Morning, Hackers! The 2...

It’s been a long, caffeine-fueled ride for the hundreds of hackers who have set up at our big Disrupt NY 2012 Hackathon, but the furious process of taking a wild idea and turning it into something real is finally winding down. Projects were being finalized, UIs were being tweaked, last minute Red Bulls were being downed — it was a quite a sight to see everyone buckling down for those final few minutes before submissions were due. It’s almost like a weight has been lifted off everyone’s shoulders though, and more than a few people have chosen to let off some of their stress-fueled steam by running around with the arsenal of Nerf guns we’ve left strewn about. Oh, but it’s not over yet. Now that everyone’s hacks have been collected, they’ll all start to take the stage here at Pier 94 and present the fruits of their hard work to our panel of judges. The chosen winners will then have the chance to present their projects at the Disrupt main stage in front of all of our wonderful attendees (but only after they get a few days to catch up on their sleep). On top of that, our API sponsors will be handing our prizes of their own, ranging from cold hard cash to a free Windows Phone. The Hackathon finals are set to begin in just a few moments, so stay tuned for all the action! Click to view slideshow.

Microsoft Announces Its...

Microsoft, just like Apple, usually runs a major back-to-school promotion every summer that is meant to give students (and their parents) some extra incentives to buy a new computer. The company’s just-announced back-to-school deal for the U.S. and Canada is pretty much the same as last year’s. A year ago, Microsoft gave students who bought a new PC and Xbox 360 and this year it’s doing exactly the same. There are some differences to last year’s program, though. This time around, Microsoft isn’t just partnering with Best Buy in the U.S., but also with Dell.com, Fry’s Electronics, HPDirect and NewEgg.com (its own Microsoft stores , of course, will also honor this promotion. In Canada, students can buy their PCs from Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source. The program is scheduled to start on May 20 in the U.S and May 18 in Canada. To be eligible, students need to buy a Windows PC worth at least $699 ($599 in Canada). Apple vs. Microsoft Apple also used free products like an iPod touch as an incentive for shoppers. Last year, however, it switched to handing out $100 gift cards to its digital stores instead . Apple usually announces its annual back-to-school promotion in June. By the end of last year’s summer promotions, some analysts noted that Apple handily beat Microsoft 8 to 2, with around 80% of incoming students opting for Macs instead of a Windows machine. This year, Microsoft hopes that Ultrabooks like the Samsung Series 5 ULTRA and the Dell XPS 13 will make students think twice about buying a Mac.

Analysts: Nokia On Trac...

The Facebook IPO is expected to usher in a day of massive trading volumes on the markets, and some believe that might translate to a lift for some tech stocks . But one that could really use some help has just been served another course of bad press: Nokia is apparently burning through its cash reserves — fast. The company, for years the biggest mobile phone maker in the world, has fallen on very tough times, as competition from companies like Samsung, Apple and a barrage of inexpensive device makers, have translated into declines in sales, market share and profitability. That’s now translating into what has been identified as another issue: the burning of the cash pile. In the last five quarters, Nokia has burned through €2.1 billion ($2.7 billion) from its cash reserves. Analysts polled by Reuters on average believe that at the rate Nokia is going, it will go through another €2 billion ($2.5 billion) in the next three quarters, with the total current cash pile of €4.9 billion ($6 billion) gone within two years. To put that in some context, in 2007 Nokia had cash reserves of €10 billion in 2007 ($12.7 billion). That points to its cash pile burn accelerating — a result of the fact that the company has been trying to transform its business, which requires investment, while at the same time seeing massive sales drops: In the company’s last quarterly earnings , reported April 18, Nokia reported that overall revenues were down by $4 billion (€3.4 billion) to $9.7 billion (€7.4 billion). Smartphones, the core of Nokia’s fightback strategy, declined by more than 50 percent both in revenues and unit sales, and the company saw a 40 percent drop in revenues from devices, its biggest business, with sales in those now at €4.2 billion. Nokia also swung to an operating loss of $1.7 billion, blaming the double-whammy of competition from Apple/Google as well as restructuring costs, as the company has pushed to put a stronger emphasis on its new line of smartphones in a race to gain back its rapidly disappearing market share in the higher-margin end of the smartphone market. That market share has been slipping for some time now, but it was in the last quarter that it finally slipped enough to put Nokia into number-two behind Samsung. According to Q1 figures out earlier this week from Gartner , Nokia now has 19.8 percent of the mobile market to Samsung’s 20.7 percent. While Samsung’s sales have been rising, up to 86.6 million units from 68.8 million in the quarter a year ago, Nokia’s have been going in the reverse direction: now at 83.1 million units compared to 107.6 million a year ago. Nokia currently has two tranches of credit bonds outstanding: bonds of €1.25 billion euros at 5.5 percent maturing in 2014 and €500 million of notes at 6.75 percent due in 2019. These have now reached the lowest investment grade status at S&P , Fitch and Moody’s  with negative outlook. “I would not rule out the possibility of Nokia being downgraded further,” Nancy Utterback, a credit strategist at Aviva Investors, told Reuters. “The company is in a negative spiral that will be hard to reverse.” Reuters does also point out some bright spots. The company is expected to sell 20 million of its new Windows Phone-based smartphones this year, and 46 million next year. And if the company continues on its cost-reducing course, it could end 2012 with €2.8 billion ($3.6 billion) in net cash this year. And there is another possibility that we will likely see raised more and more: a “white knight” in the form of a Microsoft acquisition. The software company  is already heavily entwined with Nokia over the use of the Windows Phone OS — paying Nokia $1 billion annually for this — a relationship that could well deepen if Nokia’s problems continue to grow.  [Image: Images of Money, Flickr ]

