Meet The Disrupt NY 201...

It’s been about eight hours since our big Disrupt Hackathon kicked off , and all of our intrepid hackers have been busy letting the code (and the caffeine) fly ever since. I managed to tear a few of them away from their work (these folks are pretty motivated, so it took a bit of doing) to tell us a little bit about themselves and what they be trying to crank out during the wee hours of the morning. Devon Peticolas Devon is a senior at Rutgers University (and the newly-minted president of the school’s undergrad CS club ). As you might imagine, he’s no stranger to hackathons either — he can’t quite put his finger on it, but he’s probably in the “double digits” at this point. He’ll be spending the night working on a mobile web app that allows users to find their friends in a crowd through sort of a hot-and-cold approach — if all goes well, a phone will vibrate when it’s pointing in the direction of a user’s friend, and will vibrate even stronger as the two people get closer to each other. Peter Verrillo Peter is the CEO of a company called EnHatch, and during the day he works on creating apps to help promote, demo, and sell medical devices for use in surgery. He and his team specialize in creating those 3D apps for the iPad, but he’s looking to spend his time at the Hackathon bringing that 3D experience to the iPhone. The app he’s working on tonight deals with slightly less gruesome fare — instead, it aims to walk users through the process of putting together Ikea furniture. “If Ikea had a good app, this would be it,” he told me. Dasara Kushi This is Dasara’s second Hackathon (her first was a photo-centric event), and this time around she and her partner Ronn have decided to spend their night building a web app that uses a computer’s built-in webcam to analyze a user’s face and suggest places for them to go in real time. “If you look sad, it’ll tell you to go to a comedy club,” said told me. Their project makes pretty extensive use of the faceAPI, but there’s still plenty of work to do — they’re both still looking at pulling in new data from different APIs, to make the service more robust, but thankfully the night is still young. Jared Zoneraich Jared is a 14-year old hacker who attends Bergen Academy, and he’s quite excited to stay up and have fun here at his very first Hackathon. His project of choice? Nothing less than an ad delivery service, of course. “If I weren’t doing this, I’d be doing homework,” he said. His hacker idols include Mark Zuckerberg as well as seasoned iPhone cracker George “geohot” Hotz, who just so happened to attend Bergen back in the day as well. Pavan Krishnamurthy Pavan and his teammates are cranking away on an iOS app that will tell you what sort of music people in different cities are listening to – a noble and clever goal. Cities that tend to listen to faster-paced music on Rdio are labelled ‘hot,’ while more laid-back cities (Chicago in their mockup) are tagged with the “chill” label. His team’s mockups look pretty darned solid, but we’ll soon see if the finished product lives up to their ambitions. When he’s not hacking, Pavan works at Bloomberg and (like Jared) looks up to Mark Zuckerberg as his own hero hacker. Jon Gottfried Jon works for Twilio (during the day) and dons his hacker cape when night falls. He and his buddies are working on a system for A/B testing Amazon products tonight — not the sexiest idea the in the world sure, but that system is only part of his team’s plan. They hope that their testing system can be used to determine consumer desires, and use that information to whip up a subscription service — Thingscription — that’s focused on delivering those goods to people on a regular basis. Octavian Costache The royally-named Octavian (or Vivi, as he’s also known) and his teammates are working on a second-screen app that provides users with additional context they watch Game of Thrones , which is probably one of the geekier endeavors we’ve spotted today. Need to figure out why that guy just got stabbed? Or some lesser-known facet of some clan’s convoluted family tree? Keep your eyes peeled on this guy. Incidentally, he is totally in love with the Khalisi (because of the dragons, not the other thing) and his Twitter is Okvivi . Karina Ruzinov Karina goes to Rutgers (there’s a pretty large contingent of Rutgers kids, it would seem) and is spending her summer interning for Refinery 29. She studies Computer Science and Math and she says the student parties are real ragers. She and her team are working on a app that helps people come up with names for their Hackathon projects. It’s not quite ready for primetime yet, but when it is, it aims to inspire people by providing synonyms and rhymes for words that embody their particular project’s spirit. Victoria Mo Victoria is a Master’s Student in Computer Science at Columbia University and her tech role model is none other than Google’s Marissa Mayer. She and her team are working feverishly on an app that helps users find the hottest clubs in town (and not the hottest clubs in Ontario, as it sounded when we first heard the pitch). They aim to accomplish that by posting images and videos of the clubs’ exteriors so people will be able to quickly determine how popular a particular venue is.

Kickstarter: Meet CordL...

My set ritual before going to bed each night is as follows — turn out the lights, plug in my iPhone, take off my glasses and attempt vainly to nod off. Step two in that process can be a bit of a crapshoot in the dark, but the folks at Scrap Pile Labs have recently kicked off a new Kickstarter campaign for a product called the CordLite that just may come in handy. As the name sort of implies, the CordLite is a dock connector cable for iDevices that, well, lights up thanks to a pair of forward-facing LEDs. It’s a very simple concept, but the thoughtful execution is what make this project worth keeping an eye on. Perhaps the niftiest thing about the CordLite is how you actually fire up those lights — the dock connector’s aluminum body is entirely touch-sensitive, so the lights engage whenever someone goes to plug in the cable. Meanwhile, a pair of indicator lights run along the top of the dock connector so there’s never any confusion as to which side is up. Pledging $25 locks you in for one of the first CordLites to roll off of the assembly line, so you’d best shell out the dough if you’re interested — after the Kickstarter campaign ends, the price will jump up to $35. Not a bad deal for night owls, especially considering that Apple’s own dock connector cable is nearly $20 without a single frill to go with it. Though the CordLite is Apple-only for now, Android users shouldn’t feel too left out. The team also has a light-up micro-USB cable in the works, though I suspect we won’t be seeing those out in the wild for a little while yet.

