Dale Zak organized the first Hackathon last July in Halifax which produced two apps, Wish You Were Here supporting Feed Nova Scotia and Meet Me Here, supporting Phoenix Youth. This year we had events in Halifax, Saskatoon and Montreal with teams working on seven new apps as well as updating our existing apps.

MindSea was proud to help organize and sponsor the Halifax event, and I am happy to report that we had over 25 people show up to donate their skills. Our push this year was to get more marketers and designers and I think we handily met that goal. Each team had a couple of designers and marketers which was really nice to see and made a big difference in our productivity. This extra horse-power allowed the Halifax team to take on four apps!

• Sushi Hiro – in support of Stepping Stone is a Sushi making game for the iPad
• Artists 4 Good – in support of Clean Nova Scotia is an iPad wallpaper app that show cases local artists
• Swipey-Tappy – in support of Leave Out Violence – a game that works similar to the simon says genre of games but using gestures and taps
• Stick Person Theatre – in support of Joints In Motion – an application that allows you to create stick person animations in interesting situations like walking on the moon

Saskatoon had a great turnout as well and they are building some great apps. Here is how Dale Zak described the apps in his post about the weekend.

WeDJ, a social DJ’ing app with a twist that will benefit Choc’laCure who help raise funds for the Saskatoon Cancer Centre, CoachPad a handy sports team sketchpad that supports North East Outreach a small non-profit charitable organization in Melfort, Saskatchewan that provides 24 hour crisis hotline and finally ShouldI, a social decision maker that will benefit Saskatoon Friendship Inn who provide breakfast and lunch for over 500 people daily.

Well, now we head in to the most important stage: finishing the apps, getting the word out and getting the proceeds into the hands of the charities. We have an extremely dedicated group of volunteers that have committed to getting these apps done, so stay tuned over the next little while and you will see some shiny new apps in the App Store.

I would like to thank Dale Zak for coming up with this crazy idea and keeping everyone motivated; his energy level and commitment to social change is unwavering.

The iHackathon in the news

For more information about Apps 4 Good and our mission check out the website at www.Apps4Good.ca

Check out the iHackathon segment in episode 214 of CommandN.tv, around the 5:00 minute mark.

Michelle Doucette took some fantastic photos for us this year.

We had some nice coverage on CBC both east and west:

• Developing iPhone Apps for Charity
• Sask. Developer builds apps for charity

T2Go Halifax Routes Around Me Screenshot

Metro Transit provides reliable service, but this system can be difficult to navigate and decipher, even for experienced riders, especially when traveling at non-peak times and from stops not detailed on the paper- based schedules. Patrons can struggle when determining what route to take at different times throughout the day, the nearest stop location at any given point, and the exact time of the buses’ scheduled arrival. Transit to Go has been developed to respond to this challenge, providing a user-friendly guide to the peninsula’s transit system for the commuting iPhone owner.

The application, the brainchild of software developers Dmitri Dolguikh, Willliam Lachance and Bill Wilson, is simple: when using Transit to Go, a patron can either input a stop number into the “Look up Stop” screen, or use the “Around Me” option and have the device’s GPS technology, or the manual entry of an address, aid in determining the location and schedule of nearby stops.

For the data that fuel the Halifax iteration of Transit to Go, an application that will begin to unroll in other select Canadian cities after its inaugural, East Coast launch, the group of developers turned to the local online route-planner, hbus.ca, developed by Lachance in spring ’09. This site not only provides the software “brains” behind Transit To Go, but is also the only publicly available source of machine-readable bus and route schedule information in Halifax. Unlike transit operators such as the ETS in Edmonton, or the SFMTA in San Francisco, Metro Transit does not release its route information to the public—although, since hbus.ca was created, Metro Transit has privately released this information to Google Transit, a Google web service. The detailed stop information used by hbus.ca and Transit to Go was gathered by hand using a bike and a handheld GPS device.

Transit to Go is the result of three local developers coming together in the right place at the right time. During Halifax Weekend, held at the Hub Halifax in late March 2009, Wilson, who had despairingly crossed off “transit iPhone application” from his to-do list since Halifax’s route information was not publicly available, met Lachance—a man with the missing link. Add Dolguikh, also in attendance, to the equation, along with the visual talents of Nick Brunt of Hi There Web Design and Marketing, and you have the team behind a useful tool for accessing the transit system presented in an innovative, simple and attractive interface.

“Creating a transit application for the iPhone is a perfect fit,” says Wilson, pointing out the device’s mobility and innate GPS capabilities. “Recently, one of my good friends created and launched the Red Rocket, a transit app for Toronto. Ever since, I’ve thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to do this for Halifax?’”

