BlogBloghttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2012-01-10T21:34:32ZSquarespaceUpcoming: PennApps Spring 2012http://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/12/19/upcoming-pennapps-spring-2012.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-12-19T16:38:25Z2011-12-19T16:38:25ZPssst. PennApps Spring 2012 is just around the the corner. More details coming soon, but the dates are January 13-15. Mark your calendars and sign up for updates here.

]]>Congratulations to Social+ on winning the Student Choice Awardhttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/26/congratulations-to-social-on-winning-the-student-choice-awar.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-26T06:38:30Z2011-09-26T06:38:30ZWith over 650 votes cast, Social+ has won the $1,000 Student Choice Award.

Congratulations also to BeerSnob for a strong second place showing.

Thanks to First Round Capital for sponsoring the award and to the Undergraduate Assembly for helping spread the word.  Make sure to check out the full list of participants for PennApps 2011 here.

]]>Student Choice Awardhttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/20/student-choice-award.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-20T05:25:00Z2011-09-20T05:25:00ZVoting for the student choice award is open! You can see videos, descriptions, and websites for the 40 teams who presented, at http://vote.2011f.pennapps.com/. Any college student is eligible to vote, and you can vote for as many teams as you choose.

PennApps teams - if you have not yet sent us a 140 character description (and a website, if you have one), you should do so now by emailing Pulak.

Voting closes on Friday, at 6 PM! 

]]>Congratulations to the winners!http://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/18/congratulations-to-the-winners.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-18T21:10:14Z2011-09-18T21:10:14ZThanks to everyone for participating! We were incredibly impressed by the quality of the hacks presented during demos this afternoon. We will have videos and descriptions of teams posted online ASAP so we can begin the student choice award voting.

While you wait, here is a list of all winners from today:

Grand Prize ($2500, sponsored by Venmo + all-expense paid trip to present your project to engineers at Google NYC): µWave - Kevin Conley, Varun Sampath, Benjamin Shyong, Teddy Zhang, 
Second Place ($1500): Class Grapher - Alex Rattray, Greg Terrono
Third Place ($1000): PennMeet- Nathan Fraenkel, Jason Lucibello,  Boris Treskunov, Dan Zhang

Most Creative (iPad, sponsored by Color): SlamWhale - Andrew Jaeger, Dan Mundy, Devon Peticolas, Bilal Quadri
Most Creative, Honorable Mention ($250): Commit Logs from Last Night - Abe Stanway

Most Amusing app ($1000, sponsored by Comcast): KaraokeJS - Bezhou Feng, Thomas Ly, Eric O'Brien, David Wang
Top Windows Phone 7 App (Windows Phone + $250 Visa Gift Card, sponsored by Microsoft): Social+ - Jinyan Cao, Dan Trujillo, Stefan Zhelyazkov
"Doing Backend Yourself Sucks" award - top CloudMine apps (Free year of CloudMine): PennMeet; Dine 'N' Dash - Dalton Banks, Natalie Gravier, Nicholas McGill, Michael Rivera
Best Business Potential ($300, sponsored by the Interactive Media Group): Konexion - Lauren Frazier, Zachary Wasserman
Audience Choice Award, First Place ($1000, sponsored by Twilio): Beer Snob - Kyle Hardgrave, Jennie Shapira, Dave Sharples, Kevin Shen
Audience Choice Award, Second Place (Google TV, sponsored by Google): SmileTube - Eric Berdinis, Cris Feo, Jeff Kiske, Benjamin Perez
Audience Choice Award, Third Place (Google TV, sponsored by Google): PennMeet

Dude, They Totally Should Have Won a Prize (iPad, sponsored by Color): Moody - Sam Appelbaum, Ryan Gormley, Eliot Kaplan, Gary Menezes

]]>Presentation Orderhttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/18/presentation-order.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-18T17:16:03Z2011-09-18T17:16:03ZHere is the presentation order (chosen randomly). Presentations will start at 2 in Heilmeier Hall (Towne 100).

If your team is not here, let us know. If you need to go at a particular time, let us know. (Email us, pulak1@gmail.com)

  1. bckchn.nl
  2. Bored?
  3. GetMeHome
  4. Tick Talk
  5. PennMeet
  6. CrowdSource
  7. SlamWhale
  8. ClassGrapher
  9. Guilt by Association
  10. TheWikiFund
  11. μWave
  12. contxt
  13. Penn Schedule Scrambler
  14. MacroNow
  15. PicHacks
  16. Clickr
  17. Moody
  18. Beer Snob
  19. Let's Settle This
  20. BuckIt
  21. mesht
  22. Commit Logs from Last Night
  23. text20
  24. Social+
  25. SmileTube
  26. RateMySchedule
  27. TrendTV
  28. Let's Play!
  29. Super Tumblr Search
  30. Mobile Casino
  31. Prince of Thieves
  32. KaraokeJS
  33. Twalker
  34. Magic Dateball (did not present)
  35. staq.ly*
  36. PennCoursePredictor
  37. Konexin
  38. Dine 'n' Dash
  39. Penn Course Planner
  40. Let's Do Stuff
  41. Social Ranking

 

]]>Rob's Five Protips On How To CRUSH Your Hackathon Demohttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/18/robs-five-protips-on-how-to-crush-your-hackathon-demo.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-18T16:33:15Z2011-09-18T16:33:15ZDemoing your hack is the second critical part of participating in any hackathon.  Crushing your demo can make a good hack great and bombing your demo can make a great hack bad.  Rob's presentation this afternoon on "How To Crush Your Hackathon Demo" are available on his Github.  

Here's a summary:

  1. Rehearse, rehearse, REHEARSE! - You only have two minutes.  Make sure your timing is right.
  2. Capture your audience in 30 seconds - if you don't get 'em early, you don't get 'em at all.
  3.  Abandon PowerPoint - Deckware is for financial consultants and insurance salesmen.  Don't be that guy (or gal).
  4. Show, don't tell - Let your hack wow the crowd, not your initimate familiarity with 4chan memes.
  5. Fail gracefully - you wrote this software in 48 hours.  There are bugs.  Be ready to deal with them.

Demos are the meant to be the most fun part of any hackathon.  If you're having fun, the crowd will be able to tell.

]]>The Final Countdown!http://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/18/the-final-countdown.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-18T14:43:35Z2011-09-18T14:43:35ZUpdate: You will only have 2 minutes to demo (otherwise we'd be here until tomorrow...)
  1. Save & CloseCode freeze at 12pm! YOU MUST STOP CODING THEN!  
  2. If you haven't already, please register here for a slot in the demo session. 
    1. All teams need to register by 11:30am in order to present!
  3. Rob Spectre will be giving a talk at 12:00pm on how to give a good Hackathon Demo.
  4. Right afterwards, judges will be coming around to talk to you guys.
  5. ~1:00pm-ish, lunch will be served (we'll let you know when your food is here!)

Good Luck Guys!

]]>Giving & Getting Help!http://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/17/giving-getting-help.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-17T14:09:42Z2011-09-17T14:09:42ZNo one said that hackathons were easy, but let's see if we can help.

Help Thy Fellow Hacker
There are many other hackers here that are trying out platforms that you may already know.
Can you help a fellow hacker out?

Put your name and skills down here. (This will be just used by us internally to contact you.)

Get Help
Have a question about a platform, API, anything?

Come to the front desk and we'll set you up—and remember, all the api-demoers are around and are generally pretty impressive hackers in their own right. 

 

]]>A prize worth hacking forhttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/17/a-prize-worth-hacking-for.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-17T05:17:59Z2011-09-17T05:17:59ZHere is the post I'm sure many of you have been waiting for: prizes!

We will have 3 "main" prizes, that all teams meeting our eligibility guidelines (http://git.to/rules) can win:

  1. Grand Prize ($2500 + all-expense paid trip to present your project to engineers at Google NYC)
  2. Second Place ($1500)
  3. Third Place ($1000)

And our other sweet awards:

  • Audience Choice Award, sponsored by Twilio: $1000
  • "Combining more than one seemingly disparate data sets that makes life easier in the most entertaining way”, sponsored by Comcast: $1000
  • Student Choice Award, sponsored by First Round Capital: $1000
  • Telemetry Hack, sponsored by Mozilla (more details here): $1000
  • Top local team: Free tickets to Philly Startup Weekend
  • Top Windows Phone 7 Apps: Windows Phone (top app), $250 Visa Gift Card (second app) 
  • Best Business Potential, sponsored by the Interactive Media Group: $300
  • All teams using Mashery APIs: USB Drive Bottle Openers (talk to Amit)

And a to-be-announced prize of two iPads, sponsored by Color!

]]>API & Dataset Resourceshttp://2011f.pennapps.com/blog/2011/9/16/api-dataset-resources.htmlPennApps Organizers2011-09-17T01:16:38Z2011-09-17T01:16:38ZEDIT: Amazon is giving every person $50 AWS accounts (you'll need to register with your credit card now but they'll give you a code that deducts up to $50. Sign up here!)
  1. If your team hasn't registered via either of the forms, you should do so here. 
  2. Also, expect information about mentors/helpers in a blog post soon!
  3. Please also keep twitter.com/#/pennapps open for any updates that we post.
  4. A list of prizes/custom prizes is to follow as well!

Here are links to APIs presented today and other resources. This may be updated in the next couple of hours, so if you're interested in more resources, check back around this post later.

Aviary
Bump
CloudMine -- sign-up code is "cloudmine<3pennapps"
DuckDuckGo
Google
Hunch
Mashery, iodocs
MongoDB
NFC
Open Data Philly
Penn Course Review
Tumblr
Twilio, key is TWILIOLOVESPENNAPPS
Twitter
Venmo, more details

Other resources and APIs:
Factual 
Mozilla
Many other data sets 

If you have any questions at any point, just come up to the front desk and ask!
Good luck and happy hacking!

]]>