Biomimicry is an engineering field that takes cues from nature to help solve and address human problems, and Google today launched a new website at its Google Green initiative that highlights some of the ways nature’s engineers can inspire and guide human behavior. The site uses gorgeous National Geographic images along with brief descriptions of how the natural antecedent relates to the human concept, and then provides Google-sourced tools to help people emulate that activity.

Is it basically an ad? Yes. Is it a smart one? Definitely. Google manages to pitch pretty much all of its major web- and app-based offerings and services in a single slide show, with direct integrations built in that make it possible to take immediate action based on the trends they choose to highlight. You can do a local search for recycled and upcycled decorating material, grab apps and movies on the subjects from Google Play, search for maps and join Google+ communities and more. My only complaint is that Google buries the science at the end of the site in linked academic articles for each animal or plant behavior, where those probably should have been at least linked somewhere in each well-designed spread right alongside the Google service advertisements.

Some might call this empty lip-service to Earth Day, which takes place today and probably would be better served by Google powering down a server farm or two for a few hours, but the concepts highlighted (including ride sharing, composting, energy conservation and diet modification) are solid ones and would have genuinely beneficial ecological effects if adopted by large portions of the community. Plus it’s an impressive example of web design in its own right, and a look at what Google can do with content marketing models which could be a key vector for it to exploit as the nature of online advertising continues to shift.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, VP of Product, Chris Cox discussed Facebook’s new-found focus on design consistency, something the company calls “mobile-inspired.” Today, with its News Feed and Photo redesign, you’ll notice consistency no matter what device you’re on. This hasn’t always been the case for Facebook.

The idea of “desktop only” design seems to be dead, at least at Facebook HQ in Menlo Park. It’s all about mobile. What does that mean exactly? It means a more intimate experience, more responsive to touch and clicks, and way less clutter.

“Now you can get to any page on Facebook to any other page on Facebook without going to your home page” said Cox. The best designers in the world say that to make people engage with a product, you have to make the “tech” disappear. That is of course done with beautiful and responsive design, and that’s the approach that Facebook is taking.

One example of why Facebook had to take this approach is that Cox said 35% of Facebook users on the web never see the chat bar on the right hand side because of their browser width, so the company was missing out on a lot of message traffic because of that. The new responsive web design will fix that.

These changes will roll out on the web today and then to mobile devices in the coming months. The roll out will be very slow, to make sure that the company gets incremental feedback.

The rallying cry for the day at Facebook? “Goodbye Clutter.”

Ads weren’t discussed at all, which is where I find that most of the clutter is. It will be interesting to see how advertisements evolve with this new design, and if we’ll see more of them. The definition of “clutter” is subjective, so we’ll see if Facebook’s definition will delight its over one billion users.

Here’s a video explaining some of the reasons behind the changes:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

It’s easy to get lost in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area tech bubbles, where it seems that everyone carries five phones, owns three laptops and just had lunch with a sentient robot. But, the reality is outside of the bubble is a little different. Digital literacy is a privilege, and more the exception than the rule. Not everyone owns a computer or is employed at a startup that just raised $10 million. In fact, California’s unemployment rate for December 2012 was 9.8 percent, significantly higher than the U.S. average at 7.8 percent.

Christina Gagnier, Stephanie Margossian and Carter Fort co-founded JobScout last year to help address this problem — to help combat unemployment through digital literacy. With funding from the California State Library and the California Technology Agency, JobScout set out to create an online learning platform to help teach Californians (and everyone else for that matter) the basic skills required to help find a job in an increasingly digital world.

JobScout is part of the state’s larger digital literacy effort, iCalifornia, which aims “to promote and foster digital literacy and digital citizenship” in California and, in turn, help to energize local economies, boost innovation, competitiveness and improve the overall quality of life for residents by giving them the tools, skills and education they need to find jobs (and keep them). Initially launched as a web app, JobScout is today officially launching its app for iOS, through which it hopes to bring the power of its web platform to mobile, especially for those who might not have access to a computer.

