‘Iron Nerd’ wins website contest with social gym app
In the end, it all worked out for Daniel A. Whitlow ’10 and Jong-Moon Kim ’09. Last Thursday, the team won first place, and $4,000 in the third annual 6.470 Web Programming Competition. Their social networking site, “Iron Nerd,” lets users exercise with their friends.
The challenge for this year’s competition was to build a publicly available interactive web application that related to the topics of food, health or sports. Submissions were required to store and display data from a database and integrate third party data or a data visualization. Projects were judged for their usability, functionality, originality, and aesthetics.
6.470 participants received six units of credit for finishing the month-long course. They also competed for a share of the $30,000 prize money.
Whitlow and Kim’s winning design lets users to check in remotely to their local gym, find workout friends, and do an optimal workout as part of a multi-platform social network which will soon include an iPhone application, the team say.
“One of the big parts about getting fit is getting the motivation to workout everyday. Iron Nerd keeps track of which days you have worked out and which days you have skipped, posting it as part of your profile,” Kim said. “Social motivation, we figure, can be a powerful ally in getting you out of bed and over to the gym in the morning.”
Whitlow and Kim came in third in the 2009 competition. Whitlow said they decided to collaborate again about a week into the competition.
Even though the competition has now ended, Whitlow says that they are still polishing their website.
“Just last night I added a graph function that lets you track progress for different exercises” along with “more impressive visualizations that show which exercises target which muscles,” he said.
Kim also mentioned that a companion iPhone application is near completion. “It will include a few hidden feature surprises we are incredibly excited about,” he said.