TADHack Japan exceeded everyone’s expectations, we achieved a series of firsts for TADHack as described in the TADHack Japan Day 1 weblog. Then on Day 2 the 11 pitches demonstrated the world-class Japanese talent in telecom application development. In this weblog we review the 5 hacks that received TADHack Japan prizes, in alphabetical order of the sponsor. The judges job was tough, all hacks were excellent. We’re in the process of editing the videos so as they become available we’ll be updating this weblog.

The Matrix prize of a Trossen HR-OS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton Robot went to the homerobot hack from Riza Alaudin Syah, Pratama Putra, Akhmad Syaikhul Hadi, Isa Ansharullah, and Abdurrosyid Broto Handoyo. The hack controls your home appliances, for example get camera snapshots and streams with a chat application using Matrix. The Trossen Robot has found a good home 🙂

The Skyway prize went to Masanori Machimura and Kaori Ohara for their hack Traaps. Traaps is a concatenation of Travel Maps. Using Skyway (WebRTC) they showed how a tourist and a guide can connect with real-time translation. It was a great demo of the power of Skyway in enabling fast application development.

The first Telestax prize went to Emergency Contact hack from Jinichi Ishizaki, Kyoko Minakuchi, Ryoju Ohata, Hiroki Kitabayashi, and Hiroki Maekawa with a mash-up of Telestax and Matrix to help get an emergency worker to a location, e.g. a hospital, as fast as possible. This was a great hack because it mashed up sponsor resources and showed clearly the powerful impact it can have on solving real-world problems. (Video coming soon).

The second Telestax winner was a fun hack, Konome by Masafumi Aida, Go Oshima, and Rie Koido which used Telestax and Skyway resources, amongst many others to create a chat app that used facial recognition and mapped onto your face that of a famous person. (video coming soon)

The third Telestax prize went to the hack Tardy Support by Hironori Fukamachi. Being late for work or school is stressful, on the train you can not make a call. Instead you can have a call made on your behalf. This hack mashed up Telestax with Tropo.