Behold! My first entry for the Truveo Developer Challenge. What does it do?
"Want to know what the most popular videos on the Internet are? Easy! Simply install the Top Video gadget and you have instant access to the videos that everyone is watching at the moment, within the past day and within the past week. And you can watch the videos right from your Windows Sidebar meaning there is no need for you to open multiple browser windows just to keep up."
I've returned to the country where the Internet isn't as fast, and where there is no constant supply of electricity, and where a lot of things just don't work as they should. Fun. Total journey time from Vegas took about 17 hours, including a 3-hour stopover at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. I wonder though, why isn't free wifi provided at the Atlanta airport? They had all sorts of services where you had to pay $7.95 for 24 hours or thereabouts, and you couldn't even subscribe on the spot. This should be fixed.
Anyway, following the announcement of the Truveo Developer Challenge, I'm currently working on two entries. One involves implementing a Windows Sidebar gadget that displays the "Most Popular Video on the Internet" (pretty much), while the other is basically a web application that uses Google Maps to display the source (location) of the most recent videos found. The first one is taking shape while I'm still trying to work out the details of the latter. It's quite similar in concept to an app that I saw online a while back (the name escapes my mind at the moment) which shows the location where a Wikipedia article was edited within the last few seconds.
The Algorithm Finals was rather interesting as none of the finalists were able to finish up all three problems. It actually took quite a bit of time before the submission for the 250-point came in, by Petr. Apparently, the problems were actually much tougher than the ones in the semifinals.
A couple of hours after the system phase was over, the TopCoder founder, Jack Hughes gave a speech thanking the members, staff and sponsors for a successful event. This was immediately followed by the announcement of the winners.
Marathon Match Psyho
Algorithm tomek
Design Pops
Development romanoTC
Studio oninkxronda
The winners for the OpenAIM competition were also announced. Unfortunately, TriviaFrenzy didn't get anything. It turns out people don't like trivia games.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that it was really great experience. I'll be looking forward to TCO next year. What I'm not looking forward to though is my trip back to Lagos, which should take a total of about 17 to 18 hours.
The final day is off to a slow start with the algorithm finals starting at 10am. Meanwhile, there'll be two corporate forums by On Paint Technology and AOL with the first one already in progress.
Finally, after three days of fierce competition, we will find out who the winners are!
The Component Development Competition eventually came to an end at 5pm bringing a close to all of the competitions except for the Algorithm Finals which holds later today.
There were a couple of insightful presentations by Eli Lilly and VeriSign, and there were the Crowd Sourcing round table and the TopCoder developer forums which were also pretty interesting. Particularly, I was impressed with the scope of what VeriSign is actually involved in.
The Eli Lilly Burnout Revenge competition also held and it was pretty cool.
With just today to go, all I can say is that it's been a really fun and great experience.
We're off to a start with the second part of the Studio Design competition and the Component Development competition. The Studio Design finalists have about 4 and a half hours to finish up with their designs, while the developers have about 8 and a half hours to get their implementations up and running - including the test cases.
The Room 3 Algorithm Competition ended with SkidanovAlex, lewha0, marek.cygan and bmerry taking the first, second, third and fourth positions respectively.
Just before the wildcard round (where four runner-ups after the third position from each room compete against each other with the winner advancing to the final), the following finalists were through to the finals: Burunduk1, ACRush, John Dethridge, Petr, Eryx, vlad89, andrewzta, ardiankp and Yarin advance to the finals.
I left the Mirage soon after the wildcard round started because I was rather exhausted and had to get some sleep. tomek emerged as the winner of the wildcard round and also advanced to the finals.
The algorithm competition finals will be taking place on the final day, Thursday, the 15th. Meanwhile, the second round of Studio Design and the component development competition will be taking on day 3.
In other news, Eli Lilly will be organising a Burnout Revenge competition today which involves orchestrating the greatest car crash ever, or something along those lines. I tried my hands on the game and it was pretty cool. It's going to be fun. They're giving away and iPod Touch, an iPod and an iPod nano (I didn't really catch this) to contestants who come in first, second and third places respectively. I'm not sure what the judging criteria is but I'll try to find out.
A couple of hours after the completion of the algorithm competition for the second room, the finalists off the third and final room were introduced, as usual, prior to the commencement of the competition.
Room 2 winners announced
Additionally, photos for Day 2 can be viewed here.
There was an AOL Presentation right after the algorithm competition advancers were announced. They talked about Truveo, which is, put in simple terms, a robust platform for searching videos. Truveo basically crawls the web for videos and stores all sorts of useful data during indexing which simplifies the search process and makes it easier to find videos that you are looking for. AOL are also providing an open API that can be used with the Truveo platform. The Truveo Developer Challenge was also officially announced which involves developing a useful widget using the Truveo API. Sounds interesting.
Meanwhile, the second set of finalists for the Algorithm Competition Semi-finals were introduced. The Coding Phase is still in progress and it appears every one of the finalists has been able to finish up with the 250-point problem so far.
