Teen coder wins national competition with spoiler-blocking Twitter program

Love to see what other people are saying about your favourite show on Twitter, but hate seeing spoilers? A 17-year-old coder from New Hampshire has come up with a way to stop that from happening, and has already won a national competition for her efforts.

Jennie Lamere has developed Twivo, a plug-in for Chrome and Firefox that blocks specific keywords for a set time period on Twitter. So if you don’t want to know about what Tyrion Lannister was up to on Game of Thrones this week before you’ve watched the episode, you can block any tweets with those words from your Twitter feed for a day so you have time to catch up.

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Lamere developed Twivo as part of last month’s TVnext Hack 2013, a hackathon seeking developers to create new and innovative programs for the television industry. The teen was the only female to present a completed project, and beat out about 80 other competitors for the ‘Best in Show’ prize.

The high school senior told Mother Jones that she’s used to being the only woman at many of these events, because that tends to be a reflection on what the industry still looks like, despite pushes to encourage more women to take up careers in coding.

"We marketed the hackathon to the entire developer community, and the demographics of the participants mirror the demographics of the community itself," Mike Proulx, a spokesman for the event, told Mother Jones. "We had a diverse demographic, but obviously the majority of the people were male."

Lamere was also the only person to present solo, and beat out professional developers from ESPN, the Echo Nest and Klout to win her category of “best use of sync-to-broadcast” and the competition’s top prize.

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For her troubles, Lamere walked away with iPad Minis, an Apple TV and an assortment of gift cards, plus a $2500 cash prize. She’s also been approached by tech company Furious Minds to help her market her final product, Mother Jones reports.

Firefox and Chrome users will have to wait a couple of weeks before they can start using Twivo, as Lamere says it isn’t quite ready for widespread use yet. That hasn’t stopped her, however, from testing it out to make sure she doesn’t read spoilers about this week’s Dance Moms.

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