Apparently it was some kind of recipe / shopping / mash up thing called Whisk. Sounded good. Sounded familiar. Then I remembered this from CadburyHack

Cadbury UK

@CadburyUK

Best use of APIs at #CadburyHack - Whisk team for their recipes mashup pic.x.com/e9ztkuy3

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Now, I didn't see either the TV show or the final presentation at the Hack Day. For all I know, they're two completely separate apps. Indeed, quoth The Hodge

Dom Hodgson

@TheHodge

@girlgeeks @edent bit of research tbh, I think they did build the app at the hack daybut using the data and backend of foodient.com

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That last link points at http://www.foodient.com/ - a site co-founded by Nick Holzherr.

So, at the very least, the app was built off a back end that the team were intimately familiar with having created it.

I asked Nick, about it, and he cleared things up.

Nick Holzherr

@nickholzherr

Replying to @edent@edent We used @whiskapp APIs for recipes (and stated that) but app (Olympic event party organising) was 100% original. Hope you liked it.

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Now, the CadburyHack event had a top prize of £10,000. That's a hell of an incentive.

I wouldn't have been surprised if people had pre-built components, or even developed entire apps - I did some prep for my app.

But it just doesn't feel... sporting. Building a hack on top of your own product seems to me to be against the spirit of a hackday. But perhaps I'm just bitter that I didn't win!

How Much Is Too Much?

I suppose that the Platonic Ideal of a hackday is that one attends as a blank slate, sees the technology on offer, form a team with people you've never met, hack all through the night, and produce something groundbreaking.

That never happens. Most people have at least half an idea of what they want to build, they team up with their friends, re-use components they've build previously, and hack with an eye on the prize categories. "Doesn't seem to be much competition for best use of Erlang!"

Take, for example. my Android Theremin. I can honestly say that I didn't write a single line of code - or do any research on the Android sound APIs - until the second morning of the hackday. I didn't reuse any code that I'd previously written either. However, the idea had been buzzing around in my head for a month or so. I'd watch Theremin videos, and looked at the science behind them just to keep the idea percolating.

Is that too much prep?

My CadburyHack was a different affair:

The Twitter and FourSquare code were originally written by me for other projects - so I reused them (Yay for Object Oriented Programming!). I'd used XPath before to scrape a site - so adapting it for Cadbury's wasn't hard. The barcode scanning integration was ripped out of an existing project. Even the template from the page and the font embedding code was recycled.

Is there a difference between code you've previously written and code you've plundered from some Open Source project? Is there a difference between your prior knowledge of coding, and what you pick up on the day? Is there a difference between building on an API you've used a hundred times, and one you've only just seen?

Hackdays are fun. The prizes are a nice bonus. But, ultimately it's about showing off and proving yourself within a limited time in front of a crowd. If you "cheat" you're really only cheating yourself out of the pride of hacking something original.

Still, whether the prize is a new phone, or ten grand, then incentive to bend the spirit of a hackday is strong.

Or am I just making a fuss over nothing?

As it happens, after a bit of gentle poking, some of the terms were clarified.

The event itself went rather well, but I'd like to point out a few points where it didn't quite live up to the Hack Day Manifesto.

• Registration - due to some confusion with the registration form, some entrants were turned away.
• Checking for clashes - sadly NHS Hack Day was also on. It's hard to avoid clashes, but both seemed well attended.
• WiFi - a bit patchy and no security.
• Power sockets - far too few, requiring the staff to go out and buy more.
• Dietary requirements - lack vegetarian food. The catering staff seemed somewhat taken aback that veggie friendly fare was asked for. After a few polite comments, food was provided.
• APIs - there were none on offer. We did get a bunch of nice Cadbury's assets to play with though.
• Prizes - a contentious one this. The prizes were, if anything, too generous. £500 and new phone is quite an incentive. The top prize was £10,000! This lead to a number of professional teams entering, and some people bringing along pre-built apps to polish. Naturally, I'm just bitter because I didn't win anything.

That said, the event was very good - especially as a first effort from the team.

A specially mention on the "Accessibility" front - this was the first event I've been to where a sign language interpreter was provided.

Oh, and while some hackdays give away stickers, memory sticks, and even phones - Cadbury's provided basically unlimited chocolate! Including a 1KG bar of Dairy Milk for everyone!

My Hack

My hack allowed a user to scan a Cadbury's barcode, see nutrional information about their treat, as well as "checking in" to the chocolate on Twitter. I then added some gubbins about finding your local sports centre & tweeters near you. It looked a bit like this:

So, anyway, here's my 3 minute demo video:

Android

The Android aspect is pretty simple, it just calls ZXing and then throws the result to an HTML5 site. Which, should make it easy to port to any other system.

Cadbury's API

As I've discussed before, Xpath is a wonderful thing. I've turned Cadbury's Nutrition Information site into an ersatz API.

I used Yahoo's YQL Console to construct a JSON feed of the dietary info.

Which means we can display data like this for any of Cadbury's products:

What's Next

A number of people commented on how useful the dietary aspect was. As a vegetarian, I'm often a bit unsure as to which sweets are veggie friendly. I know coeliacs face similar issues.

Translating all of Cadbury's barcodes into their relevant ID numbers may prove a bit of a challenge - but it would be a good excuse to try every single one of Cadbury's products....