My client, Mojio, and Amazon Alexa are hosting the 2nd Annual Connected Car Hackathon in the lead up to AutoMobility LA 2016. The hackathon is happening on November 12th and 13th at the LA Convention Center.

At the hack, Mojio will be unveiling their new and improved set of SDKs, APIs and platform documentation. All of this effort is geared towards making it easy for developers and engineers to take advantage of the fast-growing connected car segment — a huge business opportunity!

They’ll also be given away $10,000 of combined value in cash prizes, Amazon Echo devices and Intel Edison IoT hardware kits. The Grand Prize Winners will be announced on stage on Monday the 14th at the opening reception of AutoMobility LA. Pretty cool!

I’ve got a limited number of free passes for the Hackathon, which include:

• One (1) free pass to the 2016 AutoMobility LA trade show, including access to exhibit halls, press conferences and networking events ($100 Value)
• Direct access to technical experts from Mojio, Amazon Alexa and other sponsors
• All meals, plus beverages and snacks catered by the LA Convention Center
• Official hackathon t-shirt and other sponsor swag (of course!)
• 36 hour access to the hackathon venue in the LA Convention Center

Use this link to get your free tickets: https://connectedcarhackathon.eventbrite.com?discount=LisaO (Discount Code: LisaO)

For more information about Mojio, visit their website.

I hope to see you in LA next weekend!

Yesterday, Google sent a note to all Glass Explorers giving them the opportunity to add three people to the Google Glass invite list.  If you’ve been wanting to spend $1,500 on your own pair of Google Glass but don’t have an invite from Google, today is your lucky day… I’m giving away one of my three Google Glass invites to one of you.  Here’s how it’ll work: (more…)

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…)