HackKitty's Blog

This is where HackKitty showcases existing hacks and potential project ideas for social good here. Also, this is a good place to find #hackkittyselfies.

[hackduke]

TransitShed Visualization for El Camino Real BRT

Here in the Bay Area, the transit system has problems with connectivity. And we have a tradition o...

A super interesting visualization on the Bay Area's transit. At the Hack My Ride hackathon, Adina Levin and Ian Rees created a tool to visualize transitshed differences between transit service scenarios. This allows users to explore how each scenario provides access to housing, major employment centers, and service to transit-dependent populations.

[gklst-blog]

I was recently invited to speak at HackDuke in North Carolina to attend their “Code for Good” hackathon. My mission was simple: Inspire the audience to make a difference.

Let’s set stage….

HackDuke, Duke University, North Carolina. Event Name: Code For Good

A buzz fills the room...

[hackduke]

GreenIt

A team of hackers in Pakistan decided to crowdsource and bring the "power of the people" to the government by collecting environmental complaints from citizens through Google+ and reporting them to the government, rewarding those who are active.

Not only do they attempt to tackle environmental responsibility, but they also consider the crucial communication gap between society and government!

[hackduke]

Five Healthcare Hacks at PennApps X

Patient, doctor, and caregiver apps for a better tomorrow

Here are some healthcare hacks that were made at PennApps earlier this season! Massive props to the hackers who worked on these!

[hackduke]

Part 2 of Linda Peng's series of how different people learned how to code! This features a few of our very own Duke alums like Cheney Tsai, (who works at Google) and Stephanie Chang (who works at Khan Academy)!

Nicole: "And go to hackathons! I’ve found that’s a great place to try out a new tech stack and get introduced to lots of new ideas (and people); I know a lot of beginners can be a bit wary of going to their first hackathon, but they tend to be very welcoming places – we don’t bite, I promise!"

[hackduke]

A huge shoutout to our very own Duke U alum Linda Peng on helping us see the different experiences in learning how to code!

"I began to wonder: what were the stories of people who were able to successfully learn how to code? What frustrations did they face when they were just starting out, and how did they get past them? What advice would they give to beginners?"

Lenny: "I decided to learn JavaScript and Ruby about a year ago. I pushed hard by doing tutorials and looking for opportunities to implement what I learned. I attended a LOT of Hackathons and meetups. I also started attending conferences. That helped me meet people who were professionally doing the things I wanted to do. By meeting people, I was able to get a holistic look at what I still needed to learn."

[hackduke]

Access To Anyone Who Needs It

At HackTheNorth, Michael Olaya, Alisha Ukani, Chris Bolton and Steven Connors created Project Seed, which is an off grid web server configured as a wireless access point. Anyone can access it from their mobile phone or their desktop computer and it is mounted with a TB full of meaningful information from Wikipedia, MIT Open Courseware and more!

This is an amazing step towards empowering local communities that might not have stable access to the internet with more information and a place to learn.

Check out their Github repo here! https://github.com/alisha/seed

[hackduke]

Music To My Ears

At the Music Ed Hackathon in New York last year, Kai Cheng, Salil Navgire, Langdon Crawford and Ying-Ying Zhang created AIR Trainer, a way for students to learn to match pitches using a leap motion and a computer. It's a great way to explore music without the use of any one instrument!

Take a look at their demo video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHyZ_1069yw&feature=youtu.be

[hackduke]

Aiding Depression

MoodTools is a depression aid created by Eddie Liu from my most favorite place ever, Duke University! It's a tool to help those who are struggling with depression by providing helpful features that assist in tracking negative thoughts, creating suicide prevention and safety plans, providing information and self-help guidelines, testing for symptom severity and boosting moods with lots of fun YouTube videos!

Check it out here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moodtools.moodtools

[hackduke]

Protecting Elephants And Preventing Wildfires

Super super awesome! Mercy Sigey from Kenya developed a sensor that could detect motion in a 9 meter radius with Arduinos that that act as environmental sensors and notify park officials of the presence of poachers and wildfires. You go girl! (:

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/09/23/19-year-old-kenyan-girl-made-simple-device-stop-poaching-and-save-elephants?cmpid=tp-ptnr-upworthy

http://www.innovatekenya.org/finalist/national-park-tech/

[hackduke]

Informing Citizens About Restaurant Cleanliness

NC Food Inspector was created by Code for Durham and is an app to help visualize the restaurants in Durham and their sanitation rating. A huge boon to health and sanitation inspectors everywhere to get a quick look at the sanitary scores and comments based off of location!

http://ncfoodinspector.com/

[hackduke]

Addressing and Raising Awareness for Poverty

The first project that I want to showcase lies under the inequality track, specifically addressing homelessness. This was made by Nick Jones, during his time at McKinney, for a homeless shelter, Urban Ministries of Durham.

Spent is an interactive game that immerses you in the world people who are struggling on the brink of homelessness and challenges you to survive the month without running out of money. Spent walks you through the tough choices and decisions that lower income families and individuals have to face everyday.

http://playspent.org/

[hackduke]

HackDuke Fall 2014 Registration Opens Today

I hope you all are excited as I am to begin registering for HackDuke Fall 2014! This year, we have four tracks of impact:

Inequality

Energy & Environment

Health & Wellness

Education

We will be providing some really awesome tech and non-profit experts to help everyone further craft their ideas as well as posting ideas for potential projects and showcasing existing projects and hacks for social good on this blog!

The link to register is below! Get at it!

http://reg.hackduke.org

Purrs and kisses,

HackKitty

[hackduke]

HackDuke: Code for Good is Back for Fall 2014!

awhf;ea gijo;aefsff;aergar;ji fewwj (Yikes, it's hard typing with paws...)

Hey everyone!

I'm super excited to announce that HackDuke: Code for Good is back for Fall 2014! Check out our website and add your email to our mailing list to keep updated with the different themes, cool new initiatives that the HackDuke team has planned for you, education week, mentors and experts that will be coming as well as the exciting swag we'll be getting!

Additionally, this will be the place where I'll be blogging about the experience of organizing hackathons as well as posting some pictures of my fun and entertaining adventures!

Looking forward to a kickass Fall hackathon season!

Purrs and kisses,

Hack Kitty