PennApps Fall 2K15: The Noteworthy And Not Worthy

Ah, PennApps: "the original college hackathon hosted at the nation's first university," which is apparently Wells Fargo Center now. Because of the growing number of participants every semester, they decided to move it out of our cozy Engineering Quad and into every computer nerd's comfort zone: a professional sports stadium. 

Hackers from all over the world came for a piece o' the $60K prize pie from sponsors like Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. But with less than 48 hours to code something from scratch, there's gonna be Ubers and there's gonna be Oopsers. Here's our review of this season's harvest:

1st Place: FifthSense

Hardware/software that makes smart devices accessible to the visually impaired

+ They invented the braille of the future
+ Has a "virtual cane" to alert users to nearby obstacles
- Constantly reminds the user that they're blind

2nd Place: Gaitorade

A product that analyzes your walking for diagnostic and health applications

+ Had no problems with mic volume during their presentation
- Excludes the entire market of people who can walk just fine
- Could've achieved a second-order pun if it was aid instead of ade

3rd Place: SemQuery

A code search engine that uses structure and semantics

+ Makes code way more searchable, if you're into that
- Extremely boring to the average layperson

Eye Opening: DigitalCoffee

Glasses that vibrate if you start to fall asleep

+ Great way to let your professor know you're trying to stay awake
+ Buster did it better
- Probably best if you use this in the privacy of your own home and nowhere else

Lost and: Fin-der

Tinder for financial advisers

- Sounds like the most boring version of Tinder ever
+ Perfect for people who want to exclusively date financial advisers
- A financial adviser would probably tell you not to buy this app

Questionable: What Would Donald Say?

A simple app that spits out Trump quotes

+ Took just 3.5 hours to make, out of the allotted 48
- Nobody really cares what Donald would say
- Everything you'd want out of the app you can get from the demo video

Complete Crap: Turdlr

An app that lets you locate and rate bathrooms

+ The long-awaited Yelp of toilets
+ Good one for their resume
+ Promotes a culture of cleanliness and hospitality

Slide To The Right: asdfghjkl

An app that turns your keyboard into a trackpad

+ The app name actually makes sense
+ Eliminates the time spent moving fingers from the keyboard to trackpad
+ Another game-changer for the chronically lazy

Noteworthy: InstaNote

An app that converts the text seen by camera to an electronic note

+ Makes scheduling, translating, and note-taking much more efficient
+ Great for when you want to read a sign irl but also on your phone
- Still requires touching our phones, which is basically like typing

Um, Okay: PennNaps

Not really sure what to say about this

- Their info page could use some spell check
- The name is deceptively sensible
+ Clearly put a lot of effort into it

Anyway, those are our 10 most noteworthy. View all the apps at the PennApps Fall 2015 Submission Gallery, or check out our coverage from previous years: Fall 2K13, Winter 2K14, Fall 2K14, and Winter 2K15.