PHILADELPHIA, July 2, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Visionary email marketing company, AWeber, is proud to announce that a team of its brightest engineers teamed up to participate in Philly Codefest 2015, where they won the Grand Prize ($3,000) along with the Dean's Award for Innovation ($750) for the creation of their bike2go mobile app. The bike-share, made easy app is now live and available to users as a way to make Indego--Philadelphia's very first bike-sharing service--more convenient.
AWeber team members, Andy Obusek and Samantha Provenza, spontaneously thought of the app idea as Provenza is a current resident of the Fairmount section of Philadelphia. The Codefest team (made up of Obusek and Provenza along with Mike Stanziano, Rebecca Nock, and Thomas Peduto) were excited by the thought of Philly's first bike-share and sought to create something civic-minded. "We wanted to design something that could really get the community to participate in a healthy way--albeit commuting to work, seeing the sights, or just traveling around the city," said Obusek, AWeber's Senior iOS Engineer.
Right now, Indego riders can use bike2go to view a map of different stations, see how many bikes or open docks are available at each station, as well as get directions to the stations. The app is easy to use and has a beautifully designed graphic interface. Version two will be an even better experience with features that gamify the experience of using a bike-share to help compel users to lead active and healthy lives.
bike2go has just launched on iOS, with development of an Android version underway. App updates soon to be released will enable users to track their stats, create a friends list, and receive badges for different milestones such as riding 100 miles or pedaling their way to a Phillies game.
Philly Codefest, sponsored by corporations like AWeber, Microsoft, Drexel University, and Independence Blue Cross, is a two-day, annually held coding extravaganza. These codefests, also known as "hackathons", are events where people come together to compete by creating innovative software programs. The participants break into teams to create anything from a prototype for a cell phone case that measures your heartbeat to a cloud-connected parking system. This year's event brought in over 175 developers, designers, and students.
As a proud sponsor of Codefest, AWeber showed their dedication to the Philadelphia tech scene by supporting multiple team members in their involvement. Amber Heilman, another member of AWeber's Engineering team, won runner-up with a different map application that shows the areas in Philadelphia that need more EMTs and paramedics. Coworkers of both teams were there at Drexel to cheer them on.
Obusek has plans to take bike2go into other cities as bike-shares become more popular and expand to other areas. For more information, check outhttp://www.bike2go.co or download the bike2go app from the App Store.
About AWeber
AWeber, headquartered in Chalfont, Pa., helps more than 120,000 businesses, entrepreneurs and bloggers increase sales and profits through its suite of web-based email marketing software. The privately held company was founded in 1998. For more information, visit aweber.com, subscribe to the AWeber blog, or follow on Twitter and Facebook.