While the app has broad applicability and seeks to provide value whether one is a first-time job seeker or a Baby Boomer looking to re-enter the workforce, the co-founders tell us that the platform is particularly geared towards Millennials. By offering educational content to help users learn resume building and other related job-seeking skills, JobScout wants to make it easier for young people to navigate the job search process, something that is sure to hit home for Millenials, which have one of the highest levels of unemployment — currently at around 25 percent.

“While people used to be able to check the classifieds or pick up an application at a local employer, these days most of the job search and application process has moved online,” says JobScout co-founder and CEO, Christina Gagnier. “For many people, this is a problem because they do not know how to make the most out of all the Web offers, or, for young Millennials, may not know how to apply their tech savvy to finding work. While this may seem unbelievable, 60 million people in the United States alone are considered digitally illiterate.”

To address this, JobScout makes a variety of lessons on how to best use the Web to look for job opportunities (on the Web and on iOS), supported by a gamified platform that allows users to earn badges for completed lessons (and presumably make the whole experience more engaging). In addition, the app’s “One Stop Job Shop” allows users to search for openings, save listings, apply and track their progress with interview dates and times, while its “ResumeBuilder” offers a simple, easy-to-use, fill-in-the-blank-type resume system.

On top of that, JobScout offers one-click submission with pre-formatted cover letters and provides ideas for how students can earn money through micro-entrepreneurship while on the job search, walking users through TaskRabbit, Etsy and other platforms. It’s also backed by its web-based platform, which offers a social community where users can connect with each other and share experiences, techniques and tips, as well as a dashboard, additional lesson content, and so on.

Of course, all that being said, you may feel as if you’ve heard about JobScout before. Today, it seems as if there are millions of online educational platforms, but the truth is that many of them target higher ed (Coursera and its ilk) or more general academic content for higher ed or K-12 (like, say, Khan Academy), or offer more advanced lessons in entrepreneurship, technical skills, web design or trade-based skills (like Skillshare, Lynda.com and CreativeLive, to name a few). So, JobScout may not be as much of a me-too idea as one might initially suspect.

And, while the gamification of education should be approached with a skeptical eye (especially for tools targeting the academic side of education, for use in or around the classroom), it could prove to be more valuable in JobScout’s context and for an audience of young people. The co-founders believe that, in the end, the platform’s value doesn’t emanate from its badges, but instead the consolidation of meaningful lesson content for a broad range of web-based skill sets.

Rather than targeting schools, districts or high school teachers, JobScout is going after the masses — the 60 million Americans without regular Internet access. “People need to learn what a URL is, how it works and why it’s important before they can learn about HTML or CSS,” Gagnier says. And while that may be cause for eye-rolling for those who spend 24/7 in the tech industry, it’s important.

It’s the same reason that California’s new Udacity-powered pilot for cheap, lower-division online courses could have big disruptive potential — it’s not always all about wowing geeks with sexy tech, it’s about bringing utilitarian, modern tech to everyone else to improve our quality of life. That’s what moves the needle, not just creating yet another online, distance learning platform for well-educated, technically-proficient non-minorities to brush up on the fundamentals of natural language processing — or whatever it may be.

JobScout is a free (so cost-effective), self-guided tour of the job search process for those who may not be overly-familiar with the ins and outs of the Web beyond using Facebook, YouTube and Google — and maybe not even that advanced. Its content is created by the startup itself in correlation with the Basic Digital Literacy Skills Framework developed by the State of California. (More on that here.)

As for JobScout-the-business, the startup is also now offering white-label solutions for institutions that want to offer job search learning resources to their communities. So, while the startup is backed by $800K in federal grants, that’s where the for-profit company plans to begin generating revenue, and it already has a few institutional customers on board. Plus, the platform also includes basic analytics through “COMPASS,” so that institutions can get visibility into activity on the platform and make more informed decisions.

