Hack Manchester

Month

October 2013

5 posts

“

To submit your entry tweet using

#hackmanchester #video
YOUR TEAM NAME
YOUR VIDEO URL

and the challenge:
#barclaystech - for university challenge
@ao_com - for the ao.com challenge
@laterooms - for the laterooms challenge
@webappuk - for the web applications uk challenge
@clockworksms - for the clockwork challenge
@layershift - for the layershift challenge
#company - company challenge

All entries will be considered for Best in Show.

EXAMPLE
#hackmanchester #video TEAM BOB https://vimeo.com/35322798 #company @ao_com

”
—
Oct 27, 2013
The week before Hack Manchestermanchesterdeveloper.com

Great post about #hackmanchester prep from one of last year’s attendees! Are you starting to plan yet?

Oct 17, 2013
University challenge - Prize part one

‘Fast-track application* for each member of the winning team to a paid 2014 summer internship at Barclays global technology centre in Knutsford, Cheshire.  12 week contract worth over £5000 each.’

Each applicant would be guaranteed an interview but would need to successfully complete an interview and all recruitment checks required by law to undertake the role.

Oct 15, 2013
The LateRooms Mo-cial Travel Challenge

Mobile and Social go hand in hand, add in a plethora of problems and challenges that we all encounter as we visit new exciting destinations and explore - and you’ve got yourself a challenge!!

We want to see what weird and whacky ideas 24 hours and sleep deprivation can dream up .. using mobile and social to help make any aspect of travel that little bit easier and fun.

We will also supply a CSV of lots of hotel goodness for you to use (if you want to) so that you can plug some hotel content into the mix…

http://datafeed.laterooms.com/Hotels.zip

Prize

4 x 1 night stay for 2 on B&B (valid for a year – on request) at H10 London Waterloo - http://www.laterooms.com/en/hotel-reservations/194633_h10-london-waterloo-london.aspx

Oct 15, 2013
Challenge from ao.com

Hack Manchester Challenge

Hello! We’re ao.com!

13 years ago a business was born, alongside one man’s vision to ‘change the face of the white goods industry’.

Today ao.com provides a third of all kitchen appliances sold within the UK, making over a million deliveries each year… and shows no signs of slowing down!

So how do we do it? 

Simple really, we function around one focus… Happiness. A happy workforce makes for happy customers and happy suppliers!….  Throw in a highly creative working environment with plenty of space for play, and you’ve got a lot of talent caring enough to make all our customers smile!

This year we were awarded 4th spot in The Times Top 100 UK companies to work for, topping last year’s spot at No. #5.

Our restless pursuit for ‘bigger and better’ has led to ao.com becoming a market-leading retail business with Information Technology and Software Development, at its core. 

Our business is run on bespoke software and strategically integrated software products, allowing us to react to opportunities faster than our competitors, understand our customers better and push the boundaries of the possible from great… to awesome.

The Challenge

“Hack days and Hackathon’s are a ridiculous amount of fun (well we think so anyway). What we want you to build for us is the ultimate software companion for a team participating in this kind of event. Think of it as the ultimate dashboard/intelligent agent that provides you with information about what’s going on in your team, and what’s going on in the wider Hackathon.

At ao.com, our mission statement contains the line, “everything we do revolves around happiness” and so we’re going to judge the entries on how happy they make us. The qualities we’re going to be looking for (that make us happy) are:

  • Innovation of idea/concept – the more useful the better
  • How engaging the app is, especially its inherent humour/comedy
  • Technical mastery, behind the scenes in the technologies you employ but also in the design and user experience of the application.

Wehope that all of you are creative enough to really run with this idea and have a massive amount of fun building it, but in case you need some help, here are a few ideas we thought might help you along…

  • Stream the timeline of Hackathon goings on from social media sites
  • Provide build metrics like how many lines of code, test coverage, build status etc
  • Team or conference chat function, possibly with a software agent that can help with team activities
  • Alert team members when it’s time to take a break, hold another planning session etc
  • Locate errant team members when they’ve wandered off for a break and you need their code”

The Prizes

Apart from winning the competition we want to make sure the winners are rewarded for their dedication to development and for taking 24 hours out of their time to compete.

