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MindSumo: The X Prize of hiring

Looking to hire smart college kids? Here's a new tool that will help you find them: MindSumo.

It lets you create challenges, or contests, to help you solve problems you have at your company. You have to put up prize money, but in return, you get (hopefully) solutions to your problems, and (more hopefully) youth you can hire to work for you full time.

The prizes are not winner-takes-all; the challenge posters select the top solutions and the prize money is distributed among the best of them.

CEO Trent Hazy says that even for the entrants who don't … Read more

Zynga coming to a board game near you, courtesy of Hasbro

Zynga will allow the toymaker Hasbro to create games and toys based on its online properties, the two companies said.

While no products have yet been confirmed, the deal will produce real world products based on online games like "FarmVille."

Zynga is no stranger to partnerships, having produced branded versions of its games on a number of occasions. Last spring, it paired with Lady Gaga for the launch of GagaVille, a FarmVille environment inspired by Gaga's stylings.

For the time being, it looks like the relationship will be limited to Hasbro producing Zynga inspired games, but it … Read more

Startup aims to cover your underwear subscription needs

Science Inc. wants its latest startup to get in your pants.

If you've ever bemoaned the fact that underwear manufactures bundle pieces together in assorted colors, MeUndies.com could have the solution. Backed by Science, a startup shop founded by former MySpace CEO Mike Jones, Me Undies wants to bring style and simplicity to a clothing commodity consumed by mostly everyone.

Me Undies allows customers to pick their style, size, and color without making the compromises associated with bundle packs. The buyer is then subscribed to receive a new pair of underwear each month for $16. Individuals who don'… Read more

Navigation app Waze gets limited voice controls

The great, free car navigation app Waze (see Rafe Recommends) is getting an update today that gives it a limited hands-free, voice-controlled interface.

Waze is now perhaps the only app to use the phone's promixity sensor to turn on the input interface, since Google removed that feature from its iPhone Search app. A wave of the hand over the iPhone brings up the voice control prompt.

Waze only accepts a limited set of voice commands. You can navigate to two pre-sets ("Drive to home," and "drive to work"), and you can create traffic alerts, to … Read more

Path and the disclosure dilemma

Was Path's data privacy flap so bad? Or Pinterest's revenue revelation?

These Web ventures have both taken heat in the last day or so because they were doing things with their users' data or activity that those users didn't sign up for. I mean that literally. Implicitly, it's a different story.

When people signed up for Path (before today's update), they didn't see a disclosure statement to the effect of, "We read your phone's address book and correlate it with other users' address books that we've read in order to connect … Read more

Pinterest making money by adding tracking code to certain user pins

How does a Web site like Pinterest make money? At least one blogger has found and revealed an apparent answer.

The online pinboard lets people share their interests and other "things they love" by pinning a photo or other image onto the site. Users can then respond to that pin by commenting on it, liking it, or re-pinning it as one of their own favorites.

Sounds pretty cut and dried. But as described by blogging site LLSocial.com, if a user submits a pin that links to an e-commerce site with an affiliate program, then Pinterest tweaks that … Read more

Startup SpringCoin aims to help those in debt

If one Y Combinator startup is successful, it might have just gotten a bit easier to get out of debt.

SpringCoin (formerly DebtEye), opens its online doors this morning with the noble intention of helping you, or possibly someone you know, get out of debt. No, SpringCoin won't pay your bills for you, but through a combination of its "smart-learning software" and human expertise, it will provide a detailed plan to get yourself out of debt.

SpringCoin isn't without competition, though. ReadyForZero, a fellow Y Combinator alum that also boasts an investment from Dave McClure of … Read more

Path shares photos--oh, and uploads your contacts, too

The popular photo sharing service Path is deep in the weeds today after a blogger revealed that the company's app automatically uploads iPhone users' entire address books to its servers.

In a blog post, a developer named Arun Thampi said that he discovered that his "entire address book (including full names, emails, and phone numbers) was being sent...to Path." And while he also wrote that he wasn't accusing Path of doing anything "nefarious," he noted that the service had never asked for his permission to upload something as sensitive as his contacts.

In … Read more

As it scales, Instagram shows restraint in all the right places

I was prepared to hate Mat Honan's latest feature on Instagram, the popular vintage-filter-photo app for Apple's iPhone. But to his credit, the Gizmodo writer made a little business problem immensely fascinating.

Honan tells a story of how Instagram blew up without blowing up--that is, scaled to 15 million users without losing uptime, industry credibility and each of its 10 employees' minds. The key is that Instagram shunned a Web interface, or a second or third app platform to support, and kept innovating in the narrow space in which they exist: a single photo-sharing app for iPhone users.… Read more