Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Kentucky teen's game hidden in Rand Paul app

Northern Kentucky Teen Creates Hidden Component in Rand Paul's Campaign App | River City News:

September 7, 2015 - "A Northern Kentucky teen played a role in the development of Senator Rand Paul's presidential campaign app.

"That app was developed by Covington-based digital agency CanDo and within it is a so-called "Easter egg", a feature of an app not expressly visible by users. In the Rand Paul app, the hidden feature is a "Space Invaders"-like game created by Villa Madonna High School junior David Blincoe while interning at CanDo over the past summer. CanDo founder Rob Ratterman works closely with the Paul campaign....

"'I kind of like to call it Rand Invader,' Blincoe said of his game. 'It was (Ratterman's) idea and I worked on it. The day before vacation, he told me about it. I worked on it all through vacation and then I really didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t really know that it would be an Easter Egg in the app, but then I was told about a week ago that it was going into the app, so it surprised me, but it was awesome.'

"The game allows users to use Paul’s campaign torch to blast other presidential campaign slogans. The app was featured in a New York Times article that stated, 'It tries to offer a blend of digital mischief and communication that has come to be the hallmark of Mr. Paul’s online campaign.' Vocativ also got a kick out of the game, writing an article about finding the game inside the app.

"Blincoe put in a lot of time developing the Rand Invader.

"'It was probably around four weeks, for an average of three hours a day,' he said. 'This is actually the first time I’ve ever created anything like this, but I’ve done a lot of work with other program languages and have done some work on Java Script, but nothing this intensive so I had to learn a lot....
"
"'So far the feedback has been great. I’ve been praised around here at the school. People walk up to me and say that they downloaded it and that it’s so cool. I haven’t really gotten a huge response outside of Villa yet, but as far as I can tell, the overall review on the IoS and its Play Store are pretty good,' Blincoe said. 'I have not heard from (Paul), but it would be really cool if I did.'"

Read more: http://www.rcnky.com/articles/2015/09/07/northern-kentucky-teen-creates-hidden-component-rand-pauls-campaign-app
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Download app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cando.randapp&hl=en

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