Hackathon Highlights: Staff Favorites From The Disrupt SF Hackathon

It’s been nearly 24 hours since the start of the Hackathon and the hax0rs have hax3d. We’ve seen 130 projects pitched in just 60 seconds each, all created in under 24 hours.

While all of the projects were wonderful (really — this was perhaps our best Hackathon yet), some of them really struck the right key with the TechCrunch writers in the audience. In no particular order (and with no indication as to who might walk away a winner), some of the staff favorites:

ClubReport – Gives you a live audio stream of clubs around the city, helping you figure out which one you want to hop to.

Justabout – An About.me for business. Easy, 30-second websites for businesses, primarily meant to group their social network accounts together in one easy to find place.

Weather Checker – A mashup of Weather Underground and Google Calendar. Automatically scans your calendar for upcoming events, and alerts you if the weather forecast for those days has turned for the worse.

SportBot: Monitors and analyzes tweets about sporting events, and generates a live blog-esque text summary of the event based off popular tweets.

Ex-Rated: Lets you rate your exes and peruse the ratings of potential suitors.


Let’s Drink Tonight: Punch in your cell phone, answer a few questions, and it’ll alert you when others nearby are looking for strangers to drink with

@shopr – matches buyers and sellers on Twitter. It’s sort of like a Craigslist for Twitter. Basically, @shopr uses Gnip to mine the Twitter firehose for people selling things and looking to buy items.

SharedRoll.com: Lets you create group-managed photo albums on the fly.


Packmule – Another easy-to-use group photo sharing tool.

Where Is Waldy? – “Wheres Waldo” for real photos. Automatically picks a face in a photo and tasks the user with finding it.

PassMyWill: “Your Will For Online Assets”. Distributes your social networks passwords to your trusted loved ones after you die. Whether or not you’re dead is determined by social network activity, followed by a Dead Man’s Switch e-mail.

Diskly: Direct feedback to the DJ at a real-world venue. Searches your iPod library for songs similar to the one currently playing at the venue, and lets you suggest those to the DJ.

Sergeant Shame: You create tasks for yourself, then give Sergeant Shame access to post on your Facebook wall. Fail to finish your task (determined by whether or not you’ve checked into your task the pre-set number of times)? Sergeant Shame calls you out in public.


SlideJoin.com – A service that lets you follow along with slide presentations right on your phone.

Karpool: “The easiest way to organize carpools with your friends.” Sign in with your number, add your riders, and start a trip. Karpool will show your rider’s current locations, and whether or not they’re ready to leave.

MilkMe.co: Uh oh — you’re almost out of milk! Text “add milk” to a provided phone number, and milk will arrive the next day. UK only as it relies on Tesco’s API.

Facefuse: Uses iOS 5’s face detection system in combination with Face.com’s facial recognition API. Once a face is detected, it returns a Wiki-esque publicly editable page corresponding to that person.

AirCart: Grocery store self-checkout through your phone, rather than the standard dedicated checkout stand. Scan an item’s UPC to add it to your “AirCart”.

Thirsty.com – Billed as “AirBnB for humans,” Thirsty lets you hire folks for short periods of time. Sellers announce what they can do in one day (Wax a car? Clean 3 rooms worth of carpet?) and their daily rate.


BuddyCall: Reminds you to call a contact (like your mom) regularly by automatically starting the call and ringing all parties on a pre-determined schedule (say, every sunday).


Music Combat: A real-time, player-vs-player music battle. Each player site reads music, playing the notes on the nearest instrument. Their mobile device detects which notes they’re playing. The better you do, the more damage you do to your opponent.


Zom-Beat Defense: Zombie defense game. Move with the arrow keys, aim with the mouse. Waves of zombies are generated based on the beat of the music.

SocialBee: Finds people in areas that you’re traveling to that your friends may be able to introduce you to. Going to Paris? SocialBee scans your social networks for friends who have contacts in Paris, and generates an introduction request.