In case you aren’t all aware, there is a very interesting new development in the cloud space which is Cloud Spokes, a bunch of challenges for developers that Appirio has pledged $1 Million dollars to. The basic way things work is that the Appirians set up a challenge, everyone submits their entry, and someone tests the code and decides who gets the prize.


Although some of the challenges read like RFPs or solicitations for subcontractors and one wonders why someone would spend lots of time on a project that is less than they would probably make hourly with only a chance of getting the prize, there are also some genuinely interesting projects out there.

So far I’ve worked on the following:

(1) Obfuscation Challenge (code in picture). Some APEX with embedded Javascript displayed like a Mandelbrot fractal which uses the HTML5 Canvas capabilities to display another fractal with fractal lightening (link).

(2) Beat Jeff Douglas ( Force.com Utility Belt Extension for Firefox). Included all of the features of JD’s Utility Belt and added some nice improvements. I already submitted this one but might add some more features if I get some suggestions via the #Salesforce IRC channel (check us out on Freenode!) or twitter ( give me a shout out @fractastical ).

(3) LinkedIn to Chatter Challenge. Actually I sort of gave up on this one after no one responded to my comments and I figured out both that the status API referenced in the challenge was deprecated and that no one had gotten the LinkedIn implementation of OAuth to work with SFDC. I was going to stay up all night last night to implement a Ruby version but thought I might be disqualified if I didn’t write purely in APEX so went to bed instead.

Anyways, so far so good, we will see how things go. As stated, there are a number of challenges out there that look simply like folks are trying to crowdsource jobs they are unable to / would rather not do themselves (which I expect to fail), but there are also some interesting challenges in the works and an idea challenge so that cloud crowd can provide ideas for future challenges. Please submit your ideas!

Whatever you conclude, this is a very interesting way to see the future of gamification in the cloud (for another example, check out the exciting company Hoopla Software).

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