The four lucky winners will walk home with their own array of gifts from ao.com

These include 4 brand new mini ipads, 4 Tassimo desktop coffee machines by Bosch and lots of ao swag!

image

Oct 7, 2013

September 2013

5 posts

Challenge from Web Applications UKwebapplicationsuk.com

Web Applications UK Ltd, market leaders in bespoke web based reservation applications for the travel industry.

After the amazing support from last year, we’re delighted to have Web Apps on board again. Their Rube Goldberg challenge from last year gave us some truly entertaining hacks at the award show, so we’re looking forward to what you make this year. Also - what a PRIZE!

Sep 26, 2013
Layershift

Layershift are a Manchester based managed hosting provider, giving you a safe and reliable home for all of your web projects. Layershift take care of the server stuff for you, so you can focus 100% of your energy on the exciting bit (your code, your business, your customers).

Layershift’s revolutionary Jelastic PaaS provides each developer with their own exclusive server stack catering for Java or PHP projects. Combine these with powerful 1-click load balancing, horizontal scaling, and a unique automatic vertical scaling feature, and you have an incredibly versatile platform ready to power your next project.

Layershift are providing exclusive free application hosting for all Hack Manchester competitors during the competition, with bonus prizes on offer for the best application developed and hosted on their platform. It’s important to use tools that you’re familiar with during a hackathon, so you can experiment with the platform right now.

Learn more at http://www.layershift.com/hackmanchester

Sep 23, 2013
Layershift Hack Manchester Challenge; 26th - 27th Octoberlayershift.com

Use Layershifts Jelastic PaaS at Hack Manchester for a chance to win 8 x £100 Amazon vouchers.

Delighted to announce latest sponsor @layershift as mentors. They have an added incentive for you to use Jelastic PaaS in your hack. 

Sep 20, 2013
#hackmanchester sponsor
Sep 18, 2013
Hack Manchester Challenge | Clockworkclockworksms.com

Our lovely sponsors Clockwork SMS have got a really exciting challenge for you. Go read more and find out about the exciting PRIZES!

Sep 17, 2013

December 2012

1 post

Post by @7digitalt.co
Dec 15, 2012

November 2012

8 posts

Post by @ben_nuttall on #hackmanchestert.co
Nov 26, 2012
Post by @robgough on #hackmanchesterpinkegobox.net
Nov 7, 2012
Play
Nov 6, 2012
[email protected] on @hackmanchesterblog.laterooms.com
Nov 6, 2012
Play
Nov 4, 2012
Play
Nov 4, 2012
Play
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012

October 2012

12 posts

here's @fredkelly's hack!blog.fredkelly.net
Oct 31, 2012
Winners of @WebAppUK Rube Goldberg challenget.co
Oct 30, 2012
Play
Oct 29, 2012
Stats

We had 151 hackers from 54 teams. Over the weekend they submitted 1,226 commits, totalling 3.8 million lines of code!

You also ate 10 boxes of Haribo ^_^

Oct 29, 20122 notes
Video

Video from the weekend is available here:

https://bitly.com/hackmanchester

Oct 29, 2012
Ta da!

So that was Hack Manchester! We really hope you enjoyed yourself. We’re going to update the blog with the hacks - stuff from the judges. Loads!

Thanks so much for coming and making the event. You really blew us away with what you created. Having to sit down and just take it all in.

Oct 29, 2012
Oct 28, 2012
Hack Manchester gets underway - Storify

Check out this Storify - capturing the buzz in the lead-up to Hack Manchester getting started today!

http://storify.com/intechnica/hack-manchester-underway

Oct 27, 2012
Intechnica's "Bacon Number" challenge

Hello folks - just wanted to give more details on Intechnica’s Hack Manchester challenge. The prize is four Raspberry Pi computers (the Model B variation).