DIY Doorbell Will Send ...

Say you’re a misanthrope and you’re afraid of humans. What to do? Well, you could cower in the dark when people ring your doorbell or you could laugh derisively at their smug faces in the screen of your iPhone. I’m going for the derisive laughter. This DIY Arduino project involves a simple circuit, a webcam, and a few API calls to PushingBox to enable a truly enjoyable derisive experience. The system works by pushing images grabbed by the webcam through PushingBox to an app like Prowl or Pushme.to . When the doorbell is pressed, it sends a serial signal to the Arduino board which in turn notifies the various services. The webcam picture then gets sent over to you so you can decide whether to let whoever is outside in. It’s probably a little more complex than it needs to be, but if you’re totally into watching the world pass you by it’s a great solution and a fun weekend project. Project Page

FastCustomer Unleashes ...

“People are sick of shitty customer service,” said FastCustomer co-founder, Stephanie Hay. And she and her team aim to do something about it. Their first product, for the iPhone , Android, and other platforms, allowed you to search for a customer service number – say Adam & Eve – and press a button. The program waits on hold for you and then calls you on your phone immediately upon connecting. The company saw 100,000 downloads and estimates that they saved people 1 million minutes of hold time. They’ve just launched a new telephone concierge service, 1855-DONT-HOLD (855-366-8465), that allows you to call in and perform the same operation. In short, this thing stays on hold for you. The whole process usually takes less than an hour. “We asked ourselves ‘How can we remove the pain for the customer service experience for the end user?’” said Hay. The co-founders are Aaron Dragushan of Wondermill, the aforementioned Hay, and Paul Singh of 500 Startups. They closed a $750,000 seed round last September. The company currently handles 1,000 calls per day and hopes to handle more with the new phone number. “After hearing ‘Please stay on the line, your call is important to us,’ on repeat, we talked about how awesome it would be if humans never had to wait on hold with technology again,” said Hay. “So now, with the introduction of our concierge-level service, we’re trying to make customer service experiences — dare I say — actually enjoyable.” The company works closely with companies to ensure proper routing. Premium services allow companies to completely control the user experience, from assigning the correct phone numbers to modifying the notification messages. They also white label the service for corporate clients. The new phone service will launch shortly but you can try the in-app service now.

Weotta Go: An iPhone Ap...

Here’s an iPhone app for those moments when you’re wondering, “Okay, I’ve got some free time right now — what should I do?” Weotta Go is actually the latest product from Weotta , a startup that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. At the time, the company had built a website that helped people make plans, such as figuring out where to eat dinner tonight. The iPhone app, on the other hand, is more focused on spontaneity — say you’re at work and want to find somewhere nearby to grab a sandwich, or you’ve just met up with some friends and don’t know where to head next. So when you open up Weotta Go, the results are tailored to the time and location. For example, when Grant Wernick came by the TechCrunch office on Tuesday afternoon, the app showed us lots of nearby lunch spots. Then he changed the clock on his iPhone to later in the day, and we started to see happy hour recommendations. When I opened the app this morning, it listed coffee shops near my apartment in Noe Valley. You can also filter the results based on how far you’re willing to go (the narrowest filter is “2 blocks”), the price, the category (activities, attractions, coffees and sweets, food, and sporting events), and the context (is this just for guys, girls, kids, or a couple on a date?). Even better, the app changes the results on-the-fly. Its recommendations are delivered as a stack of photos, which you can tap on for more information, drag down to save in a list, or swipe across to say that you’re not interested. As you do that, the list will change to show you more items in the categories that you’re interested in and less of everything else. After you’ve created a list of things you find promising, you can also share it with your friends via email. Wernick says Weotta Go is built on top of the same platform that powers the company’s earlier products. (Eric Chin, a partner at Weotta investor Crosslink Capital, describes the company as sitting “at the intersection of a large and growing market…mobile, local, real-time, and big-data algorithms.”) The platform pulls unstructured data from across the Web, allowing it to create a more complete and accurate picture of a location. For example, Yelp can give you a star rating, plus a few basic descriptions and facts about a restaurant, but after that you have to just read through all the reviews and draw your own conclusions. Weotta, on the other hand, can look at the reviews and generalize about what type of restaurant it is and what kind of person/event it’s appropriate for. The app also offers integrations with other services, like purchasing tickets from StubHub for a sporting event or from Fandango for a movie. However, Wernick says the affiliate model probably won’t be a big moneymaker. Instead, he sees partnering with enterprises who want access to Weotta’s data as the real business model. You can download Weotta Go here . As for the planning product, Weotta Make Plans, Wernick says it has been taken temporarily offline in advance of the launch of a new version.