Going forward, the team plans to add to its platform with another app that will provide similar educational and learning tools for healthcare — in other words, to help the novice navigate the byzantine world of healthcare in the post-Obamacare world. JobScout also intends to launch a Spanish language version of its app this year, something the co-founders say is already in high demand.

While it may not necessarily be for you, JobScout is beginning to go down a very important (and valuable road). By offering valuable job training and easy tools to learn digital skills, JobScout or some hybrid thereof will likely make waves in the job market. At launch, it offers 31 lessons, but its resources will grow quickly and it’s smart not to limit itself to California — even though it’s a huge market (and opportunity) to start with — and the more language editions it offers, the broader the potential reach.

Digital literacy, FTW!

JobScout at home here, and on the App Store here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Pixate, a Y Combinator-backed startup allowing mobile developers to style their native applications using CSS, is today launching to the public after several months of beta testing with hundreds of developers. The new framework is meant to combine the best of both worlds in mobile development: the richness and feature set accessible through native applications and the ease and flexibility offered by web technologies like CSS.

It’s an intriguing idea, to say the least. Today, mobile design is very image-focused, explains company co-founder Paul Colton, who previously co-founded Live Software and, later, Aptana Studios, the latter of which was acquired by Appcelerator in January 2011.

“Graphic designers have to do everything with graphics and images, so there’s often hundreds if not thousands of images required [in mobile apps],” he explains. “It’s more that it’s a huge burden – a change in the UI requires that a new image be created that has to be added into the project, and the app has to be rebuilt. It’s a much more tedious process.”

With Pixate, the designer can just focus on editing stylesheets, which can be independent from the project itself. The framework has two big pieces: the CSS for styling apps and a vector-scalable graphics engine behind the scenes. The technology can be integrated into an existing mobile app via an SDK.

“What we realized is that we needed to build a CSS engine, just like in the web browser,” Colton explains. “We needed to read standard CSS – or at least as close to standard CSS as possible.” He says that Pixate’s CSS is W3C-complaint and is 99 percent the same as CSS on the web. “Then, we just made it work for native,” he says.

Pixate is initially available for iOS applications, including those built using the usual tools (Xcode), as well as a few others which are popular among developers such as Ruby Motion, Xamarin’s MonoTouch, and of course, Appcelerator Titanium. Colton says the idea is to be platform-agnostic, which is why the big focus post-launch is on porting the technology to Android.

He acknowledges that there, Pixate may even be more relevant since it can help to render graphics on the fly across different screen sizes. This is an issue that’s even more of a challenge in the Android ecosystem than on iOS, which only has a handful of form factors to design for at present. In addition, when Pixate arrives on Android, it will also make it easier for app developers to maintain more consistency cross-platform because of this ability.

The end result is that apps created with Pixate have significantly less code and fewer images included with the app.

It’s interesting to note that the startup emerged from Y Combinator’s call for “no idea” startups, which, if you remember, was an experiment announced in March where the incubator famously sought startup founders in need of ideas. Colton says he was curious about participating in an accelerator – his first company was self-funded, and the second was VC-backed, but he had never been through an incubator program before.

After joining YC last summer, Colton brought in co-founder Kevin Lindsey, also previously of Aptana, and they interviewed the other YC founders about their mobile development needs and pain points. “What really came across to me is this whole notion that there’s plenty of really smart people – that is, there are great engineers who can write anything – but what we ended up hearing is that it doesn’t matter how good an engineer you are, it’s really hard to engineer your way to a great design.”

Designers basically asked Pixate’s founders for a way to build more beautiful apps with ease. “Can you make mobile design as straightforward as web design?” they wanted to know. The founders realized the best way to do this would be to simply bring CSS to mobile.

Palo Alto-based Pixate has seed funding from Y Combinator/YC VC, but it also raised an additional $60,000 on Kickstarter, half of which came from strategic investors, Walmart Labs, Appcelerator and Grupo.mobi, which put in $10,000 each (the donation limit).