The Halifax iteration of Transit to Go has been made available for purchase as of January 15, 2010, on the iPhone App Store. Please visit www.transittogo.com for more details.

About the MindSea Team

Dmitri Dolguikh: In addition to 10 years of experience as a software developer, Dolguikh brings Masters in Engineering degrees in Control Systems from Moscow State University of Aerospace Technologies, as well as in Internetworking from Dalhousie University, to the table. His career has included the development of large-scale enterprise software, as well as of desktop, web and mobile software. Dolguikh, an advocate of feedback driven approaches, lives and works in Halifax, NS.

Nick Brunt: Currently working as principal designer of his own company, Hi There, Nick has been working as a Halifax-based designer with a focus on web and design for usability for the past six years. He is also working as an illustrator and artist, continuing to show artwork with Argyle Fine Art. Brunt lives and works in Halifax, NS.

William Lachance: Lachance is a software developer with over seven years of industry experience. He is currently employed by the Navarra Group, an independant software consultancy that he helped co-found in 2008. In spring 2009, he launched the popular hbus.ca bus travel-planning site for Halifax. Lachance holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Computer Science and Philosophy from the University of Toronto and currently lives and works in Montreal, QC.

Bill Wilson: Wilson’s career in software development began in the mid ’90s with a consumer software-updating tool, and has since had him working on such projects as aerospace software and corporate instant messaging software. Most recently, he has dove into the world of Mac and iPhone software, with a focus on community-based projects that has brought him on board Halifax’s Apps4Good initiative. As the principal consultant for MindSea, Wilson is mindful of team dynamics, iterative development and constant improvement. He brings experience in the entire project life cycle to his management role, including business analysis, project management and delivery. Wilson, who when not creating software can be found building and flying kites, lives and works in Halifax, NS.

Contact: Bill Wilson Principal Consultant, MindSea Development Inc. bill@mindsea.com 902.452.8492

Secondary Contact: Nadine LaRoche Principal, Interrobang Inc. nlaroche@gmail.com 902.877.8118

In July of 2009 Dale organized the first “iPhone Hackathon For Charity” which brought together some very talented people who have a common desire to support their community. The goal of the hackathon was to create as many iPhone applications as possible over a weekend, publish them to the Apple App store and direct all the proceeds to charity. I have to admit that this goal seemed quite unrealistic at first, but as the weekend progressed I became more and more convinced that this was going to work and that we could accomplish some really great things! While the weekend didn’t produce any finished apps we had a great start and we chose some great charities that would benefit. The team I was on chose to create an application that allows people to send digital postcards. You select a cool postcard, add a photo and caption and send it to your pals. Inspired by many postcards collected during sunny summer vacations we decided to call it “Wish You Were Here”. (and hey.. it ties in nicely with our other app “Meet Me Here”).

As often happens with volunteer projects like this, other commitments (like work ) can slow you down. Motivated by our second, albeit smaller, hackathon “Another day of Good” held in October, we put a push on to get “Meet Me Here” and “Wish You Were Here” out the door. After a few more impromptu late night hacking sessions, Meet Me Here was ready to go and was published, and available for download on December 1st. Having our first application up and generating money for charity motivated our WYWH team even more. We went through a couple of rounds of usability testing and came up with a flow that we thought was simple and intuitive. Combine that with some beautifully designed postcards and application graphics and we were set to go! On December 29th, WYWH was ready for sale in the Apple app store. The folks on the Apple app review team really turned this around quickly. It went in for review in the morning and came out ready for sale later that night! Thanks for that! The WYWH team plans to keep adding more features to the application, like twitter and facebook integrations, image editing controls, and many more postcard designs.

All of the proceeds from WYWH will go to Feed Nova Scotia, the provincial food collection and distribution centre for approximately 150 food banks and meal programs across Nova Scotia. They provide year-round food deliveries to member food banks and meal programs who serve at least 38,000 Nova Scotians each month. To learn more about how you can help, please visit their website www.feednovascotia.ca

So, what started out as an informal weekend hack has turned into a full fledged corporation dedicated to giving back to the community. We have started the ball rolling with our first two applications, and more are in the works…. so what’s next? Well, we will be hosting another hackathon in the new year, who knows what that will bring, but I have a feeling we will have many more participants and we will come up with some great apps in support of excellent charities! If you would like to join us, head over to apps4good.ca and drop us a line…

Wish You Were Here,
Bill Wilson

Here are a few screen shots of WYWH in action:

The Wish You Were Here team members:

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