Tech talk: Battle Hacks are back

The third annual Battle Hacks, the international hackathon sponsored by PayPal and Braintree, will take place on October 8 and 9.

By ARIEL SHAPIRA
Cyber hackers [illustrative] (photo credit: REUTERS)
Cyber hackers [illustrative]
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The third annual Battle Hacks, the international hackathon sponsored by PayPal and Braintree, will take place on October 8 and 9 at Reading 3 in the Tel Aviv Port for the third consecutive year. For 24 hours, developers, hackers and IT experts are invited to “become the ultimate hacker for good.”
First-place winners will receive $100,000 and also fly to Silicon Valley in November to participate in the Battle Hacks World Final. The runners-up will receive an XBOX One 500GB.
Third-place winners will receive an Adafruit ARDX V1.3 kit.
The Battle Hacks enable young programmers from around the world to develop new apps using PayPal and Braintree platforms that address social issues and to compete with the best hackers and developers from around the world. The winners will compete in the global finals on November 14 and 15 at PayPal headquarters in San Jose.
In 2014, the Israeli app Air- Hop, lead by Shai Mishali and Pavel Kaminsky, won the Battle Hacks Grand Prize. AirHop makes it possible to send messages in areas with no cellular reception. In 2013, the Israeli team (Danny Leshem, Yoav Amit, Maya Marom and Yaniv Ben Zaken) came in second place at the World Finals with an app called RunPal.
Among the judges who will be judging the competition in Tel Aviv are PayPal senior global director John Lunn, Fiverr COO Vered Raviv- Schwarz, MobileMonday Tel Aviv founder Ofir Leitner, CitiBank accelerator head Ruth Polachek and Gett vice president of R&D David Sayag.
The apps that will be developed during the competition will be judged according to the quality of the code writing and the integration of the API, not according to the viability of the app as a business model.
The Battle Hacks have already taken place in New York, Tokyo, Berlin, Toronto, London and Stockholm, and the last one will be held this week in Tel Aviv.
Coolest cooler chest ever The summer may have come to an end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue going out and enjoying picnics. If you happen to be one of the lucky people who decided to invest and preorder a record-breaking Coolest cooler on Kickstarter, you will soon be enjoying a very cool picnic.
The Coolest cooler ever, which was designed for and printed on a 3-D printer in cooperation with MakerBot, includes a powerful ice-crushing blender (which any serious margarita- drinking individual knows is a basic necessity), forceful speakers with Bluetooth capability, a phone charger, USB outlet, LED flashlight, a cutting board, a built-in bottle opener and durable, off-road wheels so you can drag the cooler over rough terrain.
The brains behind the design is Ryan Grepper of Montana, who managed to raise more than $13 million on Kickstarter.
Coolers are at this moment being shipped to the first investors.
Grepper used the MakerBot Replicator, which helped him develop his ideas.
Systematics Systematics markets, distributes and supports computing technologies in the Israeli market.
It is the Israeli representative of leading international companies, including Solid- Works and Dassault Systemes, which assist with mechanical planning and design; Form- Labs, which offers 3-D printing solutions; MarkForged, which prints 3-D material that is as hard as metal; Esri, which produces GIS (geographic information systems) mapping software; and MathWorks, the world’s leading developer of technical computing software for engineers and scientists in industry, government and education.
Systematics offers service, training and support to its thousands of customers through its computerized customer- service center, which is staffed by a team of experts and which offers courses, seminars and professional mailings and guidance services that are tailored to customers’ needs.
More than 3,500 Israeli organizations and businesses benefit from these services, including governmental offices, businesses in the private sector, the defense industry and financial and academic institutions.
Systematics was founded in 1979 and currently employs 130 staff people in its offices in Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hahayal.
If you run a young startup, have developed an interesting app or have a question, please feel free to contact info@social-wisdom.com. Translated by Hannah Hochner.