Mobile App Hackathon
Last month I attended AT&T Mobile App Hackathon. Although our team did not make it to present an app it was absolutely fun experience.
First of all it was interesting to learn what’s going on in the world of mobile development. For instance turns out not many prefer native development especially for Android. Also the choice for non-native app development is not just limited to PhoneGap or Titanium. There are many more less known (for now) tools and APIs like appMobi or apigee.
Second, I had a chance to work on text to speech and voice recognition features for Android which I may incorporate into next generation of SAT Vocabulary.
Third, there was no free Wi-Fi. However on the bright side everyone had a chance to try out AT&T 4G Mobile Hotspot device. And it was absolutely awesome and fast which makes you want one. Kudos to AT&T actually since T-Mobile devices were showing no signal at the ATDC location.
The top three apps were:
- Four Corners – allows multiple players to scan a QR code to join a team in a game. Players tap on their own mobile device, which the impact is seen on the game board on a larger shared screen.
- YouJuke – social music selection.
- Food Porn – shows beautiful pictures of a food near you and gives you directions to it. It does nothing else and has absolutely no social networking whatsoever by design.
Looking forward to attending more events like that. Also AT&T is planning other hackathons in DC, SF, Boston and Orlando during October-December of 2011.