FinCapDev Competition

FinCapDevSince I’m a hackathon junkie, I thought I would post about some interesting hackathon/challenges I come across.  I originally heard about FinCapDev on ChallengePost over a year ago.  The premise is pretty simple, submit a proposal for a mobile app to help Americans save money and/or make better financial decisions.  And yes, it’s not the most logical thing to help people save money by requiring them to have a mobile device to use your app.  I thought they should have made it open to web apps which I think would be more accessible (at least you can get on the Internet for free at a library).  Anyways, while I might disagree with the rules, I do think the goal is noble and if even a small handful of users benefit from the apps, then it’s worthwhile.  I applied for the 2013 competition, but didn’t make the cut.  My idea was to build an online school for people to access through their phones that would try to teach financial basics through short videos/lessons with quizzes to see how well people understood the material.  The app could also provide a way for users to interact with others in similar situations trying to improve their financial situation.  I thought it was a good idea, but apparently it wasn’t good enough for the judges.  Anyways, they just started accepting submissions for their 2014 competition.  If you’re picked as a finalist, you can get $7,500 to build your app and present it in front of a panel of judges for a grand prize of $50,000.  You also get access to experts and SDKs/APIs if you’re chosen as a finalist.  I’m still looking for a team, so if you have an idea or want to help me, send me a tweet at @SolChea.

Lenovo buys Motorola

Motorola XI can’t believe Google sold Motorola to Lenovo for 2.91 billion dollars.  According to the blog post, Google will keep a majority of Motorola’s patents, but the hardware and team will go to work for Lenovo.  And while I say I can’t believe it, it’s more that I’m disappointed that Motorola won’t be as closely tied to Google and my Moto X may or may not get updates as frequently as if they were owned by Google.  I’m sure there are others that feel the same way.  Luckily, I bought my phone off-contract so if it doesn’t get updated, I’ll simply go out and buy another one. Anyways, it makes sense that Google bought Motorola for their patents to defend themselves and hopefully other Android device manufacturers.  I’m also glad that Lenovo will likely leave Motorola as an independent brand and still sell phones as Motorola phones rather than Lenovo phones.  I have never really taken to the Lenovo brand personally ever since they bought the Thinkpad brand from IBM.  So that’s the news for tonight… not exciting, a little sad but interesting nonetheless.

Games for Google Glass

Google GlassGoogle has released sample code for mini-games on their developers site to showcase game development abilities on the Google Glass.  Examples include Tennis, Balance, Clay Shooter, Matcher and Shape Splitter.  All are extremely simple but showcase different libraries available to developer to build games such as 2D and 3D rendering capabilities.  I still need to spend more time with the Glass SDK (or GDK as they like to refer to it) and start seeing what you have access to.  It does make me wonder if there will eventually be a huge demand for Glass developers similar to the huge demand for mobile developers (obviously Glass needs to become more main-stream and more geared towards consumers).  But in a year or so, there could be a demand for Glass Apps.  I can see obvious retail applications, social/location discovery, passive interactions with other technology just by looking at it.  I probably wouldn’t bet my future on the Google Glass being the wearable tech equivalent of the iPhone, but it does have potential and if any company can pull it off (besides Apple) it would be Google.

I will definitely do a write-up of my experience with developing Google Glass apps, but I also want to hack a web version of Samantha from “Her” – so stay tuned…