The first company-wide Rightside Hackathon was held last month, and I was sent a link to a video of the winning team. A team from Name.com created the nBox, which helps a user create an “instant branded email.” The email address can be used for free for one month, at which point the user would need to pay for the email service in order to continue. There are also upgrades available to help them start a website.
This offering seems to be aimed at job seekers and others who may be using a less than professional email address to communicate with others for business purposes. nBox would give users a more professional-looking email, using an available new gTLD domain name offered for sale at Name.com.
Obviously, nBox is in the idea stage at this point, but Name.com and its Rightside partners would have the ability to test the viability of the service in market. The company has told me they are also open to hearing outside ideas on how they would be able to improve this offering.
Rightside will be holding two hackathons per year going forward, and though it’s in the early planning stages they hope to include their registrar and reseller partners in future events since they might be able to offer some additional input.
The winning team was comprised of the following Name.com employees based in Denver: Nick Salvadore, Adam Jensen, Ashley Forker, SkyDiegel, and Jason Smith (known in the office as “Smitty”). Another Name.com team was also named a finalist.
The video discussing the winning team is below.
