London Hackers Bring Home the Gold at API Hackday

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Posted on August 6, 2012 by Tim Falls

Mashery, Pusher, SendGrid & Twilio devangelists wow the crowd with their API demos

As Adria forecasted in a post last week, the API Hackday crew brought our hackety fun to the UK for the first time…and the London developer community did not disappoint!

A large group of excited hackers showed up bright and early on Saturday morning, ready for a full day of mashing APIs. It was an incredibly talented group of DOers, and the fruits of their labors were quite impressive. You can see a [mostly] complete list of the apps that were demoed on the HackerLeague page for the event, but a few projects came down to the wire and didn’t have time to submit to the official site. So here’s a list, with links to their specific HackerLeague project page and a brief description:

• Rotten Toms – mess with your friends ,by throwing tomatoes onto their screen while they’re reviewing movies within the app
• txtnonymous - a gateway for anonymous text messaging
• Folks Video Player – create Youtube video playlists, by simply sending an email with your desired search keywords in the subject line – powered by the SendGrid Parse API
• LannyApp - peer to peer cashless tipping, via GoCardless
• TextMeIn – event-based group texting app with achievements and point scores
• Pusher2Talk - recreating the fun of Walkie Talkies in a browser
• Twilio Pusher Pong - the classic game of pong, remade using the telephone
• aGifts - like buying gifts, but don’t know what to buy? let a game of Arkanoid make a choice for you!
• API roulette - uses Pusher and Twilio to place bets on a roulette table in real time
• Where in the World are Carmen San Diegos? – multiplayer, in-browser spycatching game
• Project Barhop - index of local foods, drinks and specials for college students
• Missed Alerts - use your mobile to transmit critical info quickly, through the magic of a missed call
• Compassion.app - uses multiple Mashery APIs to promote understanding of the plight of children in need around the world
• Good Mornings - single, with no one to greet you when you wake up? allow your  Facebook friends to say “Good Morning” to you!
• Battle Blocks – play a friendly game of BattleShip in your browser…kablooom!
• ChattR – social streaming of Twitter on your mobile device – trending topics, sports, television and more
• Drinks on Who? – determine who’s going to buy the next round at the pub, based on the lowest Klout score among your group of friends

That’s a whopping 17 hacks! And they were built in just ~8 hours, among a group of ~70 developers, designers and all-around brilliant brains.

And the winners were…

Pusher Prize: Pusher Pong

Mashery Prize: Compassion.app

SendGrid Prize: Missed Alerts (with a consolation prize going to Drinks on Who?)

Twilio Prize: Pusher2Talk

Grand Prizes (we couldn’t choose just one!): API Roulette & LannyApp

We all had an amazing time. This was clearly one of the finest hackdays I’ve attended, with mind-blowing level of quality in the work that was accomplished in such a short period of time. To be sure, this will *not* be the last API Hackday in London – so stay tuned and keep in touch!

Also, check out some of the photos from the action – if you find yourself, feel free to add a tag!

A special thanks goes out to our friends at General Assembly for hosting and providing the space, and to the London tech community for welcoming us into this fine city, even amongst the chaos of the 2012 Olympics!

Tags: API Hackday, api hackday london, APIs, London, London 2012, Mashery, Olympics 2012, sendgrid, twilio

Author: Tim Falls

Community Guy @SendGrid and Producer @BoulderBeta. Passionate about bringing people together around things they love. Leads the SendGrid Developer Relations team in their effort to help developers around the world do more with email.

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