The campaign reportedly caused some confusion when an earlier version was cancelled and backers transitioned to a new page with a reduced goal. But that piece is a bit unfair – especially when we’re talking about a startup that’s actually trying to solve a real pain point in mobile development today – that is, they’re taking on the challenge of designing a mobile app that looks good and flows well by merging web and native technologies.

I’ve lamented before that too many apps today are relying on crutches like the “walkthrough” to explain themselves to users – a problem that can be, in many cases, solved by better design. By making it possible to design an app using CSS, the mobile industry potentially opens to a wider set of designers who can now translate their web skills to native apps.

In any event, Kickstarter’s non-corporate backers gained access to the early beta, and it seems that most of the early commentary was around why a serial entrepreneur – in YC, no less – needed to be on Kickstarter. Still other questions remain about Pixate’s performance and stability, but those are things that only wider public testing will really answer. And as is often par for the course, YC’s Hacker News’ post about the startup veered away from discussing the company’s offering itself and instead debated whether or not CSS itself is any good, or just “a big stupid mess.”

Okay then.

Given the corporate interest, it sounds like Pixate has an easy exit ahead of it, if they so desired, but Colton says that’s not the route they’re taking right now. “We want to see how broad this can be,” Colton says. “It’s really a big change in how you can build apps,” he adds.

The team of four also includes a graphic designer, Justin Belcher, and product manager.

Pixate is open now to interested developers, and pricing starts at $199 for the one-user “indie” license, then goes up to $599 for the enterprise version, and $1,299 for the enterprise version with priority support.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Online video learning platform lynda.com is making a big addition to its management team today, announcing that it has hired of Frits Habermann as its new chief technical officer. Habermann joins lynda.com from EA’s PopCap Games, where he was CTO and VP of social game operations and led the global technical growth of the company’s social, mobile and console game, including its most popular franchises Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled and BookWorm.

Habermann joined PopCap in April 2010, not long after it released Plants vs. Zombies on iOS. The casual games leader sold to EA in July of last year in a deal that was worth up to $1.3 billion. Habermann’s departure follows a large-scale restructuring of PopCap operations this summer, which led to the layoffs of as many as 100 PopCap employees and saw the closure of the company’s offices in Dublin.

In a blog post at the time, PopCap co-founder John Vechey said that the restructuring had to do with the evolution of the gaming market, as gamers have increasingly shifted from paid to free-to-play games, along with a need to cut costs and increase efficiency. More in Vechey’s post here.

Meanwhile, Habermann has left all of that behind to join one of the first-movers in the online, video-based education space. The company was founded in the 1990′s and has slowly compiled a video library of 1,500+ how-to videos that are taught by industry experts, working professionals and teachers, served up in an online database for a monthly subscription fee of about $25.

In May, we wrote a lengthy piece on how the company had, over time, grown to a paying user base of over 1 million, and saw over $70 million in revenue in 2011 in spite of not having taken a dime of outside investment. While the company may not feature the same sexy interface as some of the younger video learning platforms, it now has over 300 employees and a professional studio that focus on keeping the quality of its video tutorials high.

Since the beginning, long before the Codecademys of the world rose to popularity, the site has served those interested in a technical education, serving up how-to videos on popular apps and software from Adobe, Autodesk and Microsoft — on everything from web design to basic how-to-use-Excel content. This summer, lynda published its 500th course on Adobe apps, for example, and when Adobe released its Creative Suite this summer, lynda immediately had courses and how-to videos ready to go.

With growth headed north, the company has been looking to build out its educational content for developers and engineers and to take advantage of international interest, as lynda.com has long been English-only. On top of that, it’s been poised to take advantage of other platforms, specifically the penetration of mobile devices and social platforms.

