Month: April 2015

NASA Virtual Space App Challenge

In case you can’t make the HackUmass Hackathon,  you can still participate in another Hackathon with prizes that is happening this weekend also.

The NASA Space Apps Challenge is an international 48-hour code-a-thon where developers, scientists, students, entrepreneurs and educators gather to build applications, software, hardware, data visualization and platform solutions in four categories: Humans, Earth, Outer Space and Robotics.

On April 11-12, more than 10,000 developers are expected to participate across 138 cities and online through the virtual challenge.

IBM is offering Bluemix as a cloud development platform for the NASA Virtual Space App Challenge to help developers rapidly build applications for the challenge.

In addition to the prizes from NASA, IBM will award one prize per hackathon location for the most innovative use of IBM Bluemix. Selected winners will receive $12K of Cloud credit including high-level technical support.

For additional information on the challenge, please visit https://ibm.biz/spaceapp2015.

For participating cities, please visit the official Space Apps Challenge website ibm.biz/spaceapp15.

Using Deploy To Bluemix Button To Deploy Samples and Starter Templates

You can now quickly create sample apps and starter templates to automate deploying applications to Bluemix. Using the Deploy to Bluemix Button you can quickly share running apps with others. You can read more about it in this blog post from my colleague.   I applied this capability to allow you to deploy your own Django Python app in 2 min to using this starter template that uses the Button

The starter template is on GitHub. It includes a complete and simple helloworld app to get you started with Django Python app on Bluemix.   Give it a try would love to hear your feedback.   Also consider doing same thing with samples you want to share or with others by adding a Bluemix button to your GitHub apps.    Click the Deploy To Bluemix button below to start running your own HelloWorld Python Django app on Bluemix.

Bluemix button

Directions
The app will deploy however the initial application start will fail because you haven’t created your postgress database service.
The error messages in the DevOps pipeline services shows you haven’t created your postgresql-qc database service.
Create the postgress service. I used “postgresql-qc” as the name in the manifest file.
Bind the service to your app in the blumix console.
Restart your app in Bluemix
Access the deployed app using the routesURL at the top of your app routesURL/admin
Use admin for user id and password and start creating users.

See you at HackUMass

I am really excited to participate in the HackUMass event this weekend.  IBM is a top Sponsor for the event.  This is Hackathon competition for students in New England who want to build cool software or hardware products over a two days in 36 hours.   I will be a technical advisor,  helping out all the teams with questions about Bluemix, Java and Python.   I am looking forward to the cool apps the teams will create with Bluemix.