Last weekend, a group of engineers from Postmates traveled to Philadelphia where we sponsored PennApps, a three-day hackathon for college students across the country. The event gives young developers a chance to try out new technologies and build awesome apps in the process.
Postmates offered a $5,000 prize to the team who built the best app on the Postmates API, and we saw 38 teams integrate applications with Postmates in a matter of days. We were blown away by the creativity and innovation exhibited by these hackers, and we’re excited to share some of the ideas from the hackathon to inspire future apps to be built on our API.
Helix was an app that brings your doctor to your doorstep (so to speak). Using the Postmates API, they made it possible to get your prescriptions delivered on-demand. NeedATampon? was a crowdsourced app to deliver you a tampon from the nearest publicly available and free stash. We saw some charitable hacks as well -- Salvage brought leftover food from university dining halls to local food banks and Helping Hand delivered food and care packages from generous citizens to the homeless.
There were so many awesome hacks, but in the end we had to pick one winner and we chose Free for Fee. They built a way to get any of the free items advertised on Craigslist delivered to you on-demand for just the price of the Postmates delivery fee. The idea was pretty simple but incredibly useful -- how many times have you wanted something from the free section on Craigslist but didn’t want to go pick it up? Exactly!
Have a cool idea that you want to develop on our API? Email the team at [email protected] and tell us more. We’re still offering free delivery credits for the best ideas built on our API!
