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- Free Online Course System Also Gets New Mobile Support

WASHINGTON, April 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Blackboard Inc. today introduced an open enrollment option for CourseSites™, letting instructors open registration so any number of students can sign up for courses they are teaching with the free, fully-hosted and supported online system. In addition, the company has added mobile support, giving over 200,000 CourseSites users access on a range of the world’s most popular smartphones and mobile devices.

With the open enrollment option, any number and any type of student can register for an instructor’s course, making CourseSites an ideal platform for open teaching initiatives, community outreach efforts and collaborative research programs that have become increasingly popular in education.

“During the past decade, the world has become wide open for learning,” said Dr. Curtis Bonk, a Professor of Education at Indiana University who is using CourseSites to launch an open course this month on learner-centered approaches to blended and online instruction. “With CourseSites and other initiatives, Blackboard is making great strides in fostering this idea of opening up education opportunities beyond traditional boundaries.”

Dr. Bonk’s course is part of a new free open course series from Blackboard focused on teaching and learning with technology. The courses will be delivered through CourseSites and led by thought leaders in instructional technology and pedagogy and by Blackboard experts who will share successful strategies and approaches to online learning, course design and facilitation.

The course series and open enrollment capabilities are part of Blackboard’s continued effort to support growing interest in open education programs, including delivering large open courses (sometimes called “MOOCs,” or massive open online courses) and make it easier for users to create, use and find open courses and content. Last year CourseSites was enabled to support the publishing and sharing of courses as open education resources (OER), and policies for Blackboard Learn™, the company’s flagship LMS platform, were adjusted to provide greater support for open initiatives.

New mobile support for CourseSites allows users to access courses and other information on iOS™, Android™, Palm® webOS™ and BlackBerry® mobile devices. CourseSites also now includes an integration that lets instructors access copies of their Google Docs within their courses and synchronize them with changes made in Google Docs.

Launched in 2011, CourseSites is a free, cloud-based course option that leverages Blackboard’s latest technology for course management, Web collaboration and mobile learning. The system is currently used by more than 30,000 instructors at over 12,000 institutions and in over 130 countries, and can be accessed in English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, and Brazilian Portuguese.

The system is popular with instructors who are interested in experimenting with online teaching and learning, are interested in trying Blackboard’s newest teaching and learning technologies, or do not have access to a learning management system (LMS) at their institution. With support for open enrollment and OER, Blackboard is working to position CourseSites as a dynamic option for open teaching of all kinds.

For more information about CourseSites, please visit: http://www.coursesites.com.   

About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard Inc. is a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of millions of students and learners around the world every day. Blackboard’s solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12, professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and security, and communicate more effectively with their communities. Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various important factors. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company’s views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.  

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Snazzy 4G smartphones, tablet devices galore and slightly less expensive data plans are driving more people to view digital content on their mobile devices. In a bid to offer our readers a better mobile experience, ITBusiness.ca recently launched a new mobile Web site.

ITBusiness.ca’s mobile site offers up our breaking news, feature articles, blogs, photos, videos and social content in a format specially design to render beautifully on smartphone and tablet screens.

Some of its key features are:

• Cleaner site design formatted for mobile devices
• Consistent user interface and easy to use navigation tools
• Mobile access to videos embedded in articles and a video library
• Convenient articles and categories pages
• Provides social sharing and commenting tools on articles
• A social page showing various accounts and comment activity

View our mobile site here

Lessons learned

Our move to the mobile space did not come without challenges. By overcoming those challenges we learned some lessons we thought we might share with our readers who may be considering a mobile presence as well.

Ease of navigation and consistent user interface (UI) are critical elements of a good mobile Web site, according to Jeff Radecki, lead Web designer for ITBusiness.ca. For this reason, he chose jQuery Mobile, an HTML-5-based mobile design tool for creating sites and applications that work across smartphone, tablet and desktop operating systems such as: BlackBerry, Android, iOS, WindowsPhone, Symbian, Palm WebOS, Bada and MeeGo.

Creating a mobile-optimized Web page can eat up valuable time and resources for many startups. That is why a tool that enables users to get right into the details and functionalities they need is important, he said.