That’s where Habermann comes in, as the new lynda.com CTO will help the company pursue growth strategies in cloud infrastructure and to scale on mobile and international platforms. The hire comes at a great time, especially as the CTO is fresh from helping PopCap scale its mobile efforts.

It’s also a great fit considering that lynda has a huge following of its Adobe-focused offerings, as it so happens that Habermann joined PopCap after 20 years at Adobe, where he was instrumental in the development of InDesign. Most recently, he was VP of core technologies at Adobe, where he helped lead the technical development of its flagship products like Photoshop, Acrobat, Illustrator and InDesign.

Habermann says that, along with the company’s founders, he shares a passion for education and is “looking forward to expanding lynda.com’s technology platform to take advantage of the opportunities in mobile, social and international markets.”

The company has seen an array of newcomers enter the space over the years, from Khan Academy to YouTube, and more recent additions like Udemy, CreativeLive and a host of course-creation platforms and MOOCs like Coursera and EdX, as well as technically-focused learn-to-code platforms like Codecademy and Treehouse. To continue to survive and grow in a crowding space, the company will have to continue to accommodate more functionality and content, co-founder Lynda Weinman says, and that expansion into mobile and international markets will be crucial.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Semil Shah is an EIR with Javelin Venture Partners and has been a contributor to TechCrunch since January 2011. You can follow him on Twitter at @semil.

“In the Studio” rolls into the fall months by hosting a jack of all startup trades, someone who has founded a company (and is CEO), but who also is extremely generous with his time as an advisor, coach, and storyteller to startups.

Micah Baldwin, CEO and founder of Graphicly, not only knows a lot about books, but also where books are headed. At Graphicly, Baldwin and his team focus on building SaaS tools to help current and aspiring authors market their books through the right channels and networks, as well as navigating the revenue-share models currently used by online distributors. Whereas musicians and moviemakers initially resisted aspects of the shift to online, Baldwin believes publishers are taking a different approach, as the market for e-books is trending up and to the right, and he wants his company to build tools to help speed up and smooth out that transition.

If you’re in any way, shape, or form interested in books, reading, e-books, self-publishing, and storytelling, I’d encourage you to watch this video. In our discussion, Baldwin shares a wealth of knowledge about the self-publishing movement, key players, and market dynamics, as well how each constituent — from the story creator, the publisher, and device makers — are thinking about their incentives in this fast-growing market. This is discussion may also be useful to founders of consumer-facing startups in general, as Baldwin talks philosophically about how stories are needed to spark imagination within an audience, something that web design and engaging or persuasive copy could do. Finally, for parents of young kids who play with iPhones and iPads and spend a great deal of time playing with app games or app books, Baldwin also indirectly touches on the potential effect mobile devices and apps may have on our abilities to effectively create, absorb, and share stories.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Whether it’s in response to the over-stimulation of banner ads and animated gifs, the proliferation of mobile and tablet devices whose screen sizes dictate simpler navigation and layout options, a reaction to our information-overloaded society, or, likely, all of the above, a new class of web startups is adopting the minimalist look in terms of their user interface and design. This “clean web” movement, if you can call it that, is defined by simple typography, lots of negative space, and thoughtful but careful use of color. And it’s seemingly everywhere you look these days.

A handful of startups struck me as being among those to really showcase what this style is all about. One is the new, invite-only blog platform known as Svbtle. If anything, the platform is almost better known for its design elements than what it’s actually trying to accomplish in terms of “idea curation.” Although the folks on Hacker News were quick to point out that there’s nothing new about a simplistic blogging platform, in today’s world of pageview journalism, a network that focuses only on the words, and not the ads and click-baiting tricks found on mainstream media and highly trafficked independent blog sites, is a breath of fresh air.

There’s a lot of black and white on Svbtle blogs, so when you see color – such as in the mouseover on the blog posts on Svbtle’s homepage or the “kudos” button on individual posts – you really notice it.

