ReadWriteWeb

Every year since 2007, the Rails Rumble has thrown hundreds of starving Ruby devs into a Gladiator-style sand pit (called a "Hackathon") and forced them to compete with their bare hands for the amusement of cruel, power-drunk, code-mad judges. With only 48 hours to develop a Web app, teams are then covered in fire ants and allowed caffeine.

The results of 2010? Not in yet. But along with Leatherbound, we found a few really cool and unusual apps that might help you find your way out of a desperate situation or two. Or into one, depending on how you use them.

Even as eBook sales soar, the experience of browsing and buying eBooks still leaves a lot to be desired. If you are more interested in a particular title than in your loyalty to a particular eReader, looking for the cheapest version - or even an available version - of a book can be pretty tedious.

Is it even in the iBookstore? Is it cheaper on Amazon's Kindle or on the Barnes & Noble Nook?

Leatherbound addresses that problem by giving users a site where they can look for titles and compare their prices for Kindle, Nook, and iBook. Enter an author name or title, and the site responds with price, availability, and a link to the appropriate eBookstore. Quick and simple.

In 48 hours last weekend, 237 developer teams competed and generated a total of 137 qualifying web applications, all developed with Ruby and Rails on the back end.

The 2009 Rails Rumble was, according to organizers, the strongest yet in the contest's history. (Disclosure: I was on the "expert panel" of judges for the Rumble and got a sneak peak at a significant handful of apps.)

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about the emerging phenomenon of weekend code-a-thons in which programmers and designers get together over a short period of time to try to build web apps really fast. We went over some of the different approaches to the weekend code-a-thon and interviewed a participant in the Rails Rumble in an attempt to try and figure out why these get togethers are so attractive. An upcoming event in Santa Clara, California called Weekend Apps is taking a slightly different approach and not just focusing on app building, but also about building a sound business.