“jQuery Mobile takes the mantra “Write less, do more” to the next level,” said Radecki. “Using HTML-5 and CSS (cascading style sheets) 3, it provides the most simple code to do extraordinary thing.”

He also said jQuery tools are very relevant to the way users view content on mobile screens. “A huge benefit is that it uses responsive design and percentage-based designs that automatically adapt to different orientations, devices and screen sizes.”

Click on this link and play around with jQuery for yourself.

Here are other things Radecki found out while working on the mobile site:

• As awesome as Ajax navigation and page transitions are, shoving all the information needed to serve up ads, videos and comments in a DOM (Document Object Model) request is just not feasible. Mobile browsers cannot handle bandwidth-eating content such as those found in Web browser.
• More advanced content formatting for maximum image sizes, feature callouts and others, require additional CSS.
• Testing mobile is always a problem as there are hundreds of different configurations out there and new devices are being released everyday.
• Creating a mobile site that configures itself across mobile PCs, smartphones and tablets requires a lot of effort, time and testing.

Page Navigation 1) Check out our new mobile site. – Page 1
2) Traffic trend shows shift to mobile. – Page 2

Next Page

Back

By Daniel Eran Dilger

Published: 07:32 PM EST (04:32 PM PST)

Google’s experiment to replace Microsoft Windows on low end PCs and netbooks with its own web browser-based Chrome OS has failed, resulting in an effort to make the product look more like a conventional desktop.

First outlined in July 2009, Google’s Chrome OS was supposed to improve upon the PC experience by replacing the complexity of Windows with a simple, stripped down version of Linux hosting a web based environment modeled upon the Chrome browser, running HTML5 web apps.

“People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up,” Google stated at the time. “They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them.”

Google also said Chrome OS would be “going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates.”

In November of 2009. the company outlined more details about Chrome OS, which at the time largely targeted Windows netbooks. Just months later, however, Apple launched its own alternative to the low end PC: iPad.

No love for Chrome OS

While Apple had trouble producing enough iPads to meet demand, Google has seen limited interest in Chrome OS at all, despite creating its own Cr-48 prototype hardware for developers and licensing the design of “Chromebooks” running the new system to PC makers such as Acer and Samsung.

By the end of 2010, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit, who had since left Google for Facebook, predicted “ChromeOS will be killed next year (or merged with Android),” while open source evangelist Richard Stallman complained ChromeOS was an attempt to “push people into careless computing.”

While Apple’s iPad seemed to obliterate the demand for netbooks, it also stoked entirely new markets for tablet computing in education, marketing, government, healthcare and a variety of specialized markets ranging from airline flight bags to point of sale devices. Chrome OS hasn’t blazed any sort of trails however.

While Chrome OS-based netbooks running both Intel x86 and ARM chips were supposed to ship by the middle of 2010, Google postponed its launch plans to the middle of 2011.

New polish for old Chrome

In May of 2011, Google floated plans for subscription-based “Chromebook” hardware that could be rented for $20 per month for students or $28 for business users.

In August of last year, Gartner indicated that all alternative PC platforms running Linux would remain niche operating systems with less than 2 percent market share. The company said it did not expect Google’s Chrome OS or Android, nor HP’s Palm webOS, to gain any significant market share in the next few years, citing application compatibility issues.

In an apparent new bid to salvage Chrome OS, Google is now revamping the system to look more familiar to Windows users, with a Windows 7 Start-like app launcher and taskbar, and a new “flexible windowing system” called Aura that provides “rich visuals, large-scale animated transitions and effects that can be produced only with the assistance of hardware acceleration.”

Chrome OS vs Android vs Windows 8

In addition to being blindsided by iPad, Chrome OS has also fought with Android for attention from developers interested in Google’s future plans. Throughout last year, Google focused on tablet form factor products with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, a product that largely overlapped upon the target audience of Chrome OS.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb ultimately didn’t have much impact upon the tablet market, and was forced to compete against earlier, incompatible versions of Android used by low end tablet products from Amazon and Barnes Noble.

Going forward, Google now faces entrenched competition from Apple’s rapidly evolving iPad and its iOS ecosystem, with the $399 iPad 2 and the new Retina Display iPad starting at $499.

The company will also battle Microsoft for the attention of PC makers trying to enter the tablet market later this year, as Windows 8 ships in a version that can run on more efficient ARM-based devices.

