Moto Mods hackathon in San Francisco produces more practical Mods

Lenovo has been hosting hackathons to help develop more useful Mods for its Moto line. At the recently concluded hackathon in San Francisco there were a lot of great and practical ideas we’d actually want to see as actual products on the market. The winning Mod was a solar-powered battery charger. But aside from that, there was a baby monitor with real-time notifications for things like room temperature, a mod for allowing diabetics to check their blood sugar, and even a breathalyzer Mod from a group of high school kids. Called ModCoholic, it’ll ask you if you want to grab a cab if you’re over the legal limit.

The winning teams at these events get to present their ideas at Motorola’s headquarters in Chicago to industry leaders like Lenovo Capital, who could invest and fund promising ideas. These hackathons are being held around the globe with the next one happening in Shenzhen, China by mid-March.

Source: Engadget

Capital One Canada helps out local charities with 40-hour hackathon

Capital One Canada, together with Hackworks, are hosting a 40-hour Gift the Code Hackathon this October 21 to 23 to help address digital issues faced by six Toronto-based charities. Over 100 participants—a mix of volunteers and Capital One associates—will be brainstorming, building, and submitting technology solutions for the charities’ digital challenges. The event, which is hosted by Marc Saltzman, will see the participants broken into teams of four to six experts at BrainStation’s Toronto campus to help solve these problems.

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Budweiser's “Tackle Impossible” is a hackathon that champions designated driving

Budweiser launched the  Tackle Impossible Road Safety Challenge and is calling on young adults to join together to create smart innovations that help stop preventable drinking and driving related crashes. The initiative will ignite the entrepreneurial spirit of young adults to tackle global road safety and help find solutions that champion designated driving. The initiative is part of Budweiser’s global commitment to make roads safer around the world.

Young adults of legal drinking age can visit TackleImpossible.com to learn more about Tackle Impossible and find out how to get involved.

“Budweiser believes in a world where everyone is free to follow the life of their dreams,” says Andrew Oosterhuis, Director of Marketing, Budweiser Canada. “Whether it’s in a car, on a bicycle, or on foot - every road we choose should be open and safe. 

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Masters of Code Hackathon Montreal

Recently the Masters of Code hackathon series hit Montreal and almost 120 coders, MasterCard staff, mentors and sponsors gathered for 24 hours of extreme coding. With a kickoff from MasterCard Canada’s President Brian Lang and prize presentations from Mung Ki Woo, Executive Vice President, Digital Products and Solutions at MasterCard, the event showed developers in Montreal just what it takes to win a MasterCard hackathon.

The Montreal edition of Masters of Code was part of the company’s ongoing outreach to developers and of its commitment to helping today’s tech innovators create tomorrow’s best technology. MasterCard worked with a number of local incubators, schools and their lead sponsor, National Bank of Canada, to get the word out to developers across the city. By the time Masters of Code started on Saturday morning the event was almost completely sold out.

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