Hey! I ran the Hot Apps competition when I was the lead developer advocate. I remember Pixi Dust. I was amazed you could get it so fast.
Fun story: there was no internal API for app stats so every morning I had to manually extract data via Excel, then run scripts to generate the JSON that powered the Hot Apps dashboard. Fun times.
That's so cool! Of course with so many prizes on the line, I spent quite a bit of time (when I was visiting my grandparents in California none the less) over a weekend hacking together all of the ideas I could think of. It was a really great experience overall, and I'm glad you still remember Pixi Dust :)
Fun story: there was no internal API for app stats so every morning I had to manually extract data via Excel, then run scripts to generate the JSON that powered the Hot Apps dashboard. Fun times.