Google has launched a series of web-based products that it ultimately canceled, including Google Answers, Buzz, Catalog, Checkout, Dodgeball, Froogle, Jaiku, Knol, Labs, Lively, Notebook, SearchWiki, Wave, and 411.

Indore, India, April 08, 2012 –(PR.com)– As a part of its enduring strategy to provide customers with the best, CDN Mobile Solutions is ready with its blackberry application “personal translator” version 2.5.0 in the blackberry market.

Personal Translator is an application that translates your written words into another language and reads it aloud. It translates the words and phrases between various languages including Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish. The app detects the language in your phone and then converts it into the one in which you want.

The In App Purchase feature offers users to purchase different language kits. Users can buy all the 20 language kits with 25% discounts or even specific language kit like Chinese, Cezch, European Dutch, etc. at the available price of $1.99, by clicking on the purchase button. Consumers can also listen to the translated text in the selected destination language’s accent only if he has purchased that particular language kit.

Users can download the Utility application free from the blackberry market.

CDN Mobile Solutions is the mobile application development division of CDN Solutions Group, a one-stop-shop IT Services Provider Company. CDN Mobile Solutions provide Mobile Application Development Services including iPad application development, iPhone application development, Blackberry application development, Android application development, Nokia Application Development, Windows Mobile application development, Palm webOS application development and J2ME application development with more than 38000 hrs experience. CDN Mobile Solutions is an award winning company ranked as Top Mobile Application Developers, Top iPad Application Developers, Top iPhone Application Developers, Top Blackberry Application Developers by Sourcing Line and also as Best iPhone Application Development Company and Best Windows Mobile Application Development Company. With their passion in mobile application development and zeal to explore new avenues in mobile apps sphere, CDN let your imagination work ensure that their experienced team of Mobile Application developers makes it reality.

WASHINGTON, April 3, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Harper College is partnering with Blackboard Inc. to provide mobile access to campus services and information with the ultimate goal of increasing graduation rates, the company announced today. Harper has adopted Blackboard Mobile Central(TM) as part of its long-term strategy to enhance engagement and help students “finish what they started” and produce more college graduates.

President Barack Obama recently challenged community colleges to produce an additional five million graduates by 2020 in an effort to increase U.S. global competitiveness. Harper College found its unique, proportional share of this goal is an additional 10,604 graduates. In an aggressive effort to meet this goal, the college is undergoing several initiatives that will aim to increase student involvement and increase their likelihood of graduation. As part of this effort, the college deployed Blackboard Mobile Central to increase engagement and access to the campus community.

“Research shows that student outcomes improve when they are more involved and engaged,” said Patrick Bauer, chief information officer at Harper College. “Mobile extends the functions of our campus in a way that makes sense for community college students who are commuting, working full-time, and balancing personal and family obligations. Blackboard is helping us foster student involvement through a mobile initiative which will ultimately support student achievement.”

The Harper College app, which is accessed over 1,000 times a day, contains a suite of features within a single app including the campus directory, event calendars, news and information, maps, and more. Harper recently deployed new functionality including a “Construction” feature that provides information and updates on the $250 million campus expansion project currently underway, and access to the “My Harper” suite that connects to the student information system, course schedules and course catalog.

Harper’s IT department initially began internal development of a mobile app, but soon recognized that time, capabilities and resources were limited. By partnering with Blackboard, campus officials are able to focus more on fulfilling student needs via the mobile initiative and less on design and coding. Following a review of vendor options, Harper ultimately selected Blackboard Mobile Central because of its availability on all popular mobile platforms, the ability to quickly develop and deploy, and market leadership.

“Mobile is a territory with so many unknowns in terms of operating systems, security and infrastructure,” continued Bauer. “We knew our students wanted mobile access to campus information, but we were struggling with the best and most efficient way to provide it to them. Blackboard’s knowledge and experience better enabled us to overcome these challenges.”

“I would be lost without the Harper College mobile app,” said a student at Harper College. “Everything I need is only a couple of ‘taps’ away. There is no more wondering exactly when an assignment is due or if I’ve fulfilled my discussion board posting for the week – in an instant, I can see what is going on around campus, email an instructor directly or find my way to a classroom or office. I tell everyone I know to download it. Life will be much simpler!”

