Astea sponsors HackFmi 4.0

November 2014 — Once again Astea was a sponsor of the fourth semi-annual hackathon HackFMI, held traditionally in the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Sofia University! This edition was more massive than ever — over 250 competitors in 55 teams hacked code day and night for a whole weekend and took their best shot in bringing their project ideas to life.

Speaking of projects, the reason HackFMI 4.0 was so exciting for everybody involved was its one and only rule — create a whole game from scratch! Read more…

Cloud4all’s Smart House simulation is released

November 2014 — At the end of the third year of the Cloud4all project, Astea completed one of its major activities within the project — the Smart House Online Simulation. The quick video below is a virtual tour of a smart house, which showcases how the interfaces of various appliances adapt to users’ needs and preferences according to their profiles. Read more…

Barnes & Noble announces Reader’s Choice Awards

October 2014 — Barnes & Noble recently announced its new initiative — the Annual Reader’s Choice Newsstand Awards! For the first time readers can vote for their favorite articles in several categories. Being engineers and all, our vote goes to Popular Mechanics’ privacy tips.

Clicking the cover on the right will take you to the Promotional Article Viewer: an HTML5 reader developed from scratch by Astea on behalf of Barnes & Noble Newsstand. In addition to offering the usual features, such as quick and easy navigation and social network sharing, one of the most notable perks of the reader is that it will run in almost any browser on almost any screen! Pick your favorite — Firefox on your laptop, Safari on your iPad, or Chrome on your Android phone — all of them offer an optimized reading experience. Check out all the articles for free at nook.com/readershoice!

CourseKicker wins the BigApps challenge

September 2014 — CourseKicker was announced a winner of the NYC’s BigApps challenge! Among the 20 finalists in the Learn category CourseKicker was honoured with the grand prize as the best tool that allows teachers to connect, collaborate and share best practices with colleagues beyond their own schools, anywhere in the world.

CourseKicker uses social networking and crowdsourcing techniques to help teachers build strong professional networks, discover best practices, and recommend new connections and great lessons. Read more…

CourseKicker is released

May 2014 — CourseKicker is a lesson discovery and sharing site for teachers. It allows teachers to:

  • Easily and quickly find the best possible lesson plan for any subject
  • Find videos and other materials to enhance a lesson
  • Connect with other innovative teachers teaching the same subjects
  • Share lessons and ideas for enhancing the classroom experience
  • Follow how other teachers are teaching the same subject

CourseKicker’s simple yet modern interface allows for quick lesson planning and organization, easy interaction with other users, and rapid sharing. Lessons can be uploaded directly from the user’s computer or pasted in as links. Once uploaded, lessons are available live on the CourseKicker website where they can be reviewed, rated, and commented on by the members of the community. Read more…