Google Hackathon Singapore 2009 – A Wrapup

e27 in collaboration with Google and SMU conducted its annual hackathon event on June 16th. Senior developer associates Patrick Chanezon (@chanezon) and Pamela Fox (@pamelafox) came down from San Francisco and Sydney respectively to showcase Google technologies that can be used by developers and marketers alike.

The stage was set and the show began.

The event began with Pamela speaking about Gelocation API’s. Slides available here.

Some of the Google Geo API’s that were featured in the hackathon were Mapplets, JS Maps API’s , the SketchUP API and the Panoramio API. The following prominent features were showcased during the event :

• -> Reverse Geocoding (which is the process of converting a latitude/longitude pair into a address) was also discussed in-depth. (Detailed article here).
• -> Different ways to monetize maps were also discussed for businesses who have their application built using Google Maps API.
• -> For designers wanting to render their maps in 3D with funky outlays, 3D flash google maps with flash re-coloring was talked about.

Patrick then took the stage and shed light on some of the following technologies:

HTML 5: With browser functionalities evolving rapidly, the new version of the web language that features a combination of HTML and XHTML supports rich applications and specifies scripting API’s. We believe that some of the elements introduced by HTML5 are game-changing and these include the canvas and video tags as well as the geo-location API’s. It remains to be seen how Flash and Silverlight will react once HTML5 becomes a mainstream technology, but it sure is an exciting time to be a web developer.

• -> Video: With Firefox 3.5 and other browsers encouraging more open media standards, HTML 5 paves the way for open video that enables web developers to build interfaces consistent to the web site. The <video> tag is as simple as using <img> tags for images.
• -> Canvas: brings sophisticated graphics without downloading any proprietary plugins. It allows drawing and animation within your browser, which currently can be done only in a desktop app or a flash app.
• -> Geolocation API used by Google Latitude will enable users to access location information via a browser (If the user chooses to share) http://3liz.org/geolocation/

Friend Connect
With most of the web sites wanting to go “social”, Google’s FriendConnect enables engagement of the community through usage of Google, Yahoo, Twitter, AOL, Orkut and Plaxo accounts. The Huffington Post has an excellent illustration which showcases the power and simplcity of Google FriendConnect, by allowing users to share results on your profile and send it to friends.

Google Wave – The New Buzzword

This was one of the impromptu features of the event, and probably was the most talked about technology at Google Hackathon Singapore 2009. The live demo left people clamouring for a piece of the action (by way of asking for preview Google Wave accounts) but this was not to be. Google Wave looks like it has a legion of fans already, and the potential that it has to kick-start a new wave (excuse the pun) of web applications is immense.

After which, it was Hacking time.

With the array of technologies available to developers, it was only a matter of time before clever hackers brought ideas to life. And these were promptly showcased after a few hours of coding, when the eager developers demo-ed their respective apps. Thomas Edison’s observation that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration was put to the test as developers crunched out awesome apps in the space of a few hours. A voting process was set in place and the following apps were declared winners in descending order.

• Fan venues – developed by the PeekSpy guys which shows 3D version of the stadiums or venues built using Google Earth.
  
• The Base Is Right – built on the Google Base API is modelled after the show the price is right. Check out the post by Ridzuan on his experience at the Hackathon.
• Time map application developed by Ankit Guglani(@ankitg) which lets you sync your Google Calendar with maps and timeline integration.
  
• Thindtodoinsg -  a web application to know the hot spots in Singapore. This used the Google Maps API along with Friendconnect to engage more people in sharing their favourite locations in Singapore.
• RedHexLab – which is a twitter based app that logs the location of your tweet. This was built using Geolocations API

All the teams won some cool prizes. Pictures of the winners and event available here.

In short, we had a total blast and we hope you had fun too :)