RailsRumble 2008 Winners Announced
Take approximately 500 Rails coders with a weekend to spare, an awesome collection of prizes, and a stackload of Linode virtual servers and you end up with Rails Rumble - a significant annual contest to develop the best Rails application possible in just two days. 245,000 lines of code were written and, as TechCrunch reported, 131 Rails apps were launched!
Josh Catone of SitePoint has put together an awesome summary of Rails Rumble. If you're just interested in the raw data, however, the three main winners this year were:
MeetInBetween.us - a Web app developed by the "Great Lakes Geeks" for finding the middle ground between two locations. It's basically the same sort of thing as a.placebetween.us.
QFlip - Get strangers to influence your Netflix queue. Sounds scary, but you might end up with some interesting picks! Developed by the wonderfully named "Scatapult" team.
Riverdex - Get up to the minute news regarding the flow of your local river (in the US). Very useful if you're into rafting or kayaking.
There were also winners in Appearance, Completeness, Innovation, Usefulness, and Solo Team categories - all rounded up in the official Rails Rumble winners' post. I'd like to give a special mention to What Does This Error Mean, the winner in the Usefulness category. You paste in an error message you get in whatever you're doing and you look for answers. I could see it becoming a real-world hit if pushed properly.
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November 4th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
"It's basically the same sort of thing as a.placebetween.us."
That's what happens when you fulfil a need people didn't know they had, not only did they not know that had it but they also did not know it had already been solved.