Kevin Leneway presents Raising Uncle Jesse at Startup Weekend IV.

What happens when you lock more than 100 entrepreneurial geeks up for a weekend, fueled by soda pop and cold pizza? You get ideas like Raising Uncle Jesse, a new Facebook game which is a little bit like Farmville except the goal is to nourish and cultivate actor John Stamos as he moves through important milestones in his life. The winning scenario? Turn Stamos -- who played Uncle Jesse in the TV series "Full House" -- into an A-class actor.

Raising Uncle Jesse brought roars of laughter last night as entrepreneur Kevin Leneway presented his creation at Seattle Startup Weekend IV, an intense coding marathon which brought developers, designers, lawyers, marketers and others together to see what they could build in 54 hours.

Held at Adobe's offices in Fremont, this year's event had a heavy focus on mobile applications and location-based services. Nearly all of the 13 projects either had an iPhone/iPad component to them or were trying to tap into mobile phone user's location in some way.

Take for instance the fabulously funny iPhone app -- Is it a Party? -- which was inspired by the hit app Shazam. Instead of trying to determine the name or artist of a song with Shazam, the 99 cent app was designed to pick up background noise in order to figure out if the mobile phone user was hanging out in a party atmosphere.

Co-founder Gary Bernhardt was hopeful that there might just be enough drunk people out there who would want to figure out this burning question.

However, not all of the projects were as lighthearted as Raising Uncle Jesse -- which changed its name late in development (originally Raising John Stamos) in order to avoid legal action -- or Is it a Party? --whose founders proudly declared that they were not really trying to solve a big problem. (See video below).

Other ideas which attracted attention included Swarrm, an iPhone app which allowed video gamers to trade old titles with people who live nearby. SnapIt founder Amit Kumar returned with a continuation of his browser plug-in idea from the last Startup Weekend. His idea -- won cheers from the audience and two top prizes from the judges. (Most Disruptive and Most Progress).

Swarrm makes their pitch

"I am not giving up," said Kumar, after making his 10-minute presentation.

Seattle attorney Eric Koester also was back in action with a new iPhone/iPad app called AppAndSeek, a Concentration-style game which encouraged users to discover new mobile apps by matching tiles together.

A Startup Weekend veteran, Koester made headlines last week when he sold last year's winning project, Learn That Name, to Seattle startup Gist. (Gist CEO T.A. McCann was one of this year's judges).

Interestingly, Learn That Name was the only iPhone app developed at Seattle Startup Weekend III, which was held on Microsoft's campus. In fact, 14 of the 15 projects from last year's event were built using Microsoft's technology.

That wasn't the case this time, with many of the developers working on Facebook, Twitter or Android platforms. But Apple still was the dominant platform choice this year, once again a little ironic given that the event was held at Adobe's campus in Fremont. (For some reason, Apple has continued to blocked apps which use Adobe Flash from the iPhone).

A list of startup ideas

Nonetheless, developers kept pushing the envelope when it came to creations for the iPhone and the yet-to-be-released iPad. EggStuff, for example, decided to skip the iPhone development altogether and push forward with a new early education app for the larger iPad.

Harry Lee, the founder of PitchBank, incorporated an Urbanspoon-style slot machine interface into his startup's iPhone app for connecting investors and entrepreneurs. Lee, whose day job is at the Seattle angel group The Keirestu Forum, said he was pleased with what his team built in a short amount of time.

"We are just drained, but it is great," he said.

Of course, not all of the presentations went as planned which is to be expected when you have 54 hours to build a startup. MobVoice -- which developed a Web and iPhone app to allow people to rate bars, restaurants or conference speakers in real time -- encountered some technical difficulties during the pitch. That prompted co-founder Jeff Yee to say: "If I were out there right now, I'd be giving us a thumbs down."

Meanwhile, Seattle patent attorney Adam Philipp joined a team to create an iPhone application that determined if someone at a nearby location might be interested in getting together to talk sports, politics or just grab a cup of coffee. The result was Shall We Meet Up?

But a shortage of iPhone app developers at the event created a bit of a challenge given that no one on the team had any experience developing with Objective-C. "I saw that we were hitting a wall," admitted Philipp.

Originally drafted to draw up the privacy legal documents, Philipp decided to reach out to Seattle iPhone app makers Red Foundry to get an invitation into their private beta program. Within a few hours, they were rolling with the new app. And Philipp was so intrigued with Red Foundry -- which allows non developers to create iPhone apps -- that he spent a portion of his time building an iPhone app for his law firm.

The Digri team.

The winning team of the evening -- compiled by votes from the attendees, the judges and myself (I was brought in at the last minute to break a tie) -- was Digri.

Led by venture capitalist Ayush Agarwal, Digri (pronounced as "De-gree") used Foursquare to connect people at conferences. It does this by sending a text message to individuals who might have common connections, building off last year's winning team of Learn That Name which helped people learn the names of people at events.

"It is so cool watching everybody's presentations and seeing what we've built," said Agarwal.

No wonder that Gist CEO T.A. McCann was chatting up Agarwal and crew after they won, joking that he might have to follow-up with another buy.

By the way, here is the list of all the companies. And here's the funny video presentation of Is it a Party?