At the beginning of March, we told you about a new $100k developer fund from real-life rewards platform Kiip, and so far the response has been amazing.

The excitement about the fund isn’t coming only from the developers who hope to get selected, it’s coming from other companies who are enjoying what Kiip is doing to build a strong developer ecosystem. Today, the company has announced that it is extending the application deadline until May 30th, as well as the addition of some other interesting benefits for developers.

Kiip’s CEO Brian Wong tells me that hundreds of teams have submitted applications thus far. In fact, Wong tells The Next Web that the company plans on doing this again:

We’ve gotten more feedback and support than we thought we would. This is an ongoing initiative, we’ve seen so much interest and it’s important that this thing continues. This is the first batch, and there will be more to come.

To “sweeten the pot” a bit, Kiip has partnered up with some amazing resources for developers who are chosen to join the Build Fund. Along with $5,000 from Kiip, these companies will also get $5,000 worth of services:

Amazon Web Services: $2,000 credit
Urban Airship: 6-month Pro License
StackMob: 6-month Pro License
Crittercism: Lifetime Enterprise License

If you think about exactly what a developer needs to build out a world-class application, the above tools are the essential items in their arsenal. To be able to get these things for free gives the application enough runway to snag a following and start generating some revenue using Kiip’s reward platform.

The Build Fund is looking to select some of the best teams smaller than 10 full-time people to create great applications that leverage the Kiip platform. The company itself is taking no equity in the teams that it selects, which it says it “wouldn’t dream of” doing.

Along with guidance from Kiip and some great technical assets, the Build Fund companies will also be able to tap into a pretty impressive list of mentors, including:

Scott Kveton, Founder & CEO, Urban Airship
Roy Bahat, President, IGN
Perry Tam, co-founder and CEO, Storm8
Lee Linden, co-founder of Tapjoy

These are the type of folks who have been involved in mobile applications for some time now and will be able to lend a helping hand to developers who want to take their application to the next level.

Applications to participate in the Build Fund are coming in from places like the Ukraine and China, which means that all of the interaction with mentors will happen virtually, something Kiip wasn’t prepared for at first.

As more advertisers get comfortable with using mobile applications as a vehicle to promote its products and brands, only good things will continue to happen for Kiip and its legion of developers. It’s not just gamers who are enjoying real rewards for virtual success, Wong tells me that fitness apps are getting into it as well.

Developers are the lifeblood of Twitter’s growth, as the apps that use data found on the microblogging site have helped propel its growth. There are a lot of moving parts though to deal with when it comes to Twitter’s API, so the team keeps in constant contact with the community.

The team announced some changes to its developer section today, mostly around surfacing frequently asked questions that the community has:

Discussions on dev.twitter.com are a key place for our developer community to work together and chat about the Twitter Platform and products. Today, we’re introducing new features to surface the most Frequently Asked Questions, providing instant and easy access to the information that matters most to you.

For starters, we curated and organized Frequently Asked Questions by category, answering all of them on one canonical page: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/faq

The frequently asked questions page will be kept up to date with the hottest topics complete with the full answers to help developers:

Additionally, the frequently asked questions will now be pulled into the developer discussions area, so that when you’re searching for something specifically, questions about that similar topic will pop up contextually. It might save you the time of typing your question out, since it might already have been answered:

Taking care of its developers is definitely a strong suit of Twitter, and with updates for informational tools like these, it saves time for both the company and the developer community.

When you’re a developer, you’re faced with a whole host of challenges and concerns based around who you want to develop things for. You have to figure out what audience is best for an app or site as well as decided to pick which platform to build it for. Luckily, there are technologies out there that will help you build things that can build thing for multiple devices and browsers, and Yahoo! is releasing a framework to the open source community to assist in that goal today.

The framework, Mojito, is a “JavaScript-centric presentation platform for connected devices”, built by Yahoo! developers to bring content to customers no matter what platform or device they’re on.