Blackboard Mobile Central is used at nearly 250 education institutions worldwide and is available in native applications for Android(TM); BlackBerry; iOS® for the iPhone® and iPod touch®; Palm webOS, and on all Web-enabled devices. When enabled by their institution, users can download both mobile apps, at no cost, directly to their device from their respective app stores.

For more information about Blackboard Mobile, please visit www.blackboard.com/mobile or follow @Bb_Mobile on Twitter.

About Blackboard Inc.

Blackboard Inc. is a global leader in enterprise technology and innovative solutions that improve the experience of millions of students and learners around the world every day. Blackboard’s solutions allow thousands of higher education, K-12, professional, corporate, and government organizations to extend teaching and learning online, facilitate campus commerce and security, and communicate more effectively with their communities. Founded in 1997, Blackboard is headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for Blackboard represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various important factors. The Company anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause the Company’s views to change. However, while the Company may elect to update these statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so.

SOURCE Blackboard Inc.

[ Back To Fixed Mobile Convergence Homepage's Homepage ]

Another week on the countdown to the big event at the Pier, another chance to share more of our star-studded lineup for TechCrunch Disrupt NY! As our awesome cast of speakers continues to grow, here’s this week’s peek into our program.

Former Facebook executive and unconventional venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya will be on the Disrupt stage as well as John Lilly, former Mozilla CEO and current Greylock Partner. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield Byers Partner and previous Twitter VP of Engineering, Mike Abbott and Google’s Vice President of Location and Local Services, Marissa Mayer will also take the stage.

While it’s always exciting to share the next bit of our stellar lineup, we’re also coming to the end of the Startup Battlefield application period. Don’t forget, applications for the Startup Battlefield are due by 11:59PM PDT on Sunday, April 1, 2012.

Disrupt NYC kicks off on May 19th with our 24-hour Hackathon, and the main event starting May 21st and going through the 23rd. Stay tuned as we’ll reveal more of what’s in store for Manhattan in May. Early bird ticket pricing ends this Friday. Get your tickets now.

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Leslie Hitchcock and Jeanne Logozzo for more information.

Michael Abbott
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers

Michael is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Michael was previously Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering. Before that he lead the application platform and services development for Palm’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services. Before joining Palm, Michael was the general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft, where he led efforts to deliver a services platform that enabled the development of large-scale Internet-based services. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc., where he served as chairman and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. Michael also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as the CEO/CTO.

John Lilly
Partner, Greylock Partners

John joined Greylock as a partner in 2011. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, an open source Web browser used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO. Earlier in his career, John held positions on the executive team at Trilogy Software and as a Senior Scientist in Apple’s research labs. John is currently on the Board of Directors of Citrus Lane, Clearslide, Code for America, Mozilla Corporation, and the Participatory Culture Foundation. He is a board observer at Tumblr, and led Greylock’s investment in Dropbox. John previously served on the boards of directors of TripIt (acquired by Concur in 2011), CenterRun (acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2003), and Reactivity (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007). John holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering and an MS in Computer Science with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, both from Stanford University. He is currently a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford’s d.school, and an adviser to the Stanford Technology Ventures Program as well as SSE Labs, an incubator at the University. He is a co-inventor on seven United States patents.

Marissa Mayer
VP, Google

As a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Chamath Palihapitya
Founder, The Social+Capital Partnership

Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder of The Social+Capital Partnership. Previously, Chamath was the executive responsible for overseeing Facebook Platform as well as launching Facebook’s online advertising channel. He vacated his most recent role as Vice President of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion at Facebook in June, 2011. Chamath joined Facebook from The Mayfield Fund, a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley where he was focused on consumer Internet, advertising and technology investments. Prior to Mayfield, Chamath spent five years with AOL, most recently as the Vice President and General Manager of AIM and ICQ, where he oversaw two of the most popular instant messaging businesses on the Internet. Chamath began his career as a derivatives trader before leaving finance to work for Internet music pioneers Spinner.com and Winamp. Chamath grew up in Canada (born in Sri Lanka) and graduated first class honors in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Image credit: Screanews.us

Another week on the countdown to the big event at the Pier, another chance to share more of our star-studded lineup for TechCrunch Disrupt NY! As our awesome cast of speakers continues to grow, here’s this week’s peek into our program.

