The Next Web Hack Battle....Here's to the Winners!

As part of the opening of our new Amsterdam data center, we sponsored The Next Web 2012, a really killer conference. So we did a bit of the corporate thing, sponsoring the networking lounge. But definitely the highlight of our trip was the Kings of Code Hack Battle. The TNW team ran the event and there were some amazing entrants. For the first through third place teams we offered a total of $9,000 in Joyent Cloud compute credits. And it was worth every penny, as the winners totally blew us away! Here's the list:

1st Place - Covify. They created an amazing application that allows you to scan your CD covers and play them in Spotify. You can read more about their hack here http://hackbattle.thenextweb.com/index.php/Covify, or see them pitch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQwfwl9dWsg&feature=plcp (as a bonus, an interview after they've just won http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJvtQYgwNxw&feature=plcp).

2nd Place - VersionBox. This is version control for Dropbox. You can read more about their hack here http://hackbattle.thenextweb.com/index.php/VersionBox, and see them pitch here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsZVoL9pRNk&feature=plcp. These guys stayed overnight, hacking away until the very next day. A well deserved second place and bonus points for using Node.js to power their app.

3rd Place - Electric Vampires. This is a gamified home energy savings app. You can read more here http://hackbattle.thenextweb.com/index.php/Electric_Vampires and see their pitch here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jSq9IWvshU&feature=plcp). The name is a play on the term "Vampire" appliances - sleeping or dormant appliances which remain moderately active and suck up $3 billion worth of electricity in the U.S. alone.

We also want to thank our fellow sponsors and partners for the Hack Battle. Facebook, KPN, Twilio, MailChimp, SendGrid, SkyDrive, Dropbox, Rijksmuseum, Tendril and Spotify. Free beer and pizza's are provided by .me. A most excellent event all around. And congrats to all participants in the Hack Battle. We hope you all had a good time (and we gave you all $100 credits towards Joyent Cloud). See you all at the next event.



Post written by alexsalkever