Here’s how Yahoo! explains Mojito:

If you want to build apps that reach all your customers, anywhere and everywhere, this might ring a bell. Today you have to make hard choices, mutex choices – I hate those. Build a desktop Web site? Build a mobile Web site? Build an app? Translation: an iOS app? Or an Android app?

Mmmmh. Must I pick one?

Here’s an idea: build a standards-based application, and tailor it to the device it runs on. Make it degrade nicely, on all the devices. Easier said than done, for sure, but having a solid framework in place helps a lot. That’s Mojito (and YUI3). We’ve been working with Mojito for a while internally, building hybrid apps like Yahoo! Livestand. Or Fantasy Finance, a Web site. Or Fantasy Premier League Football, a mobile Web app. All three are built using Mojito because it lets you develop one codebase for any type of device. Think of the reduced effort!

By having one codebase from which to work, the need to have multiple developers stepping over one another to port versions of your app to say, Android, is not a problem any longer.

Letting this framework go into the wild for developers is an extremely smart move by Yahoo! as more companies are starting to give back to the community to build their brand and remain relevant. While developers might not use Yahoo! products specifically, being able to identify the company with a tool that can save them a good bit of time is a way to create goodwill and remain a part of the ecosystem.

In addition to making Mojito available for use, Yahoo! is hoping that the developer community can take the framework to the next level by adding its own nuances and features. This of course is also a great thing for Yahoo! in that it gains access to fresh new ideas and developers without having to pay for it.

➤ Mojito on GitHub

Here’s a scenario that most iOS and Android developers can understand: The dev center that Apple and Google gives you to administrate your apps contains some great information, like stats and such. The only problem is that you only get one login and password to access all of that information.

That’s right, even if you have five developers who can upload a build of your app or make changes on the App Store or Google Play, everyone has to log in with the same credentials. That’s pretty broken, but luckily Google has fixed that today by announcing multi-user access for its Android Developer Console.

It’s about time, huh? Since Google already has people using Google Accounts for pretty much everything, it’s a shock that it took them this long to take care of the developer access.

Here’s what the Android team had to say about it today:

As your apps have gotten more successful, more people have joined your team. Today, we’re making it easier to work together on analyzing and managing your published Android apps. Sharing passwords is generally a bad idea; so as of now, there’s no need to do that for the Android Developer Console — everyone can use his or her own Google account.

The account that you use today to sign into the Android Developer Console will become the account owner; only the account owner can manage access to the Console. The account owner can email an invitation to anyone; when they accept it, they’ll need to use a Google account to sign in.

This is similar to how multiple users can access Google Analytics, and you’ll even be able to choose who can access what in the console. For example, if someone at your company needs to look at your sales for financial purposes, you’ll be able to restrict their access just to that section. How Apple hasn’t fixed yet is beyond me, but considering that you can only have so many test devices on one account (which still boggles my mind), I shouldn’t be that surprised.

No longer do you have to worry about someone accidentally changing the price of your app, or gosh forbid removing it from Google Play entirely. Hey Apple, where’s this feature for iOS developers?

I’m here in Mexico City representing The Next Web at an event called Apptualizate, where I’ll be speaking about Internet culture and entrepreneurship tomorrow. I’ve never been to Mexico City, but from what I’m hearing there is quite a tech scene developing around here lately.

The focus of the tech scene seems to be around developing applications for mobile devices, which makes complete sense since it’s the hottest trend globally right now. What has been holding Mexico City back from surfacing innovative ideas and building killer apps? I’m told that it might be as “simple” as the lack of an ecosystem that we see in San Francisco and New York City.

By ecosystem, I mean a few things; developers helping other developers, angel investors taking chances on small teams, and the lack of VC funds and culture that we enjoy in the states.

Having said that, there are ways around what’s lacking, and that’s to cut through the noise with something amazing. Instead of worrying about when and if a company will get funded, developers here in Mexico City first need to realize that if they’re not completely passionate about what they’re doing, they will fail. Everything else will take care of itself in the long run. It’s a mindset that is second nature to us in Silicon Valley, but not so much here.

