developers

LinkedIn is so 2011.

In the red-hot market for skilled software engineers, companies looking to make great hires are discovering that relying on traditional services that showcase candidates' work histories -- but not their actual work -- is a great way to miss out on the best available talent.

These days, there's a new game in town -- GitHub, a place where hiring managers and recruiters alike are increasingly turning to find not just the potential employees who look best on paper, but the ones that actively (and publicly) demonstrate their capabilities.

Last month, Andreessen Horowitz, one of the … Read more

Are you a tech startup desperate to hire the best talent around and looking for a central repository of skilled engineers? Or a kick-butt coder trying to get in on the ground floor of a hot new venture? AngelList may have just the place to go.

This evening, AngelList, a service whose alumni companies have raised more than $1.1 billion in funding, launched a new talent portal, a one-stop shop where startups can search for qualified tech talent, and where skilled engineers and others can seek out the best new companies.

"We noticed that people were using AngelList … Read more

If Twitter wanted to alienate the developers who helped to make it such a success, today's new restrictions are a good way to do it.

Twitter revealed the specifics today on stricter API rules for developers, which means it's going to get tougher for third-party apps to grow their app's user base.

The new restrictions, which the company plans to roll out in the coming weeks, will include several changes, including a cap on the number of users an app can have and required authentication to access the application programming interface. This means Twitter is limiting the … Read more

LinkedIn is updating its developer platform with several new changes revolving around discussing and sharing professional content.

Over the last year, LinkedIn asserts it has been working closely with more than 75,000 developers to build innovative developer tools that leverage the LinkedIn platform across the web. Some of the developer partners getting involved and might have a heavier presence on LinkedIn soon include WordPress, Evernote, and Flipboard, among others.

The primary way more sharing is going to be done is with LinkedIn's upgraded share API, which is essentially designed to be a win-win for developers and users … Read more

Microsoft has completely overhauled its Windows Phone Dev Center and added some extra ways for developers to get paid.

The company today announced the changes in a blog post, saying that the site, which allows developers to do everything from submit applications to download software development kits, was completely rebuilt "from the ground up." The design itself comes with a healthy amount of white space and a streamlined, basic feel. According to Microsoft, the redesign aims "at providing faster access to common tasks."

For developers, however, the key additions come by way of availability and payments. … Read more

Amazon has launched a social game development effort called Amazon Game Studios, as well as a game for Facebook called Living Classics.

"Amazon Game Studios is exactly what it sounds like: a new team at Amazon that's focused on creating innovative, fun and well-crafted games," the Amazon Games Studios team said in a company blog post today. "We know that many Amazon customers enjoy playing games -- including free-to-play social games -- and thanks to Amazon's know-how, we believe we can deliver a great, accessible gaming experience that gamers and our customers can play any … Read more

More than a billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water, and some 300 million of them are in Africa. Industrial design students Ryan Lynch and Marcus Triest have an interesting approach to tackling the problem in sub-Saharan African with his Solar Bag.

This design concept is both a shoulder bag-style container to transport water from a distant source, as well as a tool to purify it.

The container is made of polyethylene, which allows UV rays to pass through the clear outer layer and kill most of the bacteria in the water. It's similar to … Read more

Facebook announced today it is doubling the site's release speed to shipping new code twice per day. The push is driven by Facebook's New York office as well as the social network's daily push already managed by its California release engineering team.

As Facebook grows towards 1 billion monthly active users and beyond, maintaining and frequently improving the site is a must. The company's hacker mentality of "move fast and break things" definitely applies here.

"We're making this change to keep our release process as quick and efficient at 1,000 engineers … Read more

Google today issued a wide-ranging update to its Developer Program Policy, with the aim of making "Google Play a great community for developers and consumers."

The search giant zeroed in on two issues it's seeing across the Google Play landscape: "deceptive app names and spammy notifications." From now on, developers will not be allowed to use app names or icons that are deemed "confusingly similar to existing system apps," the company wrote in an e-mail viewed by CNET. Google didn't say what would make a respective application confusing.

On the spam front, … Read more