Hackathon.in

A no-frills geek meet, an effort from Better Labs, a tiny geeky company in Pune.

Pune Rails Hackathon: July 29-30, 2006!

---

Blogs discussing about the punehackathon experience

Akshay Surve » Hackathon

LIVE from Pune Rails Hackathon: Stay tuned!

We are live at the Hackathon with 10 teams working on some cool Rails projects. Stay tuned.

Winners

I requested Shashank Date to review and choose the first three winners. It was a very tough decision but here's what we came up with. **Please note that the decision was based on how well the application was completed as well as the amount of time the person had worked with Rails - which ranged from 6 months to 32 hours!

Gold Hacker: Pratik Naik for DalalsTreat

Silver Hacker: Akshay Surve for Mars ( < screenshots here)

Bronze Hacker: *shared* between Vishwanath/Jatinder of expens-o-meter AND Swanand/Harish of iPolls

PuneRuby & SFBL prize money will be sent to the winners in the coming week.

Better Labs decided to change its award plan - its Rs.10,0001 for the coolest Rails application will now be shared amongst all the 9 teams with Rs.1000 each with the last Rs.1001 going to Pratik Naik for a superb hack. The very simple reason was the fact that everyone just did a stellar job and hacked through the weekend and really made the first Hackathon a huge success. It couldn't have been better.

Showtime

We started looking at the demo's at 4PM and the session went on upto almost 7PM. It was awesome as we discussed the ideas, understood the inspiration of the participants and explored the next steps. Here are some glimpses:

Name hacking: Sunday 2:30PM

I am helping tweak the UIs for the team and at the same time trying to come up with some relevant names for some of the web services being worked on. just about less than 2 hours to go :)

Sunday 9:23AM

A very good morning from the Hackathon. A woke up to see a lot of progress made overnight and almost all the hacks are coming together well. The UIs are being tweaked and everyone is pushing towards the 4PM deadline to wrap things up. We are going to use Swanand and Harish's iPolls web service to vote on the best hacks :). Stay tuned.

See those overnight eyes?

Sunday 12:59AM

I am calling it a day in a few minutes but Pratik, Gaurav, Geetesh, Akshay, Jatinder, Vishwanath are coding through the night. Thats the spirit guys! I am looking forward to waking up to some cool stuff ready to start reviewing.

See what's hacking:

QuickLib: a Rails-based library application for companies, small libraries and others with a collection that is being rented out

Deepak & Sudhanshu

Expens-o-meter: an expense tracking service in Rails

Vishwanath & Jatinder

Mars: The Red Planet (A Planet using RoR)

Akshay Surve

infotantra: A help service for Pune

Gaurav & Geetesh

iPolls: a poll creation web service

Swanand & Harish

iManage: the fastest ajax todo and reminder service

Nilesh & Surya

getEmail: a sales web service for sales professionals to quickly find out email formats for the target prospects

Sheetal & Raghu

iResume: the simplest way to publish your resume online

Ajay, Sandeep & Arun

Dalal's Treat: fantasy stock trading

Pratik

Hacker Looks

|

|

|

Pune Rails Hackathon: July 29-30, 2006!

Hackathon.in is a no-frills geek meet. Pune Rails Hackathon is the a Rails development weekend where passionate Ruby/Rails programmers can get together and build some cool web services and applications on Ruby/Rails, creating the early prototypes. The idea is really to foster a gathering of like minded Ruby & Rails ethusiasts (whether you are an expert or just a starter, it should not matter) to come together and build something cool. Since this is the first hackathon of this sort in Pune (everyone from all over India is very much welcome), we will have mentors who will suggest a range of small footprint web applications or web services that can be built within the 2 day period. Suggestions & ideas for web services and applications will be added to this wiki over the next few days so you can choose what you might be interested in. Ofcourse, you can build whatever you like. The venue (Better Labs office) will be open all day and night so you can plan your work accordingly. Please email any thoughts and ideas to vaibhav at betterlabs.net. Please see suggested applications below and add more. This event is FREE.

• People from outside Pune can participate as well. Stay tuned for a section on this in terms of logistics/plan etc.
• This is a simple event for programmers to come together and create alpha version of simple applications in Rails
• Amatuers as well as experts in Ruby/Rails are welcome
• This is not a competition but a collective effort to build interesting things with small 1-3 person teams
• Mentors will help you along the way
• There will be design help to help you with your HTML screens a bit
• You will learn from others and from post event discussions of the applications

About Better Labs

Someone recommeded that we add a small bit here about Better Labs, so everyone can have a perspective. We are a bootstrapped startup based in Pune, with a laser focus on developing a new generation of consumer web services and small footprint business web applications. We adore open source software and develop primarily using Ruby On Rails and LAMP. We obsess about user experience and keep our web services focused on specifc pain points - trying not to address too many problems with a single solution. Thats us in a nutshell. Here's some early web services that we have deployed so far:

dealplumber , dealplumber blog 

indiagoes (upcoming update) . Password: barcamphyd

indiamarks 

indiavents 

Password to edit wiki is ihack. Please be responsible while editing and ensure the formating to keep it readable. Vaibhav, Satish & Dibya are primarily updating the agenda and so on.