The Bacon Number Challenge Details

The Intechnica Challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a system that generates the Bacon Number for any actor. 

Google recently implemented a search feature that can reveal an actor’s “bacon number” (or degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, for those who don’t know) in typical Google sub-second response times. But can you out-bacon Google? Making use of the Amazon Web Services tool set, we want to see who can create an app to find specific, complex data from the Internet Movie Database the fastest and most accurately! 

See the wiki entry for more details about Bacon Numbers. 

The rules

All results must be based on the imdb dataset that can be downloaded here. 

The system you produce must use the tools available in the Amazon Web Services system and be hosted on an EC2 medium size machine (or smaller). We have created test accounts and have credits available kindly supplied by Amazon for this event. Please ask one of the Intechnica chaps for details or if you are not familiar with AWS and you would like some pointers. 

The system produced must accept a query string in the format ?q=actor_name and return a json object in the following format

{
    "baconNumber": 2,
    "steps": [
        {"actor": "Johnny Depp", "appearedWith": "Helena Bonham Carter", "appearedIn":"Dark Shadows"},
        { "actor": "Helena Bonham Carter", "appearedWith": "Kevin Bacon", "appearedIn": "Novocaine" }
    ] 
}

Judging will be done using the Test Page. In the event of a tie break the speed of response will be used as the deciding factor. [hint : this will include round trip time so build everything in eu-west region on AWS]

If you need any assistance, please tweet us @intechnica or come and find our judge Andy, who will be around for the full 24 hours.

Happy hacking!

Alex, Intechnica

Oct 27, 2012
Live stream

Just thought this was worth sharing - a live stream of @HackManchester from Nathan Rae.

Oct 27, 20121 note
Make it Real-time - Use Pusher ;)

Hi guys. Rich from Pusher here, I’ll be at the hack this weekend some come and say hello. I’ll be wearing my Pusher t-shirt so you can easily pick me out from the crowd. I just thought I’d give you a nudge towards using Pusher..!

BTW I might tweet a few things during the hack, so follow me at @rich_caudle if you like!

What can I make with Pusher?

Here’s a few use cases that Pusher is great for:

  • Notifications - simple realtime notifications making users aware that new data is available, data has changed, a new comment has been made… (you get the idea)
  • User interactions - e.g. realtime chat between users who are viewing the same piece of information or visualisation
  • Collaboration - e.g. multiple users working together to compose a melody
  • Visualisations - This requires some realtime data, but it’s amazing how realtime visualisations can even make Justin Bieber interesting
  • Multiplayer Games - gaming is all about user interaction and immersing users in engaging gameplay. With a touch of real-time interaction this game has become massively popular and highly addictive -http://wordsquared.com
  • Go Off-piste! - Pusher isn’t limited to just browser and mobile applications. Why not get your soldering iron out?
Why should I use Pusher?

Pusher is great at hack days as you can base a fiendishly ambitious project entirely upon it, but equally you can use Pusher to add some magic to any application.

You can add Pusher to your project in only a few lines of code and it’s extremely quick to pick up. You’ll really quickly notice the power and simplicity of our platform and it’ll give you the edge over the competition.

Pusher is also a very complementary API. We provide that last-mile delivery of data from the server to clients. This means that we work really well with other datasets and APIs like Twilio, DataSift, SoundCloud, Superfeedr,Twitter and many more.

I’m almost sold…

We’re offering a ‘Best Use of Pusher’ prize for the hack. The winner will get a free 6 months of our startup plan (worth $300), and an Apple TV.

All you need to do now is win me over with your amazing hack!

Oct 27, 2012
Is this thing on...?

Hello!

Hack Manchester is a mere 2 days away and we’re so excited to see everyone at the museum for a weekend of ridiculous fun, great company and amazing hacks.

Stay tuned for updates here about details of the day, cool things happening in the science festival, and details of the hacks submitted.

Happy hacking,
The Hack Manchester Team

Oct 25, 2012
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