Between bridging the translation gap, the lack of and then abundance of morning coffee, collective Internet struggles and the many many hacks using TianJi’s (“the LinkedIn of China”) API, the TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon just happened, and it was nothing short of amazing.
Around 300 hackers signed on to spend 24 hours together, and 100 actually braved a night full of spotty connectivity and vegetable noodles in order to present their hacks at 11:00 am Beijing time. Each team was given a minute to show their stuff in front of the multi-lingual audience and judges.
The judges included TechCrunch Mobile’s Greg Kumparak, ICanHazCheeseburger’s Ben Huh, Zynga’s Andy Tain, TenCent’s Peter Zhong, Sonos’ Carter Agar, Google’s Ming Yang and DigiCha’s Bill Bishop, who parsed the 46 hacks to the best of their ability, and culled six of the best. In addition to everlasting fame and glory, winners will have the opportunity to present onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt proper.
Meet first TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing Hackathon winners, below (links to come when the hacks go live).
Grand Prize WeDiary – A chronological visual diary for your blog.
Firecracker – A mobile game that simulates playing with firecrackers.
TouchMusic – A slick looking smartphone app that functions as a theramin.
HackMaster – A game that teaches people how to code Javascript, with a love story.
Shareware – Shareware realizes you’re browsing from China, and loads Chinese share buttons instead of Facebook and Twitter, solving a huge problem.
Pomo – Mobile-based app that tracks your working time — graphs what time is productive versus not productive.
TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005 by Michael Arrington, is a network of technology-oriented blogs and other web properties.
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