We're off to a start with the first room of the alogrithm competition semi-final. The competitors were divided into three batches, referred to as "rooms".
After the Coding Phase was completed, ACRush came in first place with 1360.54 points, with Jan_Kuipers coming in second with 1025.63 and a distant third by Burunduk2 with 692.68 points. Fourth, fifth and sixth places were occupied by malcin, Burunduk1 and Klinck with 620.99, 620.26 and 610.21 points respectively.
After the Challenge Phase, ACRush still maintained first position with 1410.56 points with Burunduk1 second and malcin third with 1204.43 and 620.99 points respectively.
The advancing finalists were announced after the System Testing Phase was completed with Burunduk1 taking ifrst place and ACRush and John Dethridge as runners-up.
The Welcome Reception was pretty nice, which took place about an hour after the with some speeches by TopCoder staff, people went around getting to know each other and there was plenty of good food to go round. I was pretty exhausted so I couldn't write an update at that time.
The sponsors (AOL, betfair, NSA, BT, Verisign, Eli Lilly) were all set up and apparently, they're competing for more attention from coders. Every one of them have gaming systems with large screen displays setup, except for the NSA. Small wonder no one really likes them. Okay, just kidding.
Looking forward to the algorithm semifinals tomorrow. It's going to be fun. We're just getting warmed up! Additionally, AOL is organising a scavenger hunt for a chance to win an iPod Touch. Looks like AOL is in the lead for grabbing everyone's attention so far.
I put something together to help out with knowing what games are available.
AOL System: XBox 360 Games: Guitar Hero III (although I've only watched it being played, this game is awesome), FIFA 08
betfair System: Nintendo Wii Games: Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports
BT System: Nintendo Wii Game: Mario Kart Wii
Eli Lilly System: XBox 360 Game: Burnout (I'm not sure of which version)
Verisign System: Nintendo Wii Game: Mario Kart Wii
Meanwhile, some more gaming at the event
And did I mention that Guitar Hero rocks?
Chances are there'd probably be a six-way Mario Kart showdown. I'd like to see that happen.
With the Marathon Match over and the Component Design competition coming to a close in a few minutes, we are getting close to the end of the first day.
Meanwhile, every one of the sponsors seems to have set up a gaming system, so there's apparently lots of fun to go round.
The day's been great so far.
I'm currently working on a way of integrating appropriate photos from the photo album with each individual post. I will be looking into the Picasa Web Album API which I just came across.
The Component Design Competition has just started. Meanwhile, the Marathon Match competitors have just taken a break for lunch. Met argolite, who has consistently been the top designer for quite a long while now.
I also uploaded some videos to Youtube, but the video compression is awful so I will upload them elsewhere and update this post as soon as I do so.
It took me quite a while to find the Mirage, but thankfully, I didn't have to go through too much trouble. I'm just simply going to do incremental updates and will have to implement organisation of posts based on time (I was too lazy to do this the last time I touched the source for this blog).
In any case, I arrived at the Mirage just in time to catch the Studio Design Competition in progress. This is my first time here, and I have to say it is pretty cool. Nice, huge and fun. The Marathon Match also started on schedule at 9:00 am. Everything is on schedule so far. The Component Design competition will be starting in about 30 minutes.
If there's one word I've got TCO, it's "awesome." It's really nice seeing people from all over the world coming together and interacting.
So far, I've met TheCois, d000hg, mess, and ivern and a bunch of others whose handles I haven't been able to get ahold of, yet.
The sponsors are also setup, and apparently, the most fun appears to be coming from Verisign and betfair, each of them having a Wii setup with a large TV screen. Pretty cool. Also the first time I got to play with a Wii and it's very, very nice. I'll have to look into obtaining one as soon as possible.
I will be creating photo albums based on the day; the album for today can be found here. I will also be updating the album with tags and descriptions regularly.
The entire trip took about 19 hours - about 12.5 hours from Lagos to Atlanta, 2 hours to get through Passport Control (talk about being efficient) and 4.5 hours from Atlanta to Vegas. I got to the airport around 11:15pm Vegas time on Friday, the 9th. It's been pretty nice so far. The weather is alright. The Internet is fast! Everything is pretty well organised. Of course, I'm just stating the obvious, but compared to Nigeria? Well, I can say that Nigeria is lacking, and that's me being modest.
I couldn't take any pictures during my trip since I hadn't got a camera during the trip. Had to pick one up (Canon Powershot SX100IS; initially planned to get the Powershot SD1000 but they were out) at the Wal-Mart Supercenter. Not exactly what I wanted, but the picture quality's great, at least. I find it weird that they have the products on display locked up, so you have to get a store attendant to actually help you pick up the items that you wish to buy. What's with that? That's got to be one of the most inefficient ways of shopping, ever. I'm staying at the Palace Station Hotel and it's rather nice here.
The TopCoder Open starts in a few hours at the MGM Mirage, which is located on the strip and I'll be writing my own perspective of the event for the next 4 days. I'll be taking a lot of pictures and probably record some videos as well. So stay tuned!