Bing Launches Its Paid ...

Just about a month ago, Microsoft announced that it would end free access to its Bing Search API and start charging a minimum of $40 per month for the service. Today, the company is officially launching the Bing Search API on its Windows Azure Marketplace, but unlike its previous announcement, the company has decided to continue to offer a free tier as well. Developers will still be able to make up to 5,000 queries per month for free. This, says the Bing team, will still allow most existing developers to use the service for free. For developers who need more than 5,000 queries, pricing starts at $20 per month for 10,000 queries and increases all the way up to the top tier of 2.5 million queries for $5,000 month. This API gives developers access to web, image, news and video search results. There is also a cheaper web results-only version of the Bing API that starts at $13 per month for 10,000 queries. The Bing team also announced that it made some changes to the API’s terms of use . These changes, says Microsoft, “now allow greater flexibility to re-order and blend results so that you have greater control over how Bing data is integrated into services and applications.” Developers will have to buy access to the API through the company’s Azure Marketplace , which also offers access to various other data sources and applications that can run on the company’s Azure cloud computing platform. Until now, developers had virtually unrestricted access the Bing Search API. This, is some ways, gave Bing an advantage over Google, which only gives developers a free quota of 100 queries per day .

Twilio Calling: Cloud T...

Cloud-based telephony API startup Twilio has made significant inroads into VoIP and other carrier services like SMS by launching products that work on the web and in iOS apps, supporting 90,000 developers in the process. Today it’s widening that net considerably with the launch of a new Android client, the first SDK from the company to work on Google’s platform. And it hints that Windows Phone may be next in line. Considering that Android is currently the most popular smartphone platform globally , this potentially gives Twilio a much bigger opportunity to deliver services to the wider smartphone market — with Android and iOS together accounting for 75 percent of the existing smartphone market, according to Gartner . Twilio is kicking off its Android service with features to integrate voice features into Android apps: as with Twilio’s existing APIs for iOS apps and websites, the Android VoIP APIs effectively let developers incorporate VoIP features directly into apps, to create features like in-app calling that work without needing to launch any additional apps or services. Other features in the SDK include real-time presence, with developers able to build buddy lists to let users know who is online, and who can voice chat; and app backgrounding, which lets users receive voice calls even if the relevant app is not being used. But what’s potentially most interesting about the launch of the Android SDK is that it could lead to some interesting bridges built between Android apps, iOS apps, web apps and traditional voice calls. “We now support the vast majority of smartphones globally,” Thomas Schiavone, director of product management for Twilio, noted in a statement. “With this many developers and our proven success on iOS, we know we’ll see some incredible and innovative cross-platform communication apps in the months to come.” Schiavone further said that there will be SDKs for other platforms coming soon — and hints that the next SDK to come might be for the Windows Phone platform. “We are looking at what will be next,” he told TechCrunch. “Android and iOS are the leaders, but at this time there is no clear number three. However, we are watching all the other platforms and are particularly interested in Window’s Phone.” That would also make sense, given the strategic partnership  Twilio already has with Microsoft. That partnership was announced earlier this month and means that Microsoft now offers Twilio’s APIs to tens of thousands of Microsoft Azure cloud developers. In addition to that development, Twilio has been releasing a steady stream of other news in the last month that points to the company looking to expand quickly and make good use of its $33 million in funding to date . Its services are now available in 12 countries — 10 in Europe and the U.S. and Canada — and in April, Twilio hired a full-time executive in Europe, James Parton, poached from Telefonica. But it has also seen one significant executive departure, too: Danielle Morrill, an early employee who headed up marketing, just this week left to work on her own startup, the Y Combinator-backed Refer.ly . The Android SDK has been running in a private beta, the company tells me, and from today it will be  available  to all Android developers.