HackTO mad props!
HackTO2 wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of our lovely sponsors, API providers and judges.
We’d like to take this opportunity to extend a huge thank you to all of the peeps who made this event such a success!
Sponsors
These fine folks (please excuse the self-promotion) helped pay for prizes, snacks and beer. Yesssss!
And these fine folks provided all the pizza we could eat at lunch!
API Providers
Much of the fun of HackTO depends on the APIs available for us to use. Big thanks to the following teams for providing access to their APIs as well as awesome and much-appreciated API expertise on site!
PixMatch (Idée and data from Internet Archive)
YellowAPI (Yellow Pages Group)
Judges
And of course let us not forget our wonderful judges! Their experience in technology and outstanding achievement in the field of excellence made them a natural choice to judge our apps. Not to mention their unshakeable resistance to bribes.
And of course a final thank you to all of the talented developers, coders, hackers and geek enthusiasts who came out to HackTO2. We laughed, we cried, and we made some awesome apps in a ridiculously short amount of time.
Thank you to all, and if you are interested in joining us for the next HackTO please sign up for our newsletter on hackto.ca.
Planning your app? Here's some updated API info.
Hackers, here is all the API info you should need to prepare yourselves for Saturday. Make sure to say hi to your API reps!
Cadmus (Anomaly Innovations)
DESCRIPTION
Cadmus is a real-time service that manages your Twitter, FriendFeed and RSS streams. The API lets you sort your Twitter timeline by relevance. You can also see the entire conversation around a tweet, and any related tweets that have been made by your friends. Find top conversations from within your Twitter lists, and see trending topics specifically for lists and friends.
REP: Michael Liao
tech enthusiast, developer, athlete, sports fan, trying to leave my mark on the world…
DESCRIPTION
Freebase is an open, Creative Commons licensed repository of structured data containing information about 12 million real-world entities including people, places, films, books, events, business, and more. Use the API to access a graph database of about 400 million facts and connections between entities. Google just acquired Freebase so if you are not familiar with Freebase, this is your chance to become familiar before you start seeing this data goodness in your Google search results!
REP: Shawn Simister
Shawn Simister is a programmer, entrepreneur and open data enthusiast from Ottawa. He has been a member of the Freebase community since it began in 2007 and is part of the experts group which helps maintain the community. Shawn also runs his own consulting practice which provides web development expertise to local startups.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks supplies online billing services, allowing freelancers and small businesses manage their cashflow and get paid faster. The FreshBooks API allows 3rd party developers to expand and build on the FreshBooks platform. Access FreshBooks account data using HTTP and XML to create web and desktop applications that integrate with a FreshBooks account.
REP: Corey Reid
Corey writes about software development management, swordfighting and games on his website, and at FreshBooks, is expanding the hotshot development team to meet the challenges of the company’s rapid growth. He has pretty crazy ideas on what makes a great software team, mostly involving “Making Sure Developers Are Insanely Happy”.
fxTrade (OANDA)
fxTrade is an online currency trading platform that allows everyone to participate directly in the forex (foreign exchange) market. The fxTrade API lets you create trading robots that monitor the market and buy and sell currencies at high speed. In this multi-trillion dollar market microseconds count and only the smartest algorithms come out on top. This same API has been used at OANDA to create our iPhone, iPad and Android apps.
DOCUMENTATION (username: hackto password: tohack)
REP: Paul Robinson
Paul Robinson and his team are the architects behind the API. Paul is the team lead responsible for the Transaction System Development as well as the Mobile Development at OANDA. They are the creators of hte iPhone, Android and iPad versions of the trading platform.
PixMatch (Idée and data from Internet Archive)
PixMatch is an image matching engine that allows you to perform large scale image comparisons. Identify exact image matches and modifications of a query image. For HackTO, the PixMatch API will be providing access to the Internet Archive’s Open Library collection of book covers. Or if you prefer, you can use a “blank” version of PixMatch which allows you to use your own provided image database.
DOCUMENTATION
- PixMatch with OpenLibrary (available the day-of)
- PixMatch blank, regular (available the day-of)
- PixMatch blank, mobile (available the day-of)
IMPLEMENTATION EXAMPLES
REP: Martine Vong
Programmer by day, gamer by night
YellowAPI (Yellow Pages Group)
Yellow Pages Group is Canada’s largest directory publisher. The API provides access to a large database of Canadian business content and allows direct streaming of local search content including video, photos, ad thumbs and more. Get geo-localized listings for map overlays and proximity search.
REP: Daniel Nephin
Daniel Nephin is a software developer for Yellow Pages Group.
