PennApps Recap

A minimalist review of UPenn’s official hackathon: PennApps

https://twitter.com/YayNickQ/statuses/435189823369121792

Today brings the close of PennApps, the University of Pennsylvania’s official hackathon. PennApps occurred just after a monstrous snowstorm wiping out power lines and dishing several feet over the Mid-Atlantic.

The event was a total success. Thousands of hackers arrived to do what they do best: Code like there is no tomorrow. 43 different companies sponsored to ensure the success of the event. Check out below for a description of finalists/winners and some other goodies.

Descriptions of finalists and winners:

Homework Help — 1st place

Homework Help is a hardware hack which can read simple math problems, and then write out the answer in your handwriting.

PipeTeX — 2nd place

PipeTeX is syntactic sugar for LaTeX. PipeTeX lets people type equations in an intuitive way, using just parentheses and slashes rather than LaTeX’s arcane functions. It also drops a lot of the boilerplate.

Googolplex — 3rd place

Googolplex lets you use integrate other apps with Siri, without jailbreaking. (Their demo involved changing the lighting on a Hue and playing a song through Spotify.) Check it out at betterthansiri.com.

Commodisense — Finalist

Commodisense fetches prices for stocks and commodities whenever you text it.

WebNES — Finalist

WebNES is a mobile web-based NES emulator built by a bunch of high schoolers. Check it out here: WebNES.

Evolve — Finalist

Evolve is a tool for Android developers which lets them deploy code without going through Google Play or asking users to download an update. Sort of like the npm module Supervisor, but for Java Android apps.

What I Cook Up — Finalist

Built by a team from Zurich, What I Cook Up lets you take a picture of a plate of ingredients, and will suggest recipes based on those ingredients.

Trump — Finalist

Trump is an iOS app that lets people play Cards Against Humanity (Apples to Apples) with pictures. Check it out at trumpyourfriends.com.

Divvly — Finalist

Divvly is an iOS app that makes splitting checks easier. It runs OCR on receipts, lets people claim their items, and then settles the check using Venmo. Check it out at divvly.com.

Pebmo — Finalist

Pebmo is a Venmo client for the Pebble smartwatch. It checks Foursquare to see which of your friends are nearby, and then lets you send them payments with Venmo.

Description of finalists/winners is an adaption from Tess’s post: http://on.ushacks.co/1gssWJu

Goodies (as promised!)