Nerd Stalker

Our SocialGreg sums up the SF New Tech End of Summer show on 8/27 at the Mighty Nightclub. The night featured pitches from Waze, HashtagSell, DocSend, CloudHQ, ComfortWay and Alynd. Check out SocialGreg's favorite of the night.

This month, we take another journey into Agile thinking. We will go in-depth into a couple of articles on Examiner.com titled “ Agile thinking requires forward contingency planning ” and an article on Startup Blog “ Agile success generates great feelings ” with Taffy Williams, Examiner writer and entrepreneur, and the co-founder & CEO of Colonial TDC. Taffy gives examples from his experience of Agile ways of thinking and insights on how investors think . Give it a listen or a view!

When developing apps, sometimes the focus is about the app and sometimes it is about the process. With Microsoft Idea Lab, it is both. A few weeks ago, one of Microsoft's mobile apps became the first passenger to ride on the Microsoft Idea Lab called SNIPP3T (pronounced snippet) . It is a celebrity lurking app. That's all we will say about it. What's more interesting is how Microsoft's Idea Lab is helping their app developers. A few months ago, Microsoft announced Idea Lab which was created to get Microsoft developers and their users to interact more to develop products better and faster. We talk with Microsoft Idea Lab and SNIPP3T team of Lisa Abdilova, Alisher Saydalikhodjayev  and Donald Soon as they talk about how SNIPP3T is being developed through Microsoft Idea Lab.

Hey Transmedia enthusiasts! The first  Conducttr Conference is coming in October of this year aimed at creative people who want to deepen their understanding of transmedia storytelling by sharing their experiences while building their network in transmedia.  We talk again with co-founder and front man of Transmedia Storytelling Ltd. , maker of Conductrr to discuss the upcoming conference.

Picks of the Week: Mantything https://manything.com/manything/ "Breaking: Art Student Makes Synthetic Leaf, Solves Everything" ( Kat Bauman / core77) bit.ly/1zF4ZXD Let people control the music http://www.tracktl.com/ Google Glass Alert: Potential health risks from wireless radiation bit.ly/1u1MA7g    (Dr. Joel Moskowitz / UC Berkeley) Pinterest Messaging http://about.pinterest.com/en/messages Wikimedia Won't Take Down This Photo Because a Monkey Took It via @Gizmodo feedly.com/e/UOscL8eX ( Ashley Feinberg /Gizmodo) Speed Round: Shazam for mac https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id897118787?mt=12 The Russian 'hack of the century' doesn't add up (russel Brandon / TheVerge)  bit.ly/1shIEv2 Devices.css http://marvelapp.github.io/devices.css/ Old Frenemies Google and Barnes & Noble Unite to Fight Amazon feedly.com/e/ZYqvzybL ( Issie Lapowsky / Wired)  via @WIRED Dropcam breakdown by AV insider http://is.gd/koYumi ...

Google Inc. has made a one-time, in-kind donation to the nonprofit Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA). Google will be donating 110 Nexus 5 devices and 350 Nexus 7 devices to support the organization’s goals regarding digital-literacy initiatives. MEDA provides asset building to financially challenged Latinos in San Francisco’s Mission District, with a major component of its service-integration model being computer skills. MEDA is also the lead agency of the Mission Promise Neighborhood (MPN), a citywide community partnership that has been created in support of students and families living, working and going to school in the Mission District. MPN brings together schools, colleges, community organizations, businesses and community leaders to help kids graduate and families achieve financial stability. The donated devices will have programmatic uses in the tech labs at MEDA, where digital-literacy classes are taught based on varying skill levels. Richard Abisla, MEDA...

Guest Post by Christopher Gil Mission Techie Yaritza opened her weary eyes this morning upon awakening in her Mission District home, the 17-year-old Lowell High senior not sure what her day would bring. She and 18 other Mission Techies, from MEDA’s third cohort of its free young adult program , had been graciously invited to tour the campus of tech giant Facebook. The group MEDA has been guiding on the path to an IT career now had that path extended to the tech hub of Silicon Valley. While it is a mere thirty-mile bus ride from the underserved communities of San Francisco’s southeastern quadrant to the leafy, suburban streets of Menlo Park, Yaritza was aware that a new place awaited. It was time to come face-to-face with that world—a world of high tech, as a group used to getting inside a computer was now being taken inside one of the most powerful companies in the world. “It was like spending a short vacation in a mini-Hollywood.”–Mission Techie Jamar Walker As the bus approached 1...