Salesforce.com Just Handed These Two Programmers A Million Dollars

Salesforce.com held a hackathon contest this week with the biggest cash payout ever: a $1 million grand prize.

On Thursday it awarded the money to two developers who created a voice-activated app called Upshot.

Upshot, built by Thom Kim and Joseph Turian, lets Salesforce.com users generate reports by asking their phones for them, reports TechCrunch's Alex Williams, who was also one of the judges for the event.

A hackathon is when developers work non-stop to build something new. In this case, the event began on Monday as part of Salesforce.com's annual conference, Dreamforce, taking place this week in San Francisco. Dozens of teams participated and five teams walked away with prize money.

The $50,00 prize went to an app called Healthcare.lov. A $25,0000 prize went to one called Hirebase for annotating resumes. The $10,000 prize went to Salesfetch, a service that helps salespeople search for info on leads. And $5,000 went to to2lementary, an app that lets you identify people as they walk up to a booth.

In addition to turning the top two programmers into half-millionaires, it was pretty fun to see them walking through San Francisco holding the physically enormous check.