Boston.com welcomed local digital innovators to its inaugural “The Boston Hack Day Challenge” over the weekend. The result was a host of products created by developers, techies, marketers, designers, entrepreneurs, and others, all designed to make life better for Bostonians.
The event brought approximately 150 competitors to the MassChallenge office on Fan Pier in Boston’s Innovation District. Competitors formed 26 teams to create new products including applications to hail cabs, coordinate sports pickup games, and find out about MBTA arrival times and delays.
Grand prize winners
KnowEssentials- a web site and phone service for those in need in Boston. The service doesn’t require a smartphone, and can be used to locate food services, shelters and health resources in a specific neighborhood.
Boston Green- a mobile app that connects people to parks and green spaces, allowing users to search by neighborhood and other criteria.
# Best Mobile App : Drunken Stumble- a mobile app to help you plan a pubcrawl (including walking directions and taxi numbers at the end).
# Most-Boston-centric hack: CanHazParking- a website to tell you whether you can park or not where you are
# Best use of Geo-location- Accessible Places, a crowdsourced app to let you find out, as the name implies, what locations around town are accessible.
# Best News hack: Big News Boston- A visualization of what news from Boston.com is being read right now
# Best Social hack: Zombie Programmers-a crowdsourced app for Green Line trains