Winning apps from tech developer event announced

Uber, developers, designers, Lagos, cool ideas all came together at the Uber Developer Hackathon Lagos event earlier in July.

The event is the local version of the global Uber Request hackathon , a virtual hackathon on challengepost for third-party developers which is powered by Uber. Uber recently added access that allows third party apps dispatch Uber cabs to its API.

Tech giant, Uber partnered with TechCabal to encourage Nigerian developers to enter the competition and build solutions relevant to Lagos.

Along with cash prizes and networking at the global hackathon, the top three Nigerian third party apps were up for an exclusive brainstorm with Nigerian tech masterminds; Google’s Emeka Afigbo, Etisalat Nigeria ‘s Head of Digital Media, Adia Sowho; iROKOPartners founder and CEO, JasonNjoku; Paga’s TayoOviosu and Pulse.ng’s Richard Tanksley. The masterminds also doubled as judges for the event.

According to TechCabal, six developers/developer teams demoed on the day, and here are the best three based on cross assessment by the five masterminds:

1. Executer adds Google Calendar functionality to Uber’s Request endpoint to figure out a user’s itinerary and request an Uber automatically in time for any scheduled event and movement.

2. SMS for Uber. BerSimpler gives users the ability to request a ride using SMS. The developer, Femi Taiwo is the co-founder of INITS, the Lagos-based software firm behind BambooSMS+, an app that let’s users backup SMSs, calls and contacts.

3. Beatraffik is a crowdsourced traffic reporting app with a native map. The team reworked the web app and added to the Uber Request API to provide a more accurate representation of a route with reports on traffic detours and security updates, thus giving a more accurate ETA and fare estimates.

See the gallery above for examples of the top three winners from the hackathon.