The Apptualizate event is part conference and part hackathon. The interesting spin on the hackathon is that companies who are sponsoring the event might just come out of it with a new product, or at least the team to build one. The tagline for the event (in English) is:

Develop a mobile application for a customer and earn their business in 48 hours.

For 48 hours straight, teams will be hacking away on ideas for these sponsoring companies, in hopes that it can land them a contract to see the product all the way through. The developers can’t leave the venue, the gorgeous World Trade Center here in Mexico City, and this is their big chance to shine.

The over 140 developers will also get the chance to talk to folks from the sponsoring companies, as well as speakers like Norberto Ortigoza, Ryan Bruels, Michael Silverwood, Clint Nelsen, and Tugce Ergul.

I’m told that this is the first time that Mexico City has had this type of in-depth speaker lineup when it comes to tech and venture capital. It’s an honor to be a part of it and I’ll be bringing you updates on what I see, hear, and learn at the event.

The Hacker Cup kicked off at around 10am this morning at Facebook’s office in Menlo Park and lasted for three hours. The best of the best programmers from around the world competed by taking a stab at three separate problems.

As we noted earlier, not one competitor finished all three problems last year and the same rang true this year. Based on speed and accuracy, the winner completed one problem only 1 minute faster than the second place contestant.

Roman Andreev won the Hacker Cup and gets his name placed on this awesome (and really heavy) cement trophy along with a check for $5,000:

Here are the top three competitors from this year’s Hacker Cup:

1st place: Roman Andreev from Russia, completed one problem correctly in 1 hr 4 min
2nd place: Tomek Czajka from the US, completed one problem correctly in 1 hr 5 min
3rd place: Tiancheng Lou from China, completed one problem correctly in 1 hr 44 min

Facebook plans on holding this competition every year around this time, so keep your eye out for signups to open to be the Hacker Cup champ of 2013.

According to a report by Reuters, it appears that Google wants all of the apps on its Android Market Google Play platform to use its own payment system for in-app purchases. And by want, it reports that Google is nearly forcing developers to do so.

Some developers that are using external payment systems such as PayPal, Boku, and Zong have been contacted to change their ways or potentially get the heave-ho from the platform.

According to the founder of social networking app Papaya, Google strongly suggested that the company make the change over to Google Checkout, in hopes of creating a more streamlined experience for app users:

They told people that if they used other payment services they would be breaking the terms of use. Whether it’s right or wrong, we have to follow the rules.

We haven’t heard from any developers with similar stories, but if this is something that breaks Google’s developer agreement or terms of service, the company surely hasn’t been enforcing it until now.

While forcing developers to use an in-app payment system exclusively is a page out of Apple’s books, it’s surprising that Google company wouldn’t continue to work on making its product better and letting developers choose the best option.

Choosing a payment option is an extra step that could become annoying for users, so it’s easy to see why Google would want this switchover to happen, not to mention the fact that it is losing potential revenue by allowing other companies to handle payments.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment, but haven’t heard back yet. We’ll let you know if we do.

UPDATE: We have done some research into the developer distribution agreement, and it does indeed state that app developers are required to use Google Checkout (not Google Wallet as Reuters first reported) to process in-app payments. Since Google doesn’t have a review system like Apple does, it seems like the company is reaching out to those who they find to be breaking its terms.

Anyone who has ever played a video game is bound to know about the legend of the game “Pong”, which was the first game developed by the iconic gaming company Atari.

The classic Pong is the most simple yet endearing video game ever to hit a screen of any size. There are two paddles and one ball with one mission; get the ball past your opponent and have the highest score. It’s the digital equivalent to table tennis and became the first mainstream success in the video game space. The graphics weren’t all that impressive, but the game play was simple enough for mom and dad to play along with.

To celebrate the game’s 40th anniversary Atari is asking indie developers to re-imagine Pong for iOS devices and is giving away a prize of $100,000 to the winner. Along with the cash prize, the winner’s app will be published under the Atari name on Apple’s app store.

Instead of going after people who copy its games to sue them, Atari is trying to build a relationship with independent developers, in hopes of re-caputuring the imagination of old school gamers everywhere.

