PennApps was awesome this year! I had never done a Hackathon before and now I want to do another one ASAP.<p>I definitely saw some amazing hacks that didn't get prizes. Someone made a robotic bartender using Arduino that had an iPad app that would let you choose drinks. It could mix from 16 ingredients and accept payments from Venmo. The best part is that team didn't bring the hardware to the event (minus the Uno board), they spent 24 of the 48 hours scrambling around Philly buying things (they're from Michigan). That's true hacking spirit.<p>I made PokeBattle, it's just a silly little hack but if you're interested check it out at <a href="http://pokebattle.herokuapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://pokebattle.herokuapp.com</a>
(I'm not even sure if there are directions for use or what it is, we were rushed for the demo).
I was a hacker there. I actually think some of the coolest projects went totally unnoticed. My personal favorite was <a href="http://www.bbcat.co/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbcat.co/</a>, which some Rutgers people made.
There were also some pretty sweet hardware ones out there. Some guys used electrodes attached to a person to play that google doodle running game.<p>I really thought the ones that won were pretty sensationalist and not particularly complex.<p>(they also needed to feed us better. Some dark rooms would have been nice too...)
I, too, was a hacker there. PennApps this year was definitely a great time, but the judging didn't really align well with the quality of apps. One of the most popular apps, PayTango, had a completely faked demo from what I saw (I saw the play button show up when they tapped a button on the iPad, revealing that it was just an image slideshow of mockups). That and the demo time was severely truncated, 75 seconds is enough to demo about one feature, and when your app has several features it's impossible to show it all.
The press didn't even cover some of the coolest hacks in my opinion, like <a href="http://pokebattle.herokuapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://pokebattle.herokuapp.com</a> , <a href="http://bbcat.co" rel="nofollow">http://bbcat.co</a> , <a href="http://electioneering.us" rel="nofollow">http://electioneering.us</a> , and <a href="http://notableapp.herokuapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://notableapp.herokuapp.com</a> , and some more I can't recall.
I understand that it's hard for them to deal with so many participants though (it was may more than they had planned), so I applaud them for their effort and expect them to improve their plans accordingly for the spring event, which will definitely be just as popular if not more-so.
<a href="http://snapsite.me/" rel="nofollow">http://snapsite.me/</a> is pretty cool. It takes a Facebook Page and makes a professional looking webpage out of it.<p>e.g.
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist" rel="nofollow">https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist</a> to <a href="http://www.snapsite.me/home.php?id=804" rel="nofollow">http://www.snapsite.me/home.php?id=804</a><p>It helps less tech savvy businesses only know how to operate a facebook page have a decent web presence.
Our team made Batt Signal <a href="https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-fall-2012/hacks/batt-signal" rel="nofollow">https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-fall-2012/h...</a><p>Allows you to notify your friends when your battery drops low.<p>We got Zynga’s award for Bay Area Favorite :)
Hey Brett! Nice post. I had a BLAST mentoring at PennApps - these kids could teach everybody a lot about enthusiasm and hard work. It's always inspiring when you have so many great minds in one place.<p>Look for my post about it as well, coming soon..
I really liked Dashdisco: <a href="http://dashdis.co/" rel="nofollow">http://dashdis.co/</a>
Making music by coding can be a new way to teach an amateur how to code well. This app has so much potential!
We for sure had a ton of fun making <a href="http://buddyhack.com" rel="nofollow">http://buddyhack.com</a> and it was a crazy adventure right before our demo to pivot to <a href="http://hackmyfacebook.com" rel="nofollow">http://hackmyfacebook.com</a><p>The filepicker.io guy was an awesome mentor, along with many of the other mentors that were there(Rob from Twilio!).<p>Super awesome experience; Michigan Hackers looks forward to coming back with even more hackers in January(We rallied 20 hackers to go less than a week before the event).
There is a full listing of hacks here:
<a href="https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-fall-2012/hacks" rel="nofollow">https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-fall-2012/h...</a>
this is great. impressive hacks out there and crazy to see what college students can build in a short amount of time. <a href="http://www.snapsite.me" rel="nofollow">http://www.snapsite.me</a> is a pretty cool concept definitely commercializable.