PennApps

It’s the quirky stuff that makes hackathons really special. PennApps 2013 Spring featured a photobooth, sponsored by Github.

You can check out some of the photos submitted by hackers on our Facebook page.

Alex and Kyle are having a pee problem. 

“Dude,” Kyle says. “It is impossible to see this.” He squints at the screen, which is displaying a feed of images from a webcam hooked up above a yellow toilet. The toilet is sitting next to the desk.

“I really think we need the green toilet,” Alex says.

“Okay,” Kyle agrees. “Let’s use the green toilet.” 

Thankfully, the liquid that Alex is spraying into their hack isn’t actually pee. It’s just water and yellow dye. But they keep calling it pee anyways, and it’s throwing me for a loop.

In fact, their whole project is throwing me for a loop—I don’t know what’s going on, and the two of them are so excited about it that I can’t get them to explain it to me for more than 20 seconds at a time. 

Finally, Kyle takes a moment away from the visibility problem—their webcam isn’t identifying the “pee” as it streams into the toilet—and explains: “We want people to recognize the musical potential of their pee.“ 

Then he adds, “We’re not sure what that means yet.” It might be a urine-controlled MP3 player—aim left to go to the next song. Or it might behave like a steel drum, where the user can, uh, shoot different places to play different notes.

They don’t know yet. But they do know is that they need to use the green toilet—and that’s progress.

TL;DR

The Team: Kyle Hardgrave (Penn) and Alex Rattray (Penn) 
The Hack: Musical Toilet
The Stack: Linux, Python, SimpleCV (Python computer vision library), SoundCloud, Webcam, Toilet

Post by @temiri

I’m talking to Isaac Sukin, a member of the Dorm Room Fund’s investment team, about the ducks. 

These are not your average rubber ducks. These ducks are messengers—hackers at PennApps can use them to send each other superlatives. 

The ducks were Isaac’s idea.

“Our main goal was to raise awareness [of the Dorm Room Fund],” he says. First Round Capital started the Dorm Room Fund, which is managed by students, to help student entrepreneurs raise seed funding. PennApps is a natural way for them to reach out to the community.

 

But why ducks?

“We wanted to do something get people excited and talking and having fun,” Isaac explains. “We had a bunch of ideas, like a site that hackers could use to send each other hugs, and also a site for ‘PennApps Dares’—escalating, crowd-sourced challenges.” 

That sounds crazy. And also potentially dangerous. Hackers are hackers.

“We decided to do the ducks,” Isaac continues, “because we thought that it was something that a lot of people would enjoy.” 

I ask Isaac if he’s seen any really good superlatives yet, but he won’t say. “We’re announcing the best ones at the end. The best ones will get giant inflatable ducks.” 

Post by @temiri

As soon as Team Merge started describing their solution to a common problem, a hacker from the next table over interjected. 

“It’s like the worst problem in the history of the world, ever,” he said, smiling. He was mostly joking, but he had a point—Max, one of the hackers from Merge, was describing a problem that almost every college student can relate to.

“When I want to get people together for dinner, I’m always texting the same group of people: ‘Hey, are you free in an hour?’” Merge is an iOS app for short-term event planning, meant to make impromptu dinner or coffee that much easier. (The name “Merge” is a reference to merging in version control— in a sense, you’re merging schedules on the fly.)

 

“We just wanted to make something that we’d actually use,” Max said, adding that they didn’t use any sponsor API’s because, “We didn’t have a good way to shoehorn one in. Our last hack, Electioneering, used some API’s and was super cool, but it wasn’t something that we’d really use in our day-to-day lives.

“This is something that we’d actually use.”

TL;DR

The Team: Ashu Goel (Penn), Jeff Grimes (Penn), Teddy Guenin (Penn), Max Scheiber (Penn)
The Hack: Merge, an iOS app for short-term event planning
The Stack: iOS, Flask 

Post by @temiri

One of the most popular PennApps foods is rapidly becoming a tradition. Popsicles first appeared during a warmer weather PennApps, but even in January, gourmet popsicles can get even the most serious hackers to step away from their screens. 

We had some amazing flavors this year: Spiced Apple Cider, Vietnamese Iced Coffee, and Mango-something-or-another.

Post by @temiri. Photos by @quietlykrazy.

“Stumbler? Is that with an ‘e?’” I ask. 

“No,” Sam clarifies. “It’s like ‘Tumblr.’ It’s actually like StumbleUpon, but with Tumblr content.”