Former Facebook executive and unconventional venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya will be on the Disrupt stage as well as John Lilly, former Mozilla CEO and current Greylock Partner. Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield Byers Partner and previous Twitter VP of Engineering, Mike Abbott and Google’s Vice President of Location and Local Services, Marissa Mayer will also take the stage.

While it’s always exciting to share the next bit of our stellar lineup, we’re also coming to the end of the Startup Battlefield application period. Don’t forget, applications for the Startup Battlefield are due by 11:59PM PDT on Sunday, April 1, 2012.

Disrupt NYC kicks off on May 19th with our 24-hour Hackathon, and the main event starting May 21st and going through the 23rd. Stay tuned as we’ll reveal more of what’s in store for Manhattan in May. Early bird ticket pricing ends this Friday. Get your tickets now.

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Leslie Hitchcock and Jeanne Logozzo for more information.

Michael Abbott
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers

Michael is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Michael was previously Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering. Before that he lead the application platform and services development for Palm’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services. Before joining Palm, Michael was the general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft, where he led efforts to deliver a services platform that enabled the development of large-scale Internet-based services. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc., where he served as chairman and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. Michael also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as the CEO/CTO.

John Lilly
Partner, Greylock Partners

John joined Greylock as a partner in 2011. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, an open source Web browser used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO. Earlier in his career, John held positions on the executive team at Trilogy Software and as a Senior Scientist in Apple’s research labs. John is currently on the Board of Directors of Citrus Lane, Clearslide, Code for America, Mozilla Corporation, and the Participatory Culture Foundation. He is a board observer at Tumblr, and led Greylock’s investment in Dropbox. John previously served on the boards of directors of TripIt (acquired by Concur in 2011), CenterRun (acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2003), and Reactivity (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007). John holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering and an MS in Computer Science with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, both from Stanford University. He is currently a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford’s d.school, and an adviser to the Stanford Technology Ventures Program as well as SSE Labs, an incubator at the University. He is a co-inventor on seven United States patents.

Marissa Mayer
VP, Google

As a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Chamath Palihapitya
Founder, The Social+Capital Partnership

Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder of The Social+Capital Partnership. Previously, Chamath was the executive responsible for overseeing Facebook Platform as well as launching Facebook’s online advertising channel. He vacated his most recent role as Vice President of User Growth, Mobile and International Expansion at Facebook in June, 2011. Chamath joined Facebook from The Mayfield Fund, a leading venture capital firm in Silicon Valley where he was focused on consumer Internet, advertising and technology investments. Prior to Mayfield, Chamath spent five years with AOL, most recently as the Vice President and General Manager of AIM and ICQ, where he oversaw two of the most popular instant messaging businesses on the Internet. Chamath began his career as a derivatives trader before leaving finance to work for Internet music pioneers Spinner.com and Winamp. Chamath grew up in Canada (born in Sri Lanka) and graduated first class honors in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Image credit: Screanews.us

As TechCrunch Disrupt New York fast approaches, Startup Battlefield applications are open and running. For the past few weeks, hopeful entrepreneurs have been submitting their new, unseen startup companies for the opportunity to launch on technology’s biggest stage in front of an all-star panel. The Startup Battlefield judging panels consist of the biggest innovators, angels, VCs and influencers in the tech community. Up for grabs is the opportunity to gain exposure on a worldwide platform and to some of the best investors in the business, a $50,000 prize and the coveted Disrupt Cup.

Past winners include: Mint, Yammer and RedBeacon from our TechCrunch 40 50 days. Soluto, Qwiki, GetAround have each hoisted the Disrupt Cup. Most recent winners, Shaker and OrderWithMe, our first international conference winner, will both be on hand in New York to share their seasoned Battlefield knowledge with this year’s contenders.

Disrupt NYC kicks off on May 19th with our 24-hour Hackathon, and the main event starting May 21st and going through the 23rd. Stay tuned as we’ll reveal more of what’s in store for Manhattan in May. Get your tickets now.

