Luther students win competition

Two Luther College computer science majors have won a "Hack Challenge."  Andrew Baumann and Brett Hazen designed an application called "Bring the Popcorn" and bested the entries of 30 other application development teams, including a number of professional developers.

"Bring the Popcorn" is an application which allows users to promptly organize a movie party directly from Boxee, a social media center application.  Popcorn users can add friends, sort out who brings what and send a text message to the friends to confirm attendance.    

Boxee is a home theatre social media center that can be installed on personal computers and optionally played through a TV.  Boxee allows users to watch internet movies and television shows, listen to online radio and music and play local digital music and movies.  Boxee is soon to publicly release the Boxee Box, a simple to use, personalized social media center that you connect to your television.

For winning the competition, Bauman and Hazen received a never sold before Boxee Box, as well as a Netbook by Twilio and Boxee/Twilio clothing.   Baumann and Hazen also received one free flight ticket from Twilio to attend the convention in San Francisco where their application would be presented.  Luther computer science professor  Brad Miller used funds from the college's Erdman Entrepreneurship Fund to pay for a second airplane ticket so both could attend.

Baumann and Hazen say they plan to expand the "Bring the Popcorn" application into an event planning website in the future.