By Colleen Murphy
For The Times of Trenton
EWING - Hackers aren't just people sitting in a dark room breaking code to get into Sony's email server or leak pictures that celebrities thought were private, and the participants in this year's HackTCNJ want you to know that.
At noon Saturday, The College of New Jersey kicked off its third annual hackathon, bringing together budding hackers from high schools and colleges across the nation to see who can create some of the best computerized projects in just 24 hours.
Hosted by TCNJ Association for Computing Machinery, HackTCNJ is an all-day and all-night event where engineers, designers and those interested in technology can showcase their talents, improve their abilities and learn new skills from mentors and other participants.
It's a far cry from leaking classified information obtained from government databases.
"The term 'hacking' has a negative connotation, which is incorrect, so I'm hopeful, as hackathons' popularity grows and grows, people understand the real meaning of hacking and how it's really about expert programming and innovation. There's not supposed to be the malicious side," TCNJ computer science department chair S. Monisha Pulimood said.
And the popularity of hackathons, TCNJ's in particular, has grown. In 2013, TCNJ hosted its first event, attended by about 60 students. This year, HackTCNJ registered 175, plus a waitlist, of even more, from 25 colleges across the country, according to TCNJ ACM president Nadya Pena.
Participants compete for prizes in various categories, including best-looking hack, best technical achievement, most unique, funniest and most useful, with prizes ranging from headphones and speakers to a $500 credit for GraphicStock, an online service that provides stock images.
Back for a second year, Jonathan Ruff and Yung Han Jeong of TCNJ got their idea after realizing the board games they played with their friends took too much time to set up. To solve that problem, and to save table space, the two are building a way for board games, like Monopoly, and their pieces to be displayed on a screen.
For their project, three Monmouth University students are taking the hit app Trivia Crack and making it into a classroom-friendly studying tool. Team members Jessica Kostiou, Taylor Klodowski and Justin Schlemm say that putting test material into a fun, competitive game will make students want to compete with each other. Plus, Schlemm pointed out, unlike flashcards, their app will allow teachers to create multiple choice questions, which can lead to better studying.
The game trend continued in two other rooms in the education building. TCNJ students Scott Bouloutian and Fernando Faria and Andrew Trachtman of Ursinus College were building an online maze that multiple users could compete in at once to be the first player to find the way out. In another room, TCNJ student Beau LaManna was building a program that can solve a Sudoku puzzle and then confirm that it is correct.
Ashton Hunter, a TCNJ sophomore, said he hopes to make a more organized version of Google Books. He recently participated in Rutgers' hackathon and said there's something new to learn each time.
"It's such an experience being around people who are all doing the same thing and seeing people implement their own things, in the their own ways, at what they're good at it," Hunter said.
As much as it offers the participating students, Pena said HackTCNJ also is the perfect place for the sponsors to look for up-and-coming programmers and developers.
"The companies have all the access to this talent, they can see people build projects right then and there," Pena said. Hackathons are considered by some to be the new career fair, she said, "because you can talk to students, you can watch them do team projects, watch them build things and assess their skills. Plus, it's tons of fun."
Front Rush, one of HackTCNJ's biggest sponsors for three years, builds programs to make the recruiting process for high school athletes and college coaches easier to navigate. The Lambertville company's co-founder, Sean Devlin, goes to TCNJ's hackathon to not only help the students work out their ideas and presentations, but also to look for potential interns and employees.
"What we've seen that's been unbelievable is the quality of projects that these kids are building, and the hacking that they're doing, has just improved substantially," Devlin said. "I mean, every year it just keeps getting better and better. ... We're seeing amazing stuff that these kids are building."
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