4 Ways Domain.com Can Elevate Your Hack
My name is Emily Yu and I’m a Coach at Major League Hacking. As a Zoom University student, the transition to online learning has been tough. With the change in times giving rise to new and unique problems, technology has become more important than ever. What better way to solve a problem than by deploying your hacks online, so that everyone else can easily apply them to their own lives?
Today, we’ll be taking a deep dive into how some hackers have used Domain.com’s FREE domains to share their hacks with everyone around the world.
Now let’s take a look at some of the numerous projects hackers have built using Domain.com!
Project: Invasive Species Detector @ http://invasivespeciesde.tech/
Ever wanted to whip up a platform for your app, but didn’t have time? Tristan from AuburnHacks interfaced with web development for the first time, and used Domain.com to easily put his new project, Invasive Species Detector, up on the web.
Invasive Species are animals that are harmful to the environment and Tristan’s project lets us identify these creatures in photos! Invasive Species Detector allows us to upload images that may contain an invasive species and identifies them using IBM Watson.
As someone who enjoys hiking and nature-focused activity, I would love to be able to know whether those bushes on the side of the path are just shrubs, or if they’re causing harm to the environment. With Tristan’s hack, I know that I’ll be able to access this information whenever I want — that is, once I’m off the mountain. Hiking is definitely more engaging when you know more about the location you’re hiking in!
Project: Donation Spark @ https://donation-spark.tech
With COVID, many small businesses are suffering, and many choose to seek out local businesses intentionally to help them stay afloat. At the CUNY Hackathon, Richard Zhou, Edward Noe, Zachary Heidel, and Jonathan Hail simplified this process with Donation Spark, allowing us to automatically donate when businesses update their statuses, such as releasing a new menu item.
I know for me, there are a lot of small boutiques and coffee shops that I frequent and would hate to see any of them close down. Donation Spark even has options to save and see others’ saved causes, allowing us to form a community of customers and help support causes that our friends and family love.
I’ve been making a point to go to businesses that I want to support every week, and while it’s a chore on my end, I’m glad to help see them through the pandemic. I can’t wait to be able to automatically donate to the causes that I want, saving me hours out of my schedule.
Project: Chicane @ http://chicane.online/
The conventional standard for data representation has always defaulted to various graphs, but what if we could make that more interactive. Chicane was born out of a curiosity for how data from Twitter sentiment could be visualized in 3-dimensions.Milan Wolff, Aditya Sinha, Sudhanshu Kumar, Nangokosu Nguyen, and Hanif Fauzan worked to make this a reality.
While many decide to host their projects on a web platform, Chicane’s Augmented Reality functionality focuses on a much more computing intensive platform. The team at HoyaHacks instead decided to use a website to help increase the accessibility of their product, providing links for downloading and usage of their product.
With how complex their hack is, I know that for me, I appreciated the guidance from the developers on how to use it, and I’m sure that other users will as well. Collaboration is the key to advancement, and using Domain.com to provide an avenue for it will push us towards more advancements such as this!
Project: Pushing for Progress @ http://pushforprogress.tech/
If seeing all these mind blowing projects is making you antsy, take a moment to breathe with Pushing for Progress! Kenook Shtay, Parth Sharma, Miniapple Emily, and Saad Benatti recognized this need at Code.Jam 2020 by keeping track of our eating, sleeping, meditation, and exercise habits to simplify our lifestyles.
Not only does Pushing for Progress implement many lifestyle management features, but also exhibits a calming user interface. Each feature has been tuned to use calming colors and design, further pushing towards their mission.
If you’re like me, COVID has sent my sleeping and eating cycles into a roller coaster, pushing my bedtime back and forth 12 hours at a time. Knowing that I can rely on Pushing for Progress at any time with their accessible user interface, I’m looking forward to making strides within my own life.
After seeing all these projects, I know that I’m stoked to put one of my projects up for the world to see, and I hope you feel the same way too! Let’s take a look at how we can get started.
- First off, head over to https://www.domain.com/mlh, and search for your domain name.
2. Follow the steps given until “Billing & Payment Information,” and here’s where it gets a bit tricky.
As a partner, Domain.com provides MLH hackathon participants with promo codes each weekend for MLH hackathon participants for projects to gain access to free domain names. In the box to the bottom right, make sure to set both durations to the right to 1 Year, and enter the promo code for your event, which should set the price to $0.00. If it isn’t 1 Year, then the coupon code won’t activate, so make sure that this information is correct!
Domain.com places the power of app publishing at our fingertips, whether it’s for communication or demonstration. For more info on the initiatives being offered, check out hack.mlh.io/prizes.
I can’t wait to see what you’ll build at your next hackathon, so be sure to make your project publicly available using Domain.com!
