Augmented Reality Pervading Theme at the TapSense & AT&T ‘Hacker Bus’ Hackathon

SAN FRANCISCO - Nov. 12, 2014 - PRLog -- TapSense, the leading independent mobile ad exchange, today announced the winner of its 2014 Hacker Bus hackathon. Hackers traveled from San Francisco to the GDC Next conference in Los Angeles for the four-day event. Supported by key partners from AT&T, Nvidia, Women Who Code, and Pocket Gamer, the TapSense Hacker Bus was a pilot initiative to foster relationships with digital publishers and promote mobile app and game development.

Thirty-five of the nation’s top mobile developers assembled into various teams to impress the esteemed list of judges, including:

> Alex Donn, Developer Evangelist, AT&T Mobility
> David Coombes, Developer Program Manager, Nvidia
> Alaina Percival, CEO, Women Who Code
> Chloi Rad, US News Correspondent, Pocket Gamer
> Tobiah Marks, Game Evangelist, Microsoft and more: http://www.tapsense.com/hackerbus/

"We have a deep appreciation and understanding of the mobile industry and its developers. In fact, a handful of our own engineers participated and traveled with the competition. I am excited to see the creativity that emerged with AR,” says Gregory Kennedy, Senior Vice President, Marketing at TapSense.

The TapSense Hacker Bus finalists (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV8TtWxVESEv1RLgpD...) include:

> 1st place: Game of Suits (created by Amar Chitimalli) Unique game play that is fun and addicting, Game of Suits offers an immersive turn-by-turn “Match 3” experience with elements from poker.

> 2nd place: #Selfie #Snap #Adventure!!! (created by Angelo Hizon, Yuping Zhang, and George Katsaros) A fast-paced Google Cardboard, iOS, and Android adventure photography game where it’s always time for selfie.

> 3rd place: Platonic Solids Experience (created by @Yosun) Discover the properties of platonic solids in a magical and intuitive way using augmented reality. Learn by playing geometric counting games on vertices, faces, and edges.

With the Oculus Rift providing a preview of where human-machine interaction is headed, Google Cardboard further blurs the line between mobile devices and augmented reality.

George Katsaros mentions, “Selfie Snap Adventure was inspired by the popularity of smartphone culture and our obsession with images. Our smartphones contain sophisticated hardware and can truly deliver experiences many consumers may not be aware of. We had a great time on the Hacker Bus and look forward to future TapSense hackathons.”

Kennedy concludes, "It was a huge success and everyone had a good time. The quality of the output far exceeded our expectations. We are planning to do something bigger and even more ambitious in 2015. We're not ready to announce it quite yet - stay tuned."

For more information on the winning teams and conference highlights, check out the Hacker Bus overview on the TapSense blog: http://tapsense.com/blog/2014/10/30/tapsense-hacker-bus-l...

About TapSense
TapSense is the leading independent mobile advertising exchange, and has been featured in publications including Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, VentureBeat, GigaOM, CMO.com, MediaPost, Entrepreneur and AdExchanger. Founded in 2011 and based in San Francisco, California, investors include top Silicon Valley venture firms, Ron Conway’s SV Angel and Maynard Webb, a board member of Salesforce and Yahoo.

TapSense was named one of the 2014 AlwaysOn Global 100 Companies to Watch, and is a member of the Mobile Marketing Association.