Here’s what Atari CEO Jim Wilson had to say about the challenge:

The Pong Indie Developer Challenge is a great opportunity to celebrate the 40th anniversary of an iconic game franchise. We are enthusiastic about working with the independent developer community to evolve Pong through a wide variety of creative concepts and gameplay experiences that will further engage our Atari fan base and introduce new consumers to this pioneering video game franchise.

Along with being published under the Atari name and getting the cash prize, the winning developers will receive a publishing agreement with the company and full marketing support upon the title’s launch. Developers have until Martch 31st to submit their full plans and details for the proposed Pong title, and if selected as a semi-finalist must be able to provide a fully playable demo.

If you’re a game developer and have ideas on how you can bring Pong back to life for a new generation, head on over to to the Pong challenge page and start getting your ideas together for submission. The winner will be selected and announced by August 2nd, with a release date sometime before the end of 2012.

Pong® Indie Developer Challenge!

If you’re an iOS or Android app developer and have built something that you’d like people to share photos on, you know how plain and vanilla the default photo sharing functionality is for an app.

When using one of these apps, the only choices you get are your photo stream and camera roll, which pretty much consists of the same pool of photos. What about the photos you’ve shared directly to Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, and Instagram? Unless the app developer has taken the extra steps to build in functionality to grab photos from those services you’re out of luck, until now.

The startup Chute has built a pretty epic service for developers that will make the photo sharing experience way better on just about any app. It’s called Photo Picker+ and by using its SDK and a line of code, any application can instantly pull photos off of other social platforms by allowing users to log in and authorize the app to do so.

Here’s what we’re used to seeing on most iOS apps when it comes to grabbing a photo for a profile picture or any other function asking for a picture:

Using the Photo Picker+ SDK, photo pickers in apps could start to look something like this:

Not only is this a better experience for app users, it’s a great way for developers to get more engagement on their respective services. The SDK requires no programming whatsoever and just takes a quick swap of the photo picker code within the app.

Check out the demo of Photo Picker+ below:

Photo Picker+ is completely free for developers to use, all you have to do is sign up for a Chute developers account and download the SDK. There’s pretty much no downside for developers to start using the service and I suspect that we’ll start seeing it pop up in a lot of social apps for iOS and Android soon.

“How will it make money?” is a question that we should ask, but I’m sure that Chute has something in mind.

➤ Photo Picker+

One of the things that I’m not too fond of when it comes to the launch of Google+ thus far is the lack of a proper API for developers to create cool tools and uses for Google’s social network.

Even though Twitter has throttled usage of its API for third-party developers, once in a while a really great tool becomes available that either people use the heck out of until Twitter buys them, like Summify, or it serves a quick purpose, and we all move on. Either way, it’s great promotion and increased usage for Twitter.

Facebook has seen similar growth and engagement thanks to a huge ecosystem of developers and companies building apps and games on its platform. Needless to say, Google+ hasn’t exposed enough of its platform to enjoy any type of innovation. Perhaps that will change now that the company has announced a Google+ Developers page on the social network. Here’s what Google+ Developer Relations lead Chris Chabot had to say about it:

Our team will host regular hangouts to talk about the +Platform, your experiences with it, and share tips and tricks with the community. Our weekly office hours hangouts take place every Wednesday at 11:30am – 12:15pm PDT, and can be accessed from our Google+ Developers page. The +Platform team will also share Google+ developer events, conferences and hackathons, as well as photos and videos of the events. In addition, we’ll announce and discuss our +Platform launches on our page.

2012 is going to be a very exciting year for the Google+ Platform — I look forward to seeing you on our new Google+ Developers page!

In October, Google’s Vic Gundotra said that the company was taking a “cautious approach” to exposing the service for third-party development, and that’s exactly what the company has done. Currently, there is no “write” access for Google+ without using its own badge systems that you see on sites like ours.

There doesn’t seem to be a huge ecosystem of developers creating things for Google+ as of yet, and I’m hoping that the “exciting year” Chabot mentions will mean that the company will open up more access to Google+ for developers through its platform.

➤ Google+ Developers Page