Boston.com’s "The Boston Hack Day Challenge” Crowns Winners

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. Once there, they 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.

Two teams out of the innovative and competitive group were chosen as grand prize winners. Knowessentials, comprised of Isaac Kastenbaum, Justin Kaufman and Aaron L'Heureux, developed 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. The other grand prize winner was Boston Green, a mobile app that connects people to parks and green spaces, allowing users to search by neighborhood and other criteria. The team participants were Holly St. Clair, Peter Gett, Tom Morris, Christian Spanring, Jon Herman, Patrick Robertson, David Rafkind and David Norcott.

The award-winning products will be showcased on the Beta.Boston.com web site, along with other winning creations. In addition, the grand prize teams were invited to a Red Sox game and to watch a Boston Celtics game from all-star Paul Pierce’s suite at the TD Garden, respectively.

Awards were also given for best mobile app, best use of geo-location, best Boston-centric product, best news-oriented app, and most socially connected app or web site. In addition, the crowd-voted favorite was a mobile app to plan a pub crawl from start to finish, including information about taxi services to ensure a safe ride home.

Throughout the weekend, the public was invited to follow the challenge at Beta.Boston.com and via Twitter at @betadotboston and hashtag #bostonhack.

"We’re thrilled that our first ‘Hack Day Challenge’ was a success,” said Jeff Moriarty, vice president, digital products of The Boston Globe and Boston.com. "Boston is a mecca for those working to develop new digital products, and this weekend provided a wonderful opportunity for them to take an idea and build something over just two days.”

Boston.com worked with Project 11, which specializes in mentoring start-up technology companies, to organize the weekend. On Friday evening, teams were formed and given 48 hours to build a web site or phone app that makes life in Boston better. Mentors from the innovation community were on hand to answer team questions.

The weekend culminated with demonstrations of the new digital creations and the selection of winners by a panel of judges: Globe publisher Christopher Mayer; Innovation Economy blogger for the Globe and Boston.com Scott Kirsner; Director of User Experience at Backupify Shannon Bator; Laurel Ruma of O’Reilly Media; and Michael Schneider of Allen & Gerritsen.

Some of the finished projects are now featured on a new site on Boston.com, Beta.Boston.com, where the entire Boston community is able to test the web sites and applications. A video gallery of this weekend’s event is also available.

Beta.Boston.com is an interactive site that allows site users to experiment with emerging technology and provide feedback on new products. In addition to projects from Hack Day, Beta.Boston.com will also showcase new features and technologies being developed for Boston.com and the new web site BostonGlobe.com, which is expected to launch later this year. One goal of Beta.Boston.com is to make site users a key part of the website development process.

About Boston.com:

Boston.com is one of the most visited regional portals in the U.S. and is wholly owned by The New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT), a leading media company with 2010 revenues of $2.4 billion, which includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.