48 hours, 12 developers, 3 applications – Intridea at the Rails Rumble

Last weekend the 2008 Rails Rumble took place; the Rumble is a 48-hour competition in which teams of developers must build complete web applications from the ground up using Rails and available open-source tools. Intridea was a sponsor of the competition this year and we also fielded three teams of four developers. It was an intense weekend but in the end we all launched our applications. Below is a short summary of the three applications and the teams that built them.

Love+Loathe

Adam Bair, Michael Bleigh, Doug Ramsay, and Xue Yong Zhi took the weekend to build a site to let people list the things that they love and hate called Love+Loathe. With a strong eye for a simple and eye-catching interface, Love+Loathe makes it easy to make lists, browse through other people’s lists, and follow your friends and people whose interests coincide with your own.

Run1Mile

Dave Naffis, David Potsiadlo, Dave Pranata, and Chris Selmer addressed the difficulty in starting an exercise program for people not already in. Run1Mile is a simple six-week program to provide a gradual introduction to physical fitness with activities that build up to the goal of running one mile. You can track your progress as you complete the program, motivating you to keep gong and achieve your goals!

Lyricist

Raymond Law, Doug March, Paul Ostazeski, Bryan Ray wanted to change how we find lyrics for our iTunes library. We have all had that experience of hearing a song and wondering what the lyrics are. The online space has been taken over by countless sites with advertisements and marquee tags, we wanted to change that. Lyricist is a simple application that helps you find lyrics to your favorite songs without all of the distractions and annoyances.

Overall it was a great weekend and our teams put together some fantastic applications. In the next few days we’ll be posting more about lessons learned and the process from each of the teams’ perspective (you can see Raymond Law’s thoughts here), but for now we all need to go catch our breath! Thanks to everyone organizing the Rumble and to all the other competitors for making it a great and memorable weekend.