Applications are due by 11:59PM PDT on Sunday, April 1, 2012. We review applications on a rolling basis, so feel free to submit sooner rather than later. While we have many more exciting speakers to announce, I’m holding off this week in favor of giving you a peek at a few of our judges for New York’s Disrupt in May. Scroll down to get a glimpse of a portion of our distinguished judging group.

If you’d like to become a part of the Disrupt experience and learn about sponsorship opportunities, please contact Leslie Hitchcock and Jeanne Logozzo for more information.

Judges:

Bijan Sabet
Partner, Spark Capital

Bijan Sabet has been a General Partner at Spark Capital since its inception in 2005. Bijan led Spark’s investments at Twitter, Tumblr, Boxee, Foursquare , Stack Exchange, ExFM, OMGPOP, and Bug Labs. He also led the investment in thePlatform (acquired by Comcast) and was on the board at Next New Networks (acquired by Google).

David Samuel
Co-founder, Freestyle Capital

David Samuel is serial entrepreneur, Internet pioneer, and an experienced executive with a proven ability to identify market trends and build companies from the ground up. He has repeated success providing significant investor ROI. Dave has specialized in software media since 1994. His success comes as a result of his strong technical background, ability to manage large teams, and adept leadership to adjust company direction while navigating through volatile or uncharted markets.

David Lee

David Lee is the Managing Member at SV Angel, where Ron Conway is a Special Partner. SV Angel focuses its investments on early-stage consumer media companies. He focuses on investments within the consumer Internet, mobile, video and other IT industries. Prior to SV Angel, he was at Google, where he led new business development efforts in video, media and content/data partnerships. After Google, he led all business development-related efforts for StumbleUpon.

Fred Wilson
Partner, Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments including, ITXC, Patagon, Starmedia, TheStreet.com and Yoyodyne. Fred currently serves on the boards of Alacra, Comscore, iBiquity, Return Path, Instant Information and Tacoda Systems. (Source: Union Square Ventures)

John Frankel

John Frankel is an early stage venture capitalist and founder of ff Venture Capital because he saw a market that was not being served well by established venture funds. John Frankel has been an early-stage venture investor for over 10 years, with a broad portfolio of investments. He has worked closely with entrepreneurs in a variety of fields and has experience advising start-ups. He started his business career with Arthur Anderson Co. in the audit and insolvency divisions. He spent the following 21 years at Goldman, Sachs Co. in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering, and capital markets. His primary focus is helping early-stage companies deploy lightweight disruptive business models to become the low-cost player in their respective markets.

Josh Kopelman

Josh Kopelman is a venture capitalist and Managing Partner at First Round Capital. Previously, Kopelman founded Half.com, which was acquired by eBay in 2000. He remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual sales. In late 2003 Kopelman helped to found TurnTide, an anti-spam company that created the world’s first anti-spam router. TurnTide was acquired by Symantec just six months later. In 2001 Kopelman co-founded the Kopelman Foundation, a non-profit grant fund for social entrepreneurs. He also serves as a member of the advisory boards for Wharton Entrepreneurial Center and the Weiss Tech House at the University of Pennsylvania.

Marissa Mayer
VP, Google

As a VP at Google, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more. At 35 years old, she is also the youngest member of Google’s executive operating committee. During her 11 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle. She started at Google in 1999 as Google’s 20th employee and first woman engineer.

Michael Abbott
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers

Michael is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Michael was previously Twitter’s Vice President of Engineering. Before that he led the application platform and services development for Palm’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services. Before joining Palm, Michael was the general manager of .NET Online Services at Microsoft, where he led efforts to deliver a services platform that enabled the development of large-scale Internet-based services. Prior to Microsoft, he co-founded Passenger Inc., where he served as chairman and led the development of the company’s consumer marketing SAAS platform. Michael also founded Composite Software, creator of industry-leading enterprise information integration software, where he served as the CEO/CTO.

Roelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital

Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia Capital focusing on financial services, cloud computing, bioinformatics, consumer Internet and mobile companies. Roelof sits on the boards of Aliph, Eventbrite, Mahalo, Meebo, Nimbula, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, Unity and Xoom. Roelof is a champion of consumer web plays and considers himself “just another consumer.” Roelof’s previous investments at Sequoia include Insider Pages and YouTube. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Roelof served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay. Earlier, he worked as a management consultant for McKinsey Company. Roelof is a certified actuary (Fellow of the Faculty of Actuaries). Roelof was listed as #23 on Forbes’ 2007 Midas List, which identifies venture capital’s most successful professionals.

Shana Fisher
Managing Partner, High Line Venture Partners

Shana Fisher is the Managing Partner of High Line Venture Partners, a NY Based venture fund focused on early stage investments. From December 2003 to June 2010, Ms. Fisher served as IAC’s Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning Mergers and Acquisitions, and prior to that as the Senior Vice President of Business Operations for IAC. Previously, Ms. Fisher served as Vice President and Director, Media and Technology Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Finance for Allen Company, LLC. In this capacity she led principle investments and advised publicly traded technology firms, private telecommunications firms and media companies. Prior to Allen Company, LLC., Ms. Fisher was a program manager for the Microsoft Corporation. Ms. Fisher received her B.A. from Hampshire College with a triple major in Sculpture, Philosophy and Linguistics and attended the Master of Arts program at New York University’s ITP.

Shervin Pishevar
Managing Director, Menlo Ventures

Shervin Pishevar joined Menlo Ventures as a Managing Partner in 2011 after a successful career as an entrepreneur and angel investor. His focus is on consumer technology investments, specifically in the gaming, mobile and social web industry sectors. Shervin works closely with portfolio companies Uber, Shaker, Warby Parker and Mr. Number, and was the driving force behind Menlo’s investment in Tumblr. During his first few months at Menlo Ventures, Shervin helped launch the Menlo Talent Fund, a $20M seed fund that invests in innovative early stage deals within a 24 to 72 hour timeframe. Prior to joining Menlo Ventures, Shervin was the Chief Application Officer and General Manager at Mozilla Corporation.  Shervin is a graduate of the University of California (BA, Interdisciplinary Studies Field Major), an author of several US patents, and has been published in JAMA and Neuroscience Letters.

Sarah Tavel
VP, Bessemer

Sarah Tavel, a vice president in the Menlo Park office, joined Bessemer in 2006. She focuses on the software and Internet sectors and has been closely involved in investments with consumer Internet company Pinterest; Microsoft SharePoint migration solutions provider Metalogix; leads-generator Yodle; learning-and-talent-management company Cornerstone OnDemand (IPO); e-commerce site Onestop; energy-management company CPower (acquired by Constellation Energy); SaaS online-marketing company Convertro; business-software company MindBody Solutions; and leading Russian e-commerce company KupiVIP. Sarah also works with Bessemer company eEye Digital Security and worked with Quidsi (operator of Diapers.com and Soap.com), acquired by Amazon.com, security software company Intego, and classifieds-provider OLX, acquired by Naspers.

Tracy Chou
Backend/ Infrastructure Software Engineer, Pinterest

Tracy is currently a backend/infrastructure software engineer at Pinterest. She was previously at Quora, where she joined as the second engineer. She holds an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Electrical Engineering, both from Stanford University.

HP: We’re Here to Help Enterprises with Mobile Solutions

Posted In: Devices | Mobile Content | Business | FirstNews

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HP might not be doing anything hardware-wise with its Palm/webOS acquisition, but that doesn’t mean it’s ignoring the mobile apps space. The company today announced new “application transformation solutions” designed to help enterprises with the integration of mobile-based enterprise apps and their traditional computing environments.

Part of the program involves helping customers determine which existing apps or processes should be mobilized to improve productivity, explains Darren McGrath, global product marketing manager in the Mobile Application Services division of HP.

“We look at the whole picture,” he adds, referring to security, privacy and other issues surrounding an enterprise’s mobile strategy.

As part of its IT Performance Suite, HP is working with Perfecto Mobile to extend testing of mobile apps across devices and networks. The process allows developers to run tests on more devices in a matter of days instead of weeks, McGrath says. Working in HP’s favor are the more than 1,000 mobile app developers it employs around the world.

HP is also offering mobility services for SAP applications. “By extending its mobile solutions to the SAP NetWeaver technology platform and the Sybase Unwired Platform, HP now offers an end-to-end enterprise mobile solution that enables client access to key enterprise information such as application development, integration and testing,” the company says.