Last week the Financial Times held its inaugural Hack Day event, providing a platform for web developers to create engaging and original products. Developers were invited to invent and build new products using a range of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) from both traditional and new media, including the FT’s search and content APIs.

The two-day event saw 22 teams and 54 participants huddled together creatively working on projects. This included external guests from the Guardian, Pearson, Apigee and LBi. Facebook’s Chief Software Engineer Stefane Crozatier was also on hand to guide and oversee the work.

Prizes were awarded for winning designs and competition on the day was fierce. FT Labs, the web and application development company acquired by the FT in January 2012, took home three of the six awards including the ‘People’s Choice’ award for their Web Kinect product. This innovative design combined the FT Web App with the Xbox Kinect , allowing users to browse through FT articles with just a wave of the hand. Watch a video clip of the design here.

Other awards included: Most Creative use of FT Content, Most ridiculously over-engineered hack, Most Obvious (Why doesn’t the FT have this already) and the Judge’s Choice. Judges were: Robert Shrimsley, Editor, FT.com; Llicco Elia, Head of Mobile; LBi and Bernard Walter, Solution Architect, Apigee.

To view presentations for some of the above winners please visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/fthackday.

Photos from the event can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fthackday/

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