On March 3 at the Pentagon, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, Chief Information Officer of the Army, announced the launching of Apps for the Army, a broad web and mobile application challenge (explicitly not “contest”) for active duty Army, National Guard members, and civilians working for the Army.

This follows other popular development challenges: the D.C. government’s Apps for Democracy project and Sunlight Labs’ Apps for America contest. These exercises have established that even moderate financial rewards will encourage both professional and casual developers to experiment creatively and share their code. The total prize money is $30,000 and will be split between entries in categories under the labels of Data-Driven; Warfighting; Mission-Specific; Local-Aware Mobile; Training & Education; Morale, Welfare, and Education; and Personnel & Career Management. One hundred teams and individuals can enter the challenge, and the competition will run until May 15.

The motivation began from an awareness of the power of the maker/hacker mentality; in fact, Lt. Gen. Sorenson began by stating strongly that the project attempts to change “how the Army functions.” Sorenson cited the example of two overseas deployed soldiers who had pressed for access to a Linux server to write web applications to share and collaborate on mission data. Unfortunately, however, due to a variety of barriers, it took six months for them to gain access to a server. Yet, once access was granted (near the end of their tour of duty), the soldiers were able to get an app online in two weeks, and before long the platform was expanded to serve around 14 or 15 different applications.

The Army has discovered that a young generation of “digital native” soldiers, as Sorenson put it, often have some software development experience, and that new tools, inexpensive open source software in particular, are enabling even “non-professional” programmers to write useful applications, often in rapid time. Hence, the Defense Information Systems Agency has adapted the military’s cloud computing environment, the Rapid Access Computing Environment (RACE), to serve the challenge as a development platform and as a demonstration environment. Of particular interest, Linux server environments and development toolkits for Android, IPhone, and Blackberry will be provided.

The source code for the applications will be hosted at forge.mil, the military’s code repository. Lt. Gen. Sorenson stated the Army is interested in exploring how they can collaborate with open source communities and local technology organizations in this and future endeavors. Also, DARPA has expressed interest in the Army’s project, according to Lt. Gen. Sorenson, and in general collaboration with hackerspaces.

HacDC, a D.C. technology collaborative, would welcome all Army soldiers and personnel in the National Capital Region to stop by to talk about mobile application and web development. The challenge explicitly encourages the creative use of new languages and mobile environments that many HacDC members have significant experience with.

Last week, the phone application start-up Twilio obtained a nice little bundle of press for its announcement that it had obtained $3.7M in funding from Union Square Ventures.

To a couple of us at HacDC who have been playing with their product for a few months, this was not so surprising. They have built a clean and intuitive API for rapidly building phone applications using web services.

On Thursday, January 14, at 7:00PM at HacDC, Todd Fine and Darius Roberts will introduce the Twilio API (HTTP requests to dynamic XML), demonstrate two applications built using Python and Ruby, and finally lead a brainstorming session about other creative and artistic possibilities using the Twilio platform.

The first application is a distributed microphone for group-created ambient soundscapes (tentatively titled “Spacerad”). Twilio’s platform can record audio over the phone and offer a callback URL for the saved WAV file. Using XMPP (the instant messaging technology used, for example, in Google Talk), this URL is immediately sent to a Python script running on a local machine which can interact with a number of audio environments Todd likes to use (Pure Data, Supercollider, and, hopefully, Ableton Live). Hence, even a large audience, with the ubiquitous cellphone, can provide the samples for an open-ended and cooperative musical experience.

The second application is based on a classic phone application of the tape answering machine era. The creative band They Might Be Giants once had a Brooklyn local phone number, popular in the eighties and nineties, that would play some of their songs off an answering machine. While this service was “always busy, often broken,” with Twilio’s API, we can create a service serving TMBG songs that far surpasses the original Dial-a-Song in functionality, hopefully without losing its charm. Darius will present his Ruby-based version of Dial-a-Song.

This event is free and open to the public, and we encourage anyone interested in Twilio, Python/Ruby, Soundscapes, or even They Might Be Giants to attend!

When: 7:00PM-8:30, Thursday, January 14
Where: HacDC Space, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010
Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

The Wall Street Journal had a fantastic article on November 13 (“Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis”) about physical computing, hackerspaces and the national return to “tinkering.” It stresses the maker movement’s creativity and its potential for national renewal.

This mainstream investigation of a difficult-to-summarize trend is very exciting for us at HacDC. Please also see Mike Musgrove’s April article in the Washington Post entitled “Where Tinkerers Take Control of Technology.”

We welcome you to attend our gatherings and events in order to see what all the buzz is about!

We are again pleased to work with DorkbotDC to offer an excellent night of lecture and discussion at the HacDC space. On Thursday August 13, we will host Max Kazemzadeh, an artist and new professor at Gallaudet University, and Jack Whitsitt & Justin Cameron, two local security professionals and Quartz Composer enthusiasts. Full bios of the three are available at DorkbotDC.

Max will talk about his interest and work in the area of interactive art using hardware, software, sensors, computer vision over the last 10 years up to his present course of PhD research at the Planetary Collegium in the UK dealing with machine consciousness.

Jack and Justin will offer an introduction to Apple’s visual development environment combining some of the capabilities of Cocoa, Quartz 2D, Core Image, OpenGL, and QuickTime. Demos will include an audio visualizer, webcam input, MIDI control, and the integration of compositions into stand alone Cocoa applications.

What: HacDC + DorkbotDC
When: 13 August 2009. 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM (ET)
Where: Sanctuary Space, St. Stephen’s Church, 1525 Newton St NW, Washington DC 20010