The inspiration, Sam says, struck when he was talking to a friend who really likes both StumbleUpon and Tumblr. When that friend started wishing for a mashup of the two, Sam knew he had a hackathon project: “I was like, ‘Hey, we can build that!’” 

PennApps presented the team with a great set of API’s for them to use: Tumblr, obviously, but also MongoDB and Facebook login (to preserve users’ preferences and voting history). They’re also thinking of adding Dropbox integration, so that users can save posts they really like in a permanent and accessible way. 

TL;DR

The Team: Sam Agnew (Rutgers), Ruell Brown (Rutgers), Jesse Huang (Rutgers) 
The Hack: Stumblr, StumbleUpon for Tumblr content
The Stack: JS, Flask (Python), MongoDB, tumblr API

Post by @temiri

“It’s a graph theory graph thing!” Sri says. 

“No,” Adam says. “It’s a draggy javascript canvas editable svg graph visualization doohickey for mackey idolizers.” (This, I learn, is what they’ve written for their github repo.)

I’m still confused, so Sri explains. “When we do stuff with graph theory,” he says, “we want to visualize stuff. But right now there aren’t any good tools that let you play with your graphs.” 

Their hack, Hamilton, aims to change that. (When I ask why it’s called “Hamilton,” they chuckle. “Like Hamiltonian cycles. We’re really clever.”) Hamilton will be a web interface that lets people upload a graph from a file. Users will then be able to manipulate a visualization of the graph, and download it again—or perhaps share it. “We’re thinking it might be like JSFiddle, where you can post it and share it,” says Sri. 

I ask if they’re using any API’s. “Not yet,” someone says. “But we’re thinking of using Filepicker.io or Dropbox for file handling.” 

As someone who’s been struggling with a tricky graph problem all week, I can’t wait to see—and use—their final product.

TL;DR 

The Team: Sri Raghavan (CMU), Vincent Siao (CMU), Adam Weis (CMU), Dan Yang (CMU)
The Hack: Hamilton, “a graph theory graph thing”
The Stack: Heroku, Python, JS, Canvas

Post by @temiri

“I’ve heard a lot about your ears,” I say. This is true. I have heard a lot about the ears—but I wanted to hear it from Song himself. 

Song Zheng is a dev evangelist for Tokbox, and he got everyone at PennApps talking when he went on stage with four ears: his own, and another pair on top of his head. This wouldn’t be so unusual, but these ears move. On their own. And he doesn’t mention them during his demo—his gives his API demo wearing robotic ears, and doesn’t say anything about them. 

Of course, rumors fly. 

So when I ran into him in the hallway of the Towne Building, I’m eager hear the scoop from him. 

So I tell Song that I’ve heard so much about his ears, and he says, “Like what?”

“Like you can control them with your mind,” I say. 

“Oh yes,” he says. 

“How?”

“There are sensors here, here and here.” He points to his forehead and behind his ear. “So it picks up all the brainwaves.” He flutters his hands around his head, and his ears flicker back and forth. 

Wow. “Do you mind if I take a picture?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says, posing. The ears pose too.

Post by @temiri 

“We’re building a RCPRS,” one of the hackers said. 

“A what?” I ask.

“Oh, you know. An RCPRS. A realtime, collaborative playlist request system.” 

Oh, of course. 

“So say you’re having a party,” someone explained. “You can then give everyone a link, and they can go to that link and submit playlist requests and vote on them.” 

Sounds pretty cool, and useful. I’d use that at a party (or a hackathon). I ask about the API’s they’re using.

“We’re using SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube for the music, and we might use Dropbox. Oh, and we’re using mongoDB. And Socket.io.”

What’s Socket.io?

“It’s a wrapper for web sockets, which lets the client and the server communicate in real time.”  Web sockets work a bit like AJAX, they explain, but instead of making a full HTTP request you can use sockets, which are much more lightweight. Socket.io will let the voting on the RCPRS work quickly and smoothly.

 

TL;DR 

The Team: Andrew Braunstein (Penn), Adi Dahiya (Penn), Rafe Kettler (Penn), Ankit Shah (Penn)
The Hack: A remote-controlled playlist request system. (Not the final name.)
The Stack: mongoDB, node.js, socket.io, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube

Post by @temiri 

The Dining Philosophers is organizing a week full of tech talks in preparation for PennApps. Whether you are a beginner or more advanced, and even if you’re not participating in PennApps, everyone is invited to come have fun and learn something new. We’ve listed “pre-reqs” to help you gauge the difficulty level.

Read More