Gear up for the Major League Hacking Spring 2015 season finale to craft the craziest hacks in the universe. Human, alien, and robot are all welcome to team up and save the world!

 

All hacks and hackers at Hack the Planet must abide by the MLH Code of Conduct.

Eligibility

Hackers must be in school/college/university or have graduated in the last year to be eligible to win. MLH staff and advisors are not eligible to compete for prizes, but may enter hacks in the event.

Requirements

Hacks must be awesome, creative, and built on site at the event. All hacks must adhere to the MLH Code of Conduct to be eligible for presentation.

Hackathon Sponsors

Prizes

1st Place

Meteorites and Dell Sputnik Laptops 
Your hack is out of this world! Take this meteorite as a memento of your high-flying awesomeness. In 1958, the Sputnik became the first satellite humankind sent to space. Dell wants to help developers fly to new heights too, so they made the Dell Sputnik. It's the XPS 13... Developer Edition. Preloaded with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and with full driver support, this is the one true dev laptop.

2nd Place

Gold Casio Calculator Watches & Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 Laptops 
You're a star hacker! So naturally you want to squeeze the most from your tech. The Apollo Guidance Computer landed people on the moon with less memory than a toaster. So why can't your watch also be a calculator? And why can't your laptop also be a tablet? With your new stylish Casio, and your new high-tech Dell, you can push your tech to the limit just like Margaret Hamilton!

3rd Place

Floppy Disk Coasters & 21.5” Dell Monitors + Hard Drives 
You did an astronomical job! You deserve a rest after such a hard weekend of hacking. Here, fill this hard drive with episodes of Star Trek, Firefly, and any documentary with Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then sit back, relax, rest your drink on that weird save icon coaster MLH gave you, and watch them all on your brand new Dell monitor.

AWS: Best use of Amazon Web Services

Arduino Starter Kits 
Build the best hack using any AWS service. Need servers, storage, hosting, or databases? AWS has all that and more. Remember to claim your $100 free credit by following the link on your coupon card.

Blockchain: Best Bitcoin Hack

5 Bitcoins split between team
We're looking for the coolest project that incorporates bitcoin. This could be anywhere from using Blockchain data to make a game, having an online store that uses bitcoin, or a website to help beginners understand bitcoin!

BMW: Best 'Ride More' Hack

A visit to the BMW Motorrad HQ in Munich, Germany
Develop a working prototype of an app running on a mobile device that is a digital enabler of the offline world. Its clear effect must be to increase the desire of riders in general to ride more often, considering his or her personal motives. [More criteria on htp.mlh.io/info]

Braintree_PayPal: Most Innovative Use of Braintree, PayPal, or Venmo (2)

Razer BlackWidow Chroma keyboards for each member of the winning team
Build an innovative use of payment technology into your hack with Braintree, PayPal, or Venmo APIs / SDKs for our top prize.

Capital One: Best Use of the Capital One API

$250 Amazon Gift Card (each)
Capital One’s Hackathon API gives you access to a multitude of real public-facing data - such as ATM and bank branch locations - along with fake customer account data. This is all structured in a way that’s similar to how we actually run things here at Capital One. Use HTTP requests to access ATM and bank branch data, set up peer-to-peer transactions, simulate a weekly paycheck, or even schedule bills for customers.

Cyanogen Inc: Best use of the Cyanogen Platform SDK

Amazon Gift cards and RC DronesThe Platform SDK allows developers to have more access to the Android OS allowing them to deliver new innovations not possible on any other Android platform. We’re looking for the best use of the SDK leveraging an existing or new application and API(s) available in the SDK.

Domain.com: Most Clever Domain

We've got great surprises and swag for the winner (valued at $100)
Domain.com is the go-to site for your domain name registration and web hosting. Enter your most clever domain name, win our hearts and go home with the prize. With so many new top level domains available, there’s a lot of creative potential.

Microsoft: Develop with Microsoft (2)

Grand Prize is up to 4 Dell Inspiron 11s. Runner Up is up to 4 Kinect V2s for Windows. All participants qualify for free Website Hosting provided by Microsoft Azure and DreamSpark.
Develop with Microsoft. To qualify for the Microsoft hack use one or more of or APIs, Tools, or Services.
Qualifying products include, but are not limited too, Office365, Bing Search, OneDrive Cloud Storage, OneNote API, Visual Studio, Universal Windows Platform for Windows 10, and Kinect. For a full list of services visit The Microsoft API and reference catalog or better yet come by our booth!

Nest Labs : Best Use of the Nest API

A Nest Learning Thermostat, Nest Protect, or the new Nest Cam
Nest is about the thoughtful home. Use the Nest API to create a thoughtful integration beyond basic remote control.

Pebble: Best Pebble Hack

One Pebble Time for each member of the winning team.
We are looking for the most technically impressive and creative Pebble app that you can make!

SendGrid: Best Use of the SendGrid API

4 Amazon Echos
We're looking for the best hack using any of SendGrid's products. Send and Receive email from your apps, take advantage of our new triggered email tool threads.io or our load testing tool loader.io.

Sensel: Best Use of the Sensel Morph

Up to three Sensels (1 per team member) when the product ships
We will be lending out a Sensel Morph to 5 teams (1 device per team). Use this new input-device with ground-breaking pressure sensitivity and multi-touch technology in a new way and we'll reward the wining team with up to three devices (1 per team member) when the product ships.

Squarespace: Best Design & Use of Squarespace API

4 Cupcades (the Raspberry Pi-Powered Micro Arcade)
Creatively integrate Squarespace into your hack and build a beautiful website you can easily customize with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git and LESS.

Twilio: Best Use of the Twilio API

A USB-powered Portal 2 Sentry Turret for each team member, $1000 in Amazon credit to split amongst the team, $100 in Twilio credit per team member
The Twilio API for voice calling, SMS and multimedia messages is like ketchup: it goes great with every application. The winning team of this prize will not only cook up an impressive app but also use the API to bake in communications that make their results far more useful to users.

Most Out of This World Hack

A Star Theater Pro
Make the best space themed hack.

Cyanogen Inc: Best addition of the Cyanogen Platform SDK

Devpost Achievements

Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:

How to enter

Hackers will be invited to register for Hack the Planet based on their participation in Major League Hacking sanctioned events over the course of the past season. We will start with the hackers who attended the most events, and keep going level by level in a rolling lottery (attended 10 events, then 9, then 8, etc.) until the event is full.

Judges

Jennifer Dewalt

Jennifer Dewalt
Zube

Greg Kumparak

Greg Kumparak
TechCrunch

Bill Scott

Bill Scott
PayPal

Tess Rinearson

Tess Rinearson
Chain

Judging Criteria

  • Awesomeness
    We're not looking for business plans and slide decks will not be tolerated. Create technically changeling, well designed, all around awesome hacks.

Tell your friends

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.