Monthly Archives: November 2012

Last Stop Hacker Tour Coding Challenge Almost Over! New Prizes Added!

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Sara Mooradian

Time is Running Out!

We’re in the final stretches of our Last Stop Hacker Tour coding challenge with HackerRank and have had an amazing turnout and participation. With approximately 36 hours left, we’ve added even more new prizes to the already awesome takeaways. There’s still time to enter for a chance to win and the top 50 scorers are all taking home something awesome.

Coding challenge ends Sunday 12/2 at midnight.

New Prize from Firebase

 

Firebase, the scalable real-time backend for your web app, is awarding 12 months of their $249/mo package to the top 25 scores. This is on top of  uber awarding the top 50 scores with $20 credits!

Fourth through sixth place scorers will also take home Romo, the smartphone robot from Romotive. Have you seen this thing? It’s sweet!!!

Romo the smartphone from Romotive

 

The top tier prizes are cold hard cash. First place scorer on the leaderboard will take home the grand prize of $1,500, 2nd place gets $500 and 3rd gets $200. So if you code, you really should enter because your odds of winning something awesome from some fantastic startups is pretty good.

But hurry! The contest ends Sunday 12/2 at midnight.

Click here to enter: www.hackerrank.com/hackertour

 

Filed Under: Coding Challenge, HackerTour • 0 Comments

Update: Last Stop Hacker Tour Coding Challenge

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Jordan

Update! New Prizes!

Top 50 Scores Prize Details:

Uber the mobile on demand private car service liked the coding challenge so much that they wanted to offer $20 in credit to the top 50 scores!

The $20 credit is for new Uber users only and can be used to summon your very own private driver in any of the 18 cities Uber cars roll in like New York, SF, Boston, Denver or LA.

Reminder! First place for the coding challenge is $1,500, $500 to 2nd Place and $200 to 3rd Place.  The 4th through 6th winners will receive Romo, the smartphone robot from Romotive.

Coding Challenge Update:

To make the challenge as fair and as fun as possible, Hacker Rank made some changes to the format of the coding challenge.

Hacker Rank has added a level to the Tron challenge. Your final score will be a combination of your level 1 & 2 scores.

The official scoring guidelines can be found at this link.
If you have any questions you can ask them directly on the Hacker Rank IRC channel or leave a comment below.

Check out level 2, submit code & see if your in the top 50 at:

www.hackerrank.com/hackertour

The challenge closes Dec. 3rd! 

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Michigan Hackers – Chargii Team Takes First Place

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Sara Mooradian

Anna and Alex recently traveled to the University of Michigan to kick off and judge the Michigan Hackers IMPACT Hack-a-thon.  Taking first place was Chargii, an iOS and Android app with hardware that can effectively manage a user’s electricity consumption.  The 5 person team, made up of  sophomores: Brad Hekman, Josh Franz, and Nathan Shields,  freshman Aubrey O’Neal and senior Tobias Franz, developed the app, hardware and marketing video in only 20 hours.

The video is awesome – check it out:

The Chargii team credits their success to their diversified team and the amount of time they invested in hashing out all the pros and cons for the different ideas they had. They actually had three concepts to chose from and the team explored them all, at length.  At one point, the team nervously looked around and saw the other teams already coding and building but they were still debating.    Their thoroughness paid off though as they were able to discount the other two ideas and the concept of Chargii emerged with a clear end product in mind.

Part software,  part hardware, the team mobilized based on their strengths to execute the vision. Brad, Nathan and Josh coded.  Josh also scavenged for hardware (at 1AM) while Aubrey and Toby developed the marketing and video presentation.

Chargii receiving their awards

By Saturday, the team was bleary eyed and excited, but when they went to make their final presentation the demo wouldn’t cooperate.  A good lesson in always be prepared, the team used their video to carry the presentation while they scrambled to make the demo work. They pulled it off in the remaining 3 minutes and walked away with both first place and the prize for most technical hack.

Next up for the Chargii team?  Likely more hack-a-thons since the taste of success was pretty sweet right out of the gate. They entered in the 1,000 Pitches contest and are looking to see how far they can take their idea.  (Here’s a link to their latest demo). Looking ahead to summer plans already, the team is using Readyforce to connect with companies for internships. Smart group.

Connect with the team on Readyforce: Brad Hekman, Josh Franz, Nathan Shields,  Aubrey O’Neal and Tobias Franz.

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HackerTour’s Last Stop: HackerRank Coding Challenge

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Jordan

Readyforce has teamed up with HackerRank to put on an inter-collegiate coding challenge that will take place over this upcoming Thanksgiving break.  This coding challenge will mark the end of Hacker Tour 2012 and with huge prizes and multiple schools competing it is sure to end the tour on an awesome note.

What is it ?

This isn’t your Grandad’s coding challenge folks but rather a bot vs bot challenge modeled after the video game Tron.  Students will have unlimited attempts at building the best bot and access to a live leaderboard so they can monitor their status and rank.

When is it

The challenge launches Monday 11/19 just in time for Thanksgiving break
The challenge ends Monday 12/3

Where is it?

Sign up for the challenge here: https://www.hackerrank.com/hackertour

Who is in it?

The challenge is open to all college student hackers but there will be 6 primary competing schools.
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
MIT
University of Texas – Austin
University of Colorado – Boulder

What is up for grabs?

1st place- $1,500
2nd place- $500
3rd place- $200

Places 4th through 6th: Romo smartphone robots by Romotive.

 

The New Romo from Romotive on Vimeo.

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