Coordinators

• Vaibhav Domkundwar, vaibhav at betterlabs.net
• Dibya Prakash, prakashdibya at yahoo.com
• Pratik Naik, pratik at betterlabs.net
• Satish Mishra, satish at betterlabs.net

Venue & Date/Tme

Better Labs 

14 Trade Field,

Opposite Sony World Showroon

Sanghavi Nagar, Aundh

Pune 411007

India

July 29-30, 2006

START: 9:30AM at the above venue, kickoff at 10:30AM

All day and night

Presentations will start Sunday afternoon

Suggested Prototype Applications

(These are just suggestions. You can create any application that you may want)

1. Dynamic Page Caching: On the fly load any page from any server (e.g. www.yahoo.com) onto your own server as a cached page. On the cached page, separate the page into 2 frames. One frame should identical look as original page with all links disable were present on the original. The other frame would have 1 edit text box and 1 image place holder. Clicking on any text or image in the first frame should copy the block of text or image into the edit box or image placeholder. Don't worry about formatting.
2. Import Contacts Module: Build a web based interface to import contacts from Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger. Sample Flow Step 1: Select sources user wishes to import from Step 2: If required, request credentials from the source the user has selected Step 3: Extract all contacts from these sources. Information to be extracted is Email First Name, Last Name if available, Phone Number if available, Address if available, Picture if available Step 4: Display email and first name/last name. Upto 100 contacts on page. Also allow users to filter by ‘substring’ on email or name Step 5: Allow user to select 1 to many contacts
3. iAlert: This is a simple Rails application where users can create an account and add alerts for themselves in a simple 1-screen format and an email alert is sent to them at the date and time. You can add a mobile alert as well, if time permit.
4. iDo: This is a simple to-do application. There are hundreds of to-do applications but none that can be as simple as a Notepad (when used to track simple to -do tasks). This application can be as simple as notepad wherein a user can create an account, and start addding tasks on a single page and should be able to delete, edit and strike-through them. You can also add re-order functionality, if time permits.
5. iDentity: This is like a simple online resume page where user should be able to create an account and create a resume page with photo, name, address, work experience, educational experience and bring in his feeds from flickr, blogs, news and so on.
6. iRecipe: Create a open recipe sharing service. Users login and add a recipe and tag it. All recipes are shared amongst all users. Anyone can browse by tags or search to find a recipe. If you can add a rating to the recipes, that will be nice.
7. iPoll: A basic poll creation app. Users can signup, login and create a poll and track results. Other users should be able to search polls and vote on the polls they are interested in.
8. MovieTicker:A simple application which will show ticket availability on the basis of search parameters for a show in a movie theatre.
9. eXam: An application to create Multiple-Choice exam. Other users should be able to appear for an exam. A high-score per exam should be maintained.
10. RXE: An application that stores and displays Foreign Exchange Rates. Allows the administrator to edit these rates. Displays these to other users and allows them to calculate exchange amount from one currency into another.
11. Ticketer An application that finds the lowest fare from Mumbai to Delhi from different airlines websites.
12. Pune Help Desk(InfoTantra) A simple application where people will use as well as maintain information about pune city ..eg: bloodbank,famous shops, restaurants, etc.This will behave like wiki where in people are responsible for maintaining info.They can put queries also where in people can reply to his queries.People can search through the database and extract information,as mentioned above,someone wants to know bloodbanks in pune so he will put in query to the helpdesk,people will reply and this information will be available to all.Search(client web service)can be made category or location wise or if you are looking for specific things you can search by name.
13. Fastudu: The fastest one page todo list
14. Expensometer: Can be used for tracking day-to-day expenses;users can define their own expense categories and using simple reports they can view aggregated expenses for a category over a selected period of time. Simplicity is the essence!

Geeks who'll be there

Please add your name and company name here. Email and/or phone is optional. Spread the word to your geeky friends and colleagues who may be interested.

1. Satish Mishra, Better Labs 
2. Pratik Naik, Better Labs 
3. Vaibhav Domkundwar, Better Labs 
4. Dibya Prakash, Reevik
5. Ashish Kulkarani, SAPforbusiness - Alas only in spirit
6. Shantanu Oak
7. Harish Ingale, Reevik
8. Anil Wadghule, Reevik
9. Vikrant Chaudhari, Reevik
10. Amol Aher, Reevik
11. Vaidehi, Reevik
12. Akshay Surve, Learning to speak Ruboi!. Pinstorm, Mumbai
13. Nilesh Avhad, Better Labs 
14. Surya Veerla, Better Labs 
15. Gaurav V Bagga
16. Geetesh Kumar Jain
17. Anup Narkhede
18. Pradeep Sinha, Mumbai
19. Swanand J Deodhar
20. Jincy John
21. Harish Kumar
22. Viky patil, Better Labs 
23. Vishwanath Nayak K and Jatinder Singh, Pune

FAQ

Post your questions here.

Any entry fee or other charges to participate?

No, there is no entry fee or any other fee at all. You will just have to manage your own lunches and dinners :) Tea and coffee will be from Better Labs.

What kind of arrangements have been made?

We are still working towards it but essentially we will be working towards keeping a set number of computers ready for the participants to use. Those who have laptops are requested to bring that along. We will provide some free Rails hosting as well for the applications for the Hackathon.

Would some kind of books and reference material provided or be allowed to refer on the internet during the contest? (this is more like a necessity)

Yes, on both counts. We will have the Rails book as well as the Rails 1.1 PDF book available for everyone. All machines will be online so you will be able to research online.

What is the schedule and timming etc.? It would make it easier for people from outside pune to plan appropriately.

We will shoot for everyone to get together at the venue between 9:30-10AM and kick-off at 10:30AM.

Prizes

Please note that prizes are just a way for interested companies to motivate and inspire the hackathon participants :-)

SFBL and PuneRuby: Win Rs.15,000 - Rs.5,000 each for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Winners need to be members of PuneRuby.

Ashish Kulkarni and Satish Talim

Better Labs: Win Rs.10,001 for the coolest Rails app

Vaibhav Domkundwar