A related effort at bringing minimalism to blogs comes from Medium, the platform from Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Obvious Corp. Although also not yet available publicly, the company offered a preview of its platform in August, which showcased a similar form of simplistic web design. Medium doesn’t go for the stark black-and-white look, but rather the tans, taupes, and grays that are also often found on sites indicative of the minimalistic movement. Color photos offer the site’s only ornamentation and are used artistically to highlight the content. Some blogs even forgo that much. (See the example below).

Outside of blogging, there are the aggregators. And the recently acquired, newly redesigned Digg is a prime example of distilling content down to a simpler format. If the web 2.0 era’s design was defined by bright colors, prominent navigation, and bubbly-lettered logos, the new “clean web” seems to be about black and white and grayscale. That’s not to say that these sites are devoid of color – Digg, for example, displays photos next to every story. But when you do see color on minimalist sites, it’s been thoughtfully included. It’s a photo accompanying the text, a carefully chosen header image, or maybe an icon or small avatar. There’s no colorful “clutter” to be found.

In many parts of Digg’s site, for example, color is used sparingly – the logo is black, the Digg buttons and Digg count buttons are gray, the navigation is gray, and the social buttons at the top right are gray. Some of these elements turn blue upon mouseover, but the overall effect is one of a more subdued experience.

What’s New? We’re Making The Web Feel Like Mobile

Let’s take a moment to address the eye rolls. Some will argue that it’s silly to say that any of this is indicative of anything “new,” and therefore, it’s not notable. After all, minimalist design, web and otherwise, is not exactly a modern innovation. In fact, one argument says that the earliest days of the web often involved basic websites with just text. But I’ll respectively disagree that we’re not seeing something worth mentioning here, even if it’s not exactly a “new” idea. It’s about defining trends among web startups and web services, and grouping them under some sort of umbrella term, the way that “Web 2.0″ once did for the older lot.

One of the differences with today’s startups is that the design choices are not necessarily being made due to technical constraints. In the current era of always-on broadband, publishers and web service makers are not necessarily adopting the minimalist look because they’re concerned about bandwidth constraints, as we’re no longer faced with slow dial-up connections and slow-to-download imagery. It’s often a conscious choice about how and when color and imagery should be used (i.e. sparingly).

Another way to look at this movement is to see how its roots can be found in the rise of the mobile web and mobile applications. And there, bandwidth issues may be present to some extent, it’s true, including the need for occasional offline access. Still, I’d argue that, more importantly, the reduced screen size of mobile devices has come into play here. That has forced designers to rethink how to display content in appealing, attractive and readable ways, even when shrunk down to the size of a smartphone’s screen. And that’s what had an impact on sites and services’ non-mobile counterparts.

It now suddenly seems more “right” to have web apps that feel lightweight, like their mobile counterparts. And that’s what minimalism does.

You can look at Flipboard, which Digg seems to take a good bit of inspiration from, as an example of minimalist mobile app design. Although you might think of Flipboard as colorful and image heavy, especially given its big “Cover Stories” section, which pulls you in via a large photo, not to mention the overall homescreen design, which features image thumbnails. In actuality, the app’s interior is very much about black-and-white text and selective use of color. Not every page inside Flipboard’s mobile app even includes a photo – a lot of it is just black headlines and a few sentences of teaser text – very simple stuff. On these black-and-white pages, only avatars and tiny social buttons have any color at all.

Image-Heavy Sites Go Minimalist, Too

What’s also interesting about the movement is that simplistic web design practices are even appearing on sites where text-based content is not the focus. For example, you may not immediately think of Pinterest as a minimalist website, since it’s basically covered in photos. But the truth is the image pinboard layout it popularized (again, not invented!) reflects many of the principles emerging in this trend. The background and text are subtle shades of taupe and gray, the navigation blends into the background, and the red Pinterest logo disappears entirely when you scroll down the page. In other words, the simplicity of everything else on the site pulls your eye to focus only on its featured imagery.

