Earlier this month, Foursquare held its second hackathon, with 500 developers from around the world contributing. Today, the company is announcing the winners. The grand prize goes to Plan Your Next Trip, which uses the Foursquare API to help you plan out your upcoming 2-day trip to any city in the world using the recommendations from Foursquare’s “Explore” feature.
Several grand prize finalists were also named, including Sqavenger, Intersquares and sponsor-chosen winners Near.co and VenueMachine.
Plan Your Next Trip was built by developer Benjamin Netter from Paris, France, and he will receive the Foursquare title belt (yes, an actual belt – see above) and dinner with Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai.
The other hackathon finalists are as follows:
1) Sqavenger: An app that lets you create and play scavenger hunts using text messages and Foursquare. (Built by a four-person team in NY and San Francisco)
2) Intersquares: Lets you compare your check-ins with a friends. (Built by Mihai Parparita)
3) Near.co: The NASDAQ prize winner built a website using the venue Push API for store owners that features hours of operation, accepted credit cards, Zagat ratings and, of course, a Foursquare check-in option. (Bulit by a four-person team in SF)
4) VenueMachine: The Twilio prize winner lets venue owners identify and reward their influential customers (as determined by Klout scores) in real-time. (Buit by Barnaby Malet and Namit Chadha)
Twilio is also awarding VenueMachine along with Sqavenger, fourhealth, Bimbimbab and Postsquare with $500 in Twilio credit for their entries.
Twelve other hacks won People’s Choice Awards through the voting that took place at Foursquare’s four official sites (NY, SF, Tokyo and Paris) and online. These include the following:
- Gettogether – An interface for scheduling an event with your friends.
- Magic Muggle Clock – Displays friends’ recent check-ins on a clock like the Weasleys’ family clock found in the Harry Potter.
- How ___ are you? – A way to discover interesting demographic information about the places you check in to.
- PlaceFace – Updates your foursquare and Twitter profile photos as appropriate for each check-in.
- Photosquare – Browse photos from venues near you on your iPad and add them to your To-Do list.
- DigiDJ – A jukebox system users who have checked in can add songs from their phone.
- 4SQSign – An e-mail signature that updates with each check-in.
- Check Me In – An iPad tool enabling merchants to check in customers using their profile photo
- 4square TV – Creates a video showcasing your recent foursquare activity.
- Hear I Am – Help you discover people near you when you’re out and about who have similar musical tastes.
- One More Check-in – Shows you what new badges you could unlock with just a few more check-ins.