About .me wants you to be the face of its new times square Billboard advertising campaign

Leena Rao is currently working as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school Medill School of journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007 she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney advocacy and community relations in New York. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where it was ... ? Read More

Personal profile run About.me, which is owned by our parent company AOL, looking for the person About.me and kicks off contest feature profiles posted on the site in a new advertising campaign.

For the background of About.me offers free people profile pages. On the page selected profile may include your name, bio and links to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites that contain information about you. Users can download high-resolution photos to a site that makes it look pretty sleek profiles and professional with a minimum of effort. You can check out co-founder Tony Conrad profile here.

The company intends to launch a massive ad blitz and tries to find the person campaigns on existing and new users. New and existing users of About.me will be invited to participate in the contest on their profile and once opted in, any visitor can vote on this profile page About.me will be featured in the campaign. The contest has just started a few hours ago and already gaining buzz on Twitter.

Three lucky About.me users who have the greatest number of votes will be featured in the campaign in the autumn (which includes the shield of the New York Times Square, as well as other billboards, taxis and in-flight announcement) and will be delivered in New York, together with the guest to participate in a special event for kickoff shield campaign. Seven runners-up will also be featured in billboard and other ads.

On the last day of voting is 20 September, so the time is to get your face on times square!

Disclosure: As TechCrunch belongs to AOL.

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NYC photo Hack Day is coming: NASDAQ feature winners at times square

Jason Kincaid currently works as a writer at TechCrunch. He grew up in Danville, California and later moved to Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California, where he studied biology with a minor in "society and genetics". You can contact him at jkincaidtc@gmail