Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Edmunds.com Plans Hackathon
Santa Monica-based Edmunds.com is joining the "Hackathon" bandwagon, and is getting set to launch a two-day event at its headquarters to brainstorm and solve problems around the car buying process, the company said today. Edmunds.com did not say how much it plans to award for its hackathon, which it says it will be opening up to auto industry insiders and other "innovative thinkers". Innovative developers with a penchant for creating new applications have had quite a number of local opportunities to demonstrate their coding and thinking skills lately, including one offering $30,000 in prizes for creating an app around discouraging texting while driving (from AT&T, held last week); a event dangling $20,000 in cash a few months ago at the Silicon Beach Fest; $10,000 offered earlier this year by Viddy for apps connecting to its video sharing product; and even one for the creatively minded from Crowdfunder, offering $25,000 earlier this year for the best startup video. Edmunds.com hasn't released the details of its own hackathon effort, but said it will be posting it within the next few weeks.