With $7M, learn-to-code startup Treehouse eyes high school market
photo: spaxiax
Treehouse, a Portland, Ore.-based startup that offers online coding lessons, has raised $7 million in new Series B funding. Read more »
Why Will.i.am and Chris Bosh want to create a new generation of wannabe coders
photo: spaxiax
In a short film released by non-profit Code.org, sports and pop stars join Silicon Valley luminaries in encouraging more people to learn to code. Read more »
Codecademy expands API lessons with Twitter, Gilt Groupe, 23andme, Box
photo: spaxiax
Learn-to-code startup Codecademy is building on its recently-launched track of API classes with lessons created in partnership with Twitter Gilt Groupe, Box, 23andMe, Dwolla and others. Read more »
Former Zynga exec ‘Lo’ Toney lands at Khosla-backed learn-to-code startup LearnStreet as CEO
Laurence ‘Lo’ Toney has been named the new CEO of LearnStreet, a learn-to-code startup supported by Khosla Ventures. Previously, Toney was a general manager at Zynga, overseeing Poker and mobile publishing. Read more »
Coding Christmas: Codecademy lets you code your own holiday card
On the heels of a new set of project-based courses, New York-based Codecademy on Monday launched CodeCards, a program that enables anyone to create and share their own online holiday cards. Read more »
How a theater major went from scripts and sequels to scripting SQL
photo: Amanda Herron / Shutterstock.com
Despite a grim economy, the tech sector is booming. For entrepreneurial people, there are lots of ways to get a foot in the door, even in a completely new field. This is how Brendan O’Brien, of Aria Systems, did it. Read more »
Estonia’s plan to get 6 year olds coding is a stroke of genius
When should children learn to code? Estonia’s Tiger Leap Foundation wants children as young as six to be enrolled in coding classes — all part of a national program that has already turned this tiny country into a technological powerhouse. Read more »
Software coding: not just for programmers anymore
The thought that everyone should write software is gaining steam. The reasoning is that if all the people who use software actually understand how to build software, everyone’s better off. But if everyone codes, what’s that mean for the professionals? Read more »
Red hot Codecademy gets $10m from Index and KPCB
Education startup Codecademy — which promises to help anyone learn to program with its game-like online courses — is stepping up to the international market with a $10 million round of funding from new backers including Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Read more »
Another reason you should learn to code: Python for Excel
Anyone who has used Microsoft Excel since 1993 has likely dabbled at least once with VBA, or Visual Basic for Applications. Now, a pair of MIT students have created an plug-in alternative to VBA called IronSpread, which uses the cross-platform Python scripting language. Read more »
Comcast data caps stand in the way of Sony video service
Sony has big plans for a competitive home video service to compete with programming offers from the cable and satellite companies – or maybe I should say ‘had’. Those plans are on hold until regulators decide if Comcast can keep prioritize its content over everyone else’s. Read more »
iPad has potential as programming teaching tool, if Apple would let it
Forward-thinking educators are looking to the iPad as a cheap, powerful and creative learning tool. Some use it specifically to introduce programming to young students. But Apple has yet to fully embrace this endeavor, despite its founder’s passion for “the intersection of liberal arts and technology.” Read more »
Google’s Dart may be the code to make web apps shine
Google unveiled its effort to create a programming language solely for building web apps. Much like there’s a shift in computer hardware to take advantage of a more connected and mobile world, Google is attempting to push a concurrent shift in software. Read more »
API market Mashape raises $1.5M seed from mega investors
Mashape, an API marketplace catering to both application developers and providers, has raised a $1.5 million seed round from a who’s who of technology investors, including Index Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Ignition Partners, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Read more »
Photo Hack Day highlights rise of NY hacking culture
Come August 20 and 21, the next Instagram and Hipstamatic could emerge in New York City, ready to do battle in the increasingly tough photo app market. Those are the dates for the Photo Hack Day, billed as the largest photo hackathon for developers. Read more »
Android Market driven by prolific, active devs
Android Market is paced by a number of very prolific app makers and it also sees more updates per app than the App Store, according to app ratings analytics and discovery firm Mobilewalla. The company found that Android users are also focused more on popular apps. Read more »
Looks like HTML5 is gaining momentum
If recent news from Twitter, Pandora, Google and Amazon is any indication, it seems that a set of technologies collectively known as HTML5 are finally starting to gain a lot of momentum, and to me, that’s a good thing — especially for the mainstream users. Read more »
For GILD, a good programmer shouldn’t be hard to find
For GILD, recruiting is more than a pile of resumes or a referral from a friend. The startup is trying to turn hiring into a science, and is gaining a following among programmers from San Francisco to Katmandu. Read more »
Bitcoin virtual currency may be worst of both worlds
After being celebrated as the future of money, the “peer-to-peer crypto currency” known as Bitcoin has taken some serious hits recently, including being derided as a scam and targeted by senators. Now a user says he has lost $500,000 in Bitcoins in a massive theft. Read more »
WWDC 2011: 5 Programming terms explained for non-programmers
With WWDC well underway, you might have heard a few words related to computer programming that even Mac experts have trouble understanding, but it happens to the best of us. Here’s a quick glossary of the programming terms that are probably most likely to confuse. Read more »
Google Teaches Programmers to Play Well With Others
While not always recognized for their fuzzy personalities and breezy conversational skills, most programmers do want to work well alongside other human beings. Why else did so many spend a precious hour of Google I/O time at “Social Skills for Geeks?” Read more »
5 Collaborative Code Sharing Tools
Sharing code can be one of the toughest parts of managing a big project: a lot of collaboration tools have a way to share written content and images but they don’t handle code particularly well. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Is Software the Key to Green Data Centers?
A new aspect of data center energy use is getting increasing attention lately: software. If the code running on all the servers in a data center was inherently more energy-efficient and governed by its own energy-aware logic, IT managers could have another, less costly option to ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The NYT API: Newspaper as Platform
There’s been a lot of chatter about the newspaper industry in recent weeks — about whether newspaper companies should find something like iTunes, or use micropayments as a way to charge people for the news, or sue Google, or all of the above — and how […] Read more »
Seattle Xcoders Coverage: Golden % Braeburn
I had the opportunity to attend the July 10th meeting of Seattle Xcoders (a local group where Mac OS X Cocoa programmers can connect) that featured Wil Shipley giving a talk on his latest initiative – Golden % Braeburn. Golden % Braeburn is a company that […] Read more »
