what was once thought possible, the proud corps of engineers who committed their sweat and their blood in the Boxee + Twilio Developer Contest asserted to the world that method and medium need no longer be segregated by the ancient shackles of traditional telecommunication.  They proved that TV and telephone did, at long last, belong together, and in so doing became more than competitors.

They became legends of these fine Internets.

As strong as this competitive field was, sadly we are forced to select a first and second place.  It was not at all easy, but after great deliberation by our rockstar panel of judges including Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, Boxee Platform Chief Idan Cohen and Twilio Head of Marketing Danielle Morrill, a winner has emerged.

Earning first place, a netbook from Twilio and a Boxee Box *before* it is available in stores is:

Bring the Popcorn
Drew Baumann and Brett Hazen

Bring the Popcorn is a fun app to quickly organize a movie party directly from Boxee.  Using a simple interface and leveraging the Twilio API, users can add their friends, sort out who brings what, and SMS those friends to see when they are coming over.  The app was developed by a team of Luther College CS Majors Drew Baumann and Brett Hazen who flew out for the hack day event at Twilio HQ this past weekend.

Finishing in a close second and netting themselves a netbook from Twilio and an Acer Revo from Boxee is none other than:

Find My Phone
Fuzz the Destroyer

Prolific Boxee developer Fuzz the Destroyer adds to his extensive portfolio of Boxee apps with a dead simple and crazy useful entry called “Find My Phone.”  The appropriately titled app uses the Twilio API to find where you put your phone with a clean interface and a wry sense of humor.  Helpful for every Boxee install, this app even helped me find my own handset stuck behind a seat in the airport terminal in which this announcement was written.

All competitors who submitted an app will get our undying respect for joining our growing family… and a Boxee T-shirt.  The entries in this contest were inspiring to all of us at Boxee and Twilio, and indicative of the radical change the living room is going to see in the next few years – a change our developer community is turning into reality every day.