6 Open Source Apps built in under 6 hours

This Saturday Bebo kicked off a weekly series of hackathons hosted at our offices in SoMa.

Don’t miss the next hack day! Saturday, September 24

RSVP: Facebook Eventbrite

First, a quick plug of the weekly hackathons….

The 4 Bebo Hackathon Guarantees

1. You will build and awesome app quickly on Bebo’s platform. You don’t need to build out any complicated back-end thanks to Bebo’s SDK. You just need to know Javascript, HTML, and CSS to build powerful apps.
2. New developers will get a taste of success by shipping something cool. Our developers will help.
3. Unlike most other hackathons, your projects are used by everyone in attendance.
4. Your project will be available to all developers. It’s all open source. You contributed to the community. You’ve literally advanced the platform by showing up and shipping.

15 devs divided into teams and built > shipped > (some even got real users!) in under 6 hours!

1. Down To Lunch
2. Daily Bite
3. Music Lounge
4. BattleShip
5. #TechLadyBrag
6. Clicker

Down To Lunch

Made by Johnny Dallas, a 14-year-old who just started coding over the summer and interned with the Bebo team.

Have you ever used Down To Lunch? Johnny built a version that you can install into your Bebo group in a few hours. That way nobody really needs to have the app.

Aa 14 year old copied Down To Lunch in 7 hours

How does it work

• You select which activity you want to do with friends in the group.
• You’re taken to a menu where you select how far in the future the activity will happen, and a list of contacts in your group that you can select.
• Users receive a notification when they’re invited with information about the activity they’re invited to and when it’s happening.

SDK Components used

• Notifications — sent out to users when activities are scheduled
• Get roster and Get User — to provide a list of users to invite to activities.
• Database — to synchronize events across users on the server.

Daily Bite — *winner*

Made by Daniel Rasmuson and Neil Dwyer

This app captures the entire point of sharing content on the web: witnessing the reaction of a friend as you share. Upon opening this app, every user laughed and immediately spent the next 10 minutes wasting whatever time they previously considered valuable. No wonder it won!

This belongs at the top of the app store charts

How does it work?

• Users are presented with hilarious content via the imgur random API. Thanks imgur!
• Pressing the arrow button brings up another random GIF or image from the popular hosting service.
• All of the users in the room see different content while they browse. If a user sees something they like, they press the share button to take over everyone else’s screen with that image.
• An audio channel is open for all of the users, so you can talk and hear people react as you share images. This is feels like magic.

SDK Components used

• Audio and events were one line of code each in Bebo SDK

Music Lounge — 2nd place

Jesse Smick and Jonas Daniels

This was easily one of the most creative and polished apps made at the hackathon.

Finally, a social DJ app

How does it work

• Users join the Music Lounge and will immediately start to hear the current song playing.
• You press the orange plus button to pull up a search view for Soundcloud, where you can then add any song available you can find.
• Once a song gets added, users may vote on which song gets played next.

SDK Components used

• Easy storing of data using the Database
• Easy sending of notifications
• Easy emitting & subscribing to network events to update votes & new tracks in real time

Battleship

Built by Jake Loo and Furqan Rydhan

This is a new take on a classic game.

Those graphics tho

How does it work

• 2 players enter the game Battleship, both are on the same server.
• Players take turns dropping bombs onto a field of empty water since the ships are hidden.
• The team added a bunch of secret power-ups (like moving your ships) in the game to keep players on their toes.

SDK Components used

• Easy storing of data using the database.
• Easy sending of notifications.

Blast

Made by Josh Lankford and Shaan Puri, who is learning to code to demonstrate that anyone can build on Bebo.

Blasis the easiest way to send out a mass SMS. Anyone can build up a subscriber list to their server and send out SMS updates, even if users don’t have Bebo installed.

the easiest way to mass text a group

How does it work

• Users subscribe to the Blast app by texting an access code to a phone number. This subscribes the phone to the Blast app in a Bebo server.
• Once users have subscribed, a user may type a message in the Blast field.
• Upon clicking send every user with receive an SMS of the message.
• Users have the option to unsubscribe by replying “STOP”

What technologies went into Blast?

• Twilio
• AWS Lambda
• DynamoDB

#TechLadyBrag community + Brag

Built by Danielle Patton, Tyler Hayes and Jason Hitchcock

Danielle not only made her app, but she also wrote a kickass blog post: “I attended my first Hackathon and built something for Women in Tech.” It got picked up by Code Like a Girl too!

Danielle built her first app with a community in mind: #LadyBrags. This is a hashtag women use on Twitter and Facebook to brag about accomplishments (large and small) a show support for each other.

Danielle created an app that makes it easy to post and share brags out onto social media, and also created her own server for the brand new #TechLadyBrag community.

Left: The community. Right: The app Danielle made

How does it work

• Users join the #TechLadyBrag server using the access code: kb02vw
• Users click Brag when they have something to brag about.
• Post a brag for the community.
• Upvote brags to show your support.
• Click Share to post directly to facebook along with link to join the #techladybrag community.

SDK Components used

• User management:

1. The app manages user auth
2. let users post as themselves, as a user
3. get a list of users who’ve posted, upvoted brags
4. track which users have seen which brags
5. track which users have upvoted brags

• Notifications — every time a brag was posted, users were notified.
• Database — saved and synchronized the app across all of the users.
• Camera — the app accesses the camera so users can upload photos as brags.

Clicker

Made by Adam Hitchcock.

A simple yet addicting app inspired by the Cookie Clicker genre of apps.

“how johnny managed to outscore himself, we’ll never know…”

How does it work

• Click the button “Click Me” to increase your count by one (1).
• As your number goes up, eventually you pass other user’s counts and your name goes above theirs. The users on top have larger fonts.
• When you pass a user, a notification is sent to that user talking smack to them, encouraging them to get back in and click more.

SDK Components used

• User management:

1. The app manages user auth
2. let users submit clicks as themselves
3. get a list of users who’ve clicked

• Notifications — sent out to users as there scores are beaten.
• Database — synchronized the app across all of the users.

Those apps were all made in less than 7 hours, including brainstorming and pizza breaks.

Are you like us and enjoy building side projects on the weekend?

Do you have ideas that need to get out of your head and into your hands?

Do you like hanging out with other makers?

Join us on Saturdays at the Bebo offices.

We’ll be there making cool stuff with people like you.

Don’t miss the next hack day! Saturday, September 24

RSVP: Facebook Eventbrite

Our F***ing incredible offices are open every saturday