A similar, Pinterest-like feel is present in many of its clones (and “it’s a Pinterest for X” variations), including even MySpace, the web 2.0 era social network, which has somehow managed not to entirely shut down. (OK, maybe you can’t count MySpace as a startup, but it sure is struggling like one!)

Myspace is an especially fun example because it used to be the epitome of overdone design, thanks to the proliferation of DIY Myspace design tools that let users add glitter text, flashy things, slideshows, and other disasters to dress up their profiles. Now, the new version is very Pinterest-y, with grays and whites for everything but the photos. The blue-and-white Myspace logo is gone, too, replaced by a black-and-white one.

These are just a handful of examples, of course, and again, nothing here is new so much as it is being “rebooted” for a new era. There are still plenty of sites and services that don’t fit into this categorization, too, and some that are only borderline. Whether this trend will end up defining our post-web 2.0 transition as a whole (what’s next, anyway?) is by no means a definite yet, either. But it’s something worth keeping an eye on as new startups emerge.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In 1967, 25-year-old Damyanti Gupta immigrated to Detroit with one goal—to be an Engineer at Ford Motor Company. Only there was one problem: there were no female engineers at the company. When a hiring executive flatly told her that “we don’t have any women on staff”, she mustered her confidence and replied “if you don’t hire me, then you won’t have that benefit.” A few weeks later, Damyanti was hired as Ford’s first-ever female engineer.

Gupta (pictured) and her story are just one of many that inspired Reshma Saujani to found Girls Who Code, a new, New York-based initiative designed to help teach girls how to code so that they can pursue careers in technology and engineering. And what’s especially awesome about Saujani’s organization is that it has the steadfast support of a number of companies, including Google, GE eBay and Twitter.

As Saujani tells me, the goal is simple: “To close the gap for women in the computer science and engineering fields.”

Twitter has taken a special interest in Girls Who Code, both financially and in an active volunteer capacity, which is a first for the social media company. Not only did Twitter make a financial donation (one of the first philanthropic donations for the company) to Girls Who Code, but several of the company’s engineers spent time with the most recent class of young women. Adam Messenger, Twitter’s VP of engineering, is on the organization’s board.

And last week, Twitter held a fundraiser with employees for the organization. The event was the first formal fundraiser Twitter has held at its offices—co-founders Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey all donated to the cause.

Girls Who Code has developed an eight week curriculum for computer science education, pairing intensive instruction in robotics, web design, and mobile development with mentorship from developers and entrepreneurs. The Summer-long class ends with a special project, where the girls actually develop an application. After the program ends, the organization encourages the graduates to still participate in hackathons, one-on-one meetings with volunteer engineers and more.

Twitter Software Engineer Sara Haider, who co-chairs Twitter’s female engineers group with Olivia Watkins, have been spearheaded the company’s efforts with Girls Who Code, spending time with the current class of young women, helping each develop Android apps built off of Twitter’s API.

Haider explains, “Girls Who Code aligns with our vision for how we want to tackle the issue of the supply of women in engineering…this looks at the other end of funnel which inspires young women to enter engineering.”

The top five projects from the summer demoed their applications to a group of engineers, including Haider. One of Haider’s favorite project was from a young woman who loved to read and wanted to create a way to share her literary experiences with others. She created a book club app that used Twitter to engage in conversations around books via hashtags.

“When the girls finally did demos, they were so eager and excited in classroom to show off their works…these girls inspired me,” she recalls.

Saujani says that this summer’s program resulted in a number of girls who are now planning to head to college to pursue a CS degree, but weren’t at the start of the class. And she plans to launch Girls Who Code in five different markets in the next year.

