This weekend I participated in the Factual hackathon, where Yosun and I made WhereBlocks.

This was a quick, pre-alpha demo to show how to use Factual’s POI database in a way that encourages humans to add and expand it… and have fun in the process.

In a nutshell, you check into a location, and you get to build a series of blocks… along with your friends, and anyone else that checks into that location. Photos (or augmented reality markers… your choice) are then used to give you a backdrop to create 3D building blocks… and basically make works of art that center around the location you check in to.

The timing was well-placed, as our way is a non-intrusive manner of avoiding locationgate, while still building a reliable and detail-oriented outline of POIs, in a database that anyone can download (seriously… you can pull down the entire gazillions-large POI database that Factual has).

Many thanks to Hackers & Founders, Hacker Dojo (for the event space), as well as Factual, for putting on the event… it was a blast.

Here are the slides (PDF) if you want to know more.