Prizes for HackTO2
Why compete at HackTO?
Sure, you could do it for the sense of personal accomplishment. You could do it for the socializing and camaraderie. You could even do it for the food.
But you know you want to do it for the GLORY and the PRIZES!
To the winners go the following spoils:
1st place: Android phone
Depending on your carrier or preference:
- Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant
- HTC Desire
- Another available Android phone of your choice
2nd place: Kindle 3G
The smaller, lighter, faster one with:
- Free 3G (!)
- Built-in Wi-fi
- Storage for 3,500 books
3rd place: Amazon gift certificate for $100
Buy your heart’s desire.
Honorable mentions: Crumpler gear
- Something neat from Crumpler
Curious about the criteria for judging? The judges will be looking for:
- Utilization of the API functionality (it doesn’t matter how many APIs you use)
- Usefullness of the application (for its intended purpose and audience)
- Creativity and ingenuity
- General effort involved
So keep those ideas flowing, and here’s to winning big!
Photo by Mick Roche
HackTO declared great success!
On Saturday, Toronto’s finest hackers and developers gathered at the ideeplex in Toronto for some serious geekery at the first ever HackTO hack-a-thon.
Being social... or being too busy to be social!
The challenge? Build a sexy web application using any combination of open APIs made available by our fantastic sponsors: Canpages, Freshbooks, Idee, OPENapps and PostRank. Oh, and build it in UNDER FOUR HOURS.
The reward? Besides total geek-cred, the top three applications received either an iPad, a $500 gift certificate for the Apple store or a $250 gift certificate for Amazon. All applications developed remained property of their creators, of course… this event was for people-meeting and stuff-strutting!
As part of the HackTO schedule we decided to introduce an unconference component: developers put their application ideas up on a white board and specified if they were looking for a team member to work with, or if they were going “rogue” independently. We ended up with a pretty good combination of rogue developers and teams. A total of 13 applications were outlined on the board by 10:30, which was our coding start time.
Yours truly thinking of more illustrative doodles for the whiteboard
Off to the races. Competition was stiff, coffee was flowing, laptops were clacking, and some creative work spaces began to sprout up…
Of course somewhere along the way we needed to break for food, although it was hard to tear some hackers away from their laptops just when they’d hit a groove! But two, three, or TEN slices of pizza later it was back to business.
Yummy pie from Pizzaiolo...
...some of us liked it more than others!
Shortly after lunch, it was serious CRUNCH TIME. The only sounds to be heard were furious fingers flailing on keyboards, the clinking of coffee spoons, the crunching of carbs, and the occasional %#$@! For some, helmets were required gear for getting down to the nitty gritty.
Buckle up, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Several pints of blood, sweet and tears later, finishing touches were made and laptops were closed. Each team presented their awesome application to the crowd, and to our wonderful panel of judges whom we would like to thank from the bottom of our collective geeky hearts: Jonas Brandon, April Dunford and Joe Stump. Thanks, dudes!
There were so many great apps, it was hard to choose the winners. But without further ado, here is what the judges selected:
Honourable mention (for lolz)
Million-Dollar Microsite-Maker by Nick Hoffman and Andrew Louis
Pick a topic and a city in Canada (e.g. dating in Toronto), then fill out a form to instantly assemble a web site complete with content, local business listings and advertising. Uses the CanPages API.
Get rich quick!
Honourable mention (app by a sponsoring team)
Soleil by Mark Bloore and Martine Vong
Submit an image, and Soleil breaks it down into a grid of colour, then replaces each colour in the grid with a similarly-coloured image to create a mosaic version of the original image. Uses Idee’s Piximilar API.
Submitted image
Result mosaic image!
Runner up
Image Statter by Rida Al Barazi
Grab a set or feed of images, identify those images that come from the highest-ranking source (e.g. sources with many incoming/outgoing links or flagged as interesting), and extract the image colours to create colour templates. Get a pie-chart breakdown of how each colour is used proportionally within the image. Uses the PostRank and Piximilar APIs.
Third place (winner of the $250 Amazon gift certificate)
Submit any web site address with an RSS feed, or provide your Google Reader feeds to receive a list of suggested feeds based on your interests. Uses the PostRank API.
Hungry for new feeds?
Second place (winner of the $500 Apple store certificate)
Photosimilar by James Hatheway and Libin Pan
Take a photo with your iPhone or select a photo from your iPhone’s image gallery, and find visually similar images on the web (e.g. images with the same look, feel, colours, etc.). Uses the Piximilar API.
First place (winner of a 32GB iPad)
what the colour?! by Mo Jangda
Submit a colour palette from colourlovers.com and retreive images that contain either all of the colours in that palette, or images matching individual colours in the palette. Click on your result images to find even more palette-inspired images. Uses the Piximilar API with colourlovers.com.
Who doesn't love colour?!
Congratulations to the winners, and a huge round of applause to everyone who participated in this very first hack-a-thon. It’s amazing what can be accomplished with great minds and a tight deadline!
It was great to meet you all, and we hope you had fun. If you are looking to connect with anyone that you met at HackTO, don’t forget that the names, faces and Twitter accounts of everyone at the event are available right here.
We are already excited about planning the next event, so we’ll see you again soon… keep hacking!
P.S. PostRank: here’s some love for you courtesy of Soleil!
Video goodness by OPENapps
The first in a series of videos courtesy of Joseph Puopolo at OPENapps. Be sure to check out some great interviews with some of the peeps of HackTO!
All quiet on the western front
Crunch time! You can almost hear a pin drop as everyone hunkers down for some serious coding and coffee.
Meet your fellow hackers!
O hai. It’s been great to see all of your wonderful faces here at HackTO, and thanks for enduring my headshot shenanigans!
And now: here are the names, faces, Twitter accounts and list of fears for each of your hacking comrades.
Engage.
Paul Myers
Logan Aube
Joseph Puopolo
Kelvin Kang
Taylan Pince
Libin Pan
James Hatheway
Andrew Baldwin
Dan Sinclair
Rida Al Barazi
“Krispy” Kristan Uccello
Haifeng Cao
Ilya Grigorik
Jonas Brandon
Matt Okura
Martine Vong
Mark Bloore
Andrew Louis
Nick Hoffman
Gabriel Mansour
Alex Hockey-Sweeney
John Grant
Corey Reid
Johnny Tong
Anita Kuno
AJ Mooney
Mo Jangda
Paul Bloore
Susahosh Rahman
Melina Stathopoulos
Shey Sewani
Ben Coe
Leila Boujnane
April Dunford
New location for HackTO… and prizes!
Phew, we have had a couple of venue changes over the last few days but we have finally settled on a location for tomorrow (this is location hacking!). HackTO 2010 will take place at the ideeplex at 223 Queen Street East.
And now for the most exciting part: Prizes!
First place API
- A lovely, shiny 32GB iPad (Or its cash equivalent if you are hacking as a team. Unless you are REALLY good at sharing!)
Second place API
- A $500 Apple store gift card
Third place API
- A $250 Amazon gift card
Remember to join us at the ideeplex tonight from 6-9pm for some pre-show brain-juice and API conspiring.
See you soon!
Drink and be merry at the ideeplex
Hello hackers and developers!
We are looking forward to welcoming you on Saturday May 15 at the ideeplex, but before that: let’s get together and have a couple of cold ones on us! Join us on Friday May 14 (also at the ideeplex) to meet other hackers and developers.
Your HackTO registration gets you into the ideeplex. Bring your ideas and cheery, social self. Make friends, because come Saturday you will need them to build your killer application!
Just a quick note: We love you all, but please come only if you are planning to attend HackTO the next day. If you have any questions please contact us. Kthnxbai!
When: Friday May 14, 2010
Time: 18:00 to 21:00
Where: Idee | 223 Queen Street East
HackTO schedule and pack list
I am sure you are as excited as we are about HackTO! We are looking forward to meeting you all and working on some awesome applications this weekend.
Below is our schedule and a list of things you will need to bring… as well as a list of things we will provide for you, our dear hackers!
For you Twitter peeps, the hashtag for this event is: #HackTO
Schedule:
9:00 – Breakfast and introductions
9:30 – API presentation: Freshbooks, PostRank, Idee, CanPages, OpenApps
Each API company will present their API. We allocated 5 minutes for each presenter
10:15 – Open Planning
We will provide the stickie notes and the whiteboard and you will put up a brief description of the application you are interested in building. People can choose to join your team or you can choose to build the app on your own
10:30 – Hacking setup and start
Noon – Lunch
1:00 – Hacking
5:00 – Application presentation – 5 minutes for each presenter!
5:30 – Judging and prizes
6:00 – Off to nearby pub for celebrations!
What you need to bring:
- your laptop
- your mobile device if you are developing a mobile app
- cables for any of the above
-anything you need for hacking (lucky tshirt, power tunes, Batman utility belt, etc.)
What we will provide:
- breakfast
- lunch
- drinks
- snacks
- development support and API assistance
-wireless internet
- smiles
- prizes for best applications developed