The team at GoogleTV is hosting a hackathon this weekend at the Google Mountain View campus in conjunction with the Silicon Valley Android Developer Meetup. I’ll be there to help teams create their elevator pitches between 7-10pm on Friday night. And, the festivities will span throughout the weekend.  Winners of the hackathon will be selected on Sunday evening, and the grand prize includes tickets to the already sold out Google I/O 2012.

So far, it looks like it’ll be a great crowd. With a 132 attendees signed up at the time of writing, there are only 18 spots left, so sign up now!  You’ll have the opportunity to meet many of the GoogleTV team as well as the people that are shaping the landscape for the next generation of TV.  Whether you’re an experienced Android developer or a first time GTV developer, this is a must attend event.

Today is the last day for developers to submit their apps to the AppCircus Spotlight on HTML5, the world’s first HTML 5 mobile app competition, sponsored by Zeewe (a mobile app web store from Movile and the best source of mobile web apps I’ve seen to date).  I’m excited by this contest on several fronts…

As smartphones evolve to support more advanced web technologies, one of the greatest untapped opportunities for mobile developers is HTML 5, which allows developers to write an app once and have it run on multiple mobile devices across OSes.  (more…)

This year, there’s a new event taking center stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on September 13-14: APPNATION: Show me the money conference.

As you might guess, this show is all about apps and monetization – mobile apps, social apps, TV apps – you name it.  The speaker list reads like a ‘who’s who’ of mobile, web, media and agencies – well worth checking out.  SocializeMobilize.com readers will get 25% off the full conference pass by using the code MHFC25 during registration.

There’s also great opportunity for developers to show off their skills, gain some cross-industry exposure, and potentially win cash through the “Pimp My App Contest”.  Here’s the scoop:

One Great Contest — Two Cool Partners. We are calling on all developers to show off your skills by Pimping The App for Fox’s television show “Fringe”, The City of San Francisco’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureau or both. Enter as many individual apps as you like for either or both of our partners. There are separate grand prizes so, who knows, maybe you’ll hack your way to victory for both contests. Sort of like winning both showcases on the Price is Right!. So, start hacking as you have until September 3rd to submit your entries.

Socialize Mobilize has a handful of free tickets to give away to the upcoming 2010 UPLINQ Conference taking place in San Diego, CA, June 29-July 1, thanks to our good friends at Qualcomm and The Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP)! (more…)

Following my earlier post announcing the nominees for the 2010 MEX User Experience Awards in London, the ballots have been tallied and the winners were recently announced.   As a judge in this year’s competition, I was particularly interested to hear see who won: (more…)

I am thrilled to be one of the five judges of the 2010 MEX User Experience Awards, the winners of which will be announced at the MEX Conference in London on May 19th.  This is the third year of the MEX User Experience Awards which seeks to recognize companies with the best user-centered design in mobile.  42 companies, freelancers, and students entered the competition this year, and today, MEX announced the shortlist of nominees up for the following Awards: (more…)

Ted Erfer over at Intertek tells me that Intertek will be giving away a bunch of $500-$1,000 testing credits at their booth at the Blackberry Developer Conference in San Francisco, California November 9-12th.

If you’re unfamiliar with Intertek, they’re one of the world’s largest mobile device and application testing companies, with a global network of more than 1,000 laboratories and offices in 110 countries.  They acquired mobile testing giant NSTL back in 2007 and are transitioning the NSTL brand to “Intertek”.  Many of the world’s leading mobile certification programs run through Intertek.

If you’re a mobile developer, you know that mobile app certification costs can quickly add up – especially when you’re testing your app on multiple devices and platforms. So, if you’re going to be at Blackberry Developer Conference, stop by Intertek’s booth to see if you can score some of those free testing credits.

I recently received an email from a start-up called USCORE who wanted to learn more about my consulting services.  USCORE aims to give high school sports teams who are filming games the ability to easily tag each play within the video with the name of each player involved.  Parents that can’t make their child’s game can sign up to receive MMS messages on their mobile phone that show any play their child was involved in real time.

As part of my due diligence, I agreed to see a demo of USCORE’s product.  After multiple assurances that my mobile number would be removed from their system after the demo and I would never be spammed, I provided USCORE with my mobile number so that they could show me their ‘powerful’ MMS feature.  Unfortunately, the MMS demo didn’t work.  And, yesterday, almost four weeks after I saw the initial demo, I learned how ‘powerful’ USCORE’s MMS feature was when I received at least 139 unsolicited MMS messages. (more…)

TechCrunch recently announced the nominees for The Europas, the awards ceremony celebrating technology innovation in European companies, to be held in London on July 9th.  I was excited to learn that one of my clients, ShoZu, was nominated for the Best Mobile Application in EMEA (shameless plug: you can vote for them in this category here).

While browsing the list of The Europas nominees, I noticed TechCrunch doesn’t provide company descriptions or links to each company’s website or page on CrunchBase.  I can’t imagine anyone besides the guys from TechCrunch and maybe a few VCs being intimately familiar with all of these companies (and I can’t imagine anyone besides me being interested enough to research such a long list).  So, to help you make a semi-informed decision before voting, I’ve done some company research for you.  Below you’ll find URLs, descriptions and CrunchBase listings for The Europas tech company nominees (Note: I have not included descriptions for the VC or founder awards). (more…)

I’m helping get the word out about a contest that the MOTODEV team at Motorola (one of my clients) is running.

If you’re a widget developer, give mobile a whirl and join the MOTODEV Widget Developer Challenge for the opportunity to win up to $200,000 in great prizes and gain unprecedented global exposure.

SUBMIT your widget NOW -  Be one of the first 100 unique submissions received by December 18, 2008, and win a $250 gift card to Amazon.com.  Click here to learn more.