Damyanti Gupta happens to be my mother-in-law. I’m not only in awe of her story, but all the stories of hardship along the way in her nearly 35 years with Ford. It turns out that being hired was only the beginning of an uphill battle in a sea full of male engineers. It’s that battle that often turn women to professions outside of Engineering. I’m hopeful and inspired that organizations like Girls Who Code will make gender a non-factor for every girl who chooses what she wants to do with her life. Damyanti would be proud.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

SkillPages, which helps people with useful skills to find those who need them, just announced that it has raised a $9.5 million Series B funding round. This new funding round brings the total investment in the company to over $18 million. Among the investors in this round are Irish VC firm ACT Venture Capital, as well as previous angel investors and the company’s founders. The plan is to use this additional funding to accelerate user growth, launch new mobile products and expand the company’s engineering team to enhance SkillPages’ “SkillGraph” technology that matches people who are searching for a skill to people who have it.

SkillPages will officially announce this new funding round at the F.ounders event in New York City tomorrow.

The company was founded by serial entrepreneurs Iain Mac Donald (CEO) and Michael Gallagher (COO) in 2010 and launched in January 2011. SkillPages is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland (with offices in Palo Alto, too). The company raised its first seed round with $4 million back in 2010 when it was still called Weedle. The company currently has 32 employees and expects to use some of the new funding to staff up to around 42 employees (mostly engineers) by the end of the year. SkillPages also plans to make a major push to expand in the U.S. market later this year and to launch location-based mobile apps that will make it easier for users to immediately find people around them that have a certain skill.

SkillPage’s Vision: Create A More Efficient Labor Market

If you are unfamiliar with the service, here is what it does: it’s not so much a job board as a place where people with a certain skill – be that plumbing, piano tuning, landscape gardening or web design – can offer their services and connect with people who need this service. SkillPages uses Facebook’s social graph to help you see the real-world connections between you and the people you are about to hire.

As SkillPages’s founder and CEO Iain MacDonald told me earlier today, this social aspect is what sets his service apart from similar startups. Given that the world is already connected, he said, it makes sense to use these connections to then find people with a skill you need. Ultimately, said MacDonald, SkillPages wants to create nothing less than a more efficient labor market.

According to its own data, the company now has users in 160 countries “and over 100,000 people are now being presented with work opportunities through SkillPages every day.” In total, the company says, it now has over 5 million members. About 1.5 million of these are in the U.S., another 1.5 million are in the U.K and the rest can be found all over the world. MacDonald noted that the service has been growing organically and has done so much faster than its founders ever expected.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A small but interesting acquisition for Twitter as it continues to hone the services that it delivers to brands and other would-be advertisers alongside its core microblogging service: it has bought Nclud, a Washington, DC-based web design agency for an undisclosed amount.

The deal was announced by co-founder and director of brand experience Martin Ringlein, appropriately enough, on Twitter (where he tweets as @martymadrid): “It’s true … @nclud was acquired. As of today, I am the new Design Manager at Twitter!!” he wrote on Sunday.

Update: A Twitter spokeperson notes that in fact it has not bought the whole company, but it has bought the company’s IP, and that some of the staff are joining: “I can confirm that some members of the nclud team now work at Twitter,” he wrote in an email. “Twitter did not acquire nclud, the company, but we did acquire their IP.” He did not provide the financial terms of the deal.

Things are moving fast. Today, Ringlein noted that he was filling out paperwork for his first day at work.

We’ve reached out to Twitter and Nclud to try to get some more color on the deal, but the acquisition makes sense as Twitter continues to mature and look both for ways of servicing advertisers — and its own customer base — with compelling design on different platforms.

Nclud up to now has mainly been an advertising and marketing design agency, with its team working on a number of projects for both web and mobile screens. They include various projects for Oracle, such as its iPhone app, Ogilvy PR’s website and Politico’s iPhone app.

If Twitter continues this line of business, this could mean the company itself branching out into more traditional web advertising work. But if this is an aqui-hire situation, then it will be about using the talent on the staff  (12 if you include the two cute dogs) to enhance what Twitter is doing.

Twitter has been on a bit of a buying spree, moster recently picking up Posterous in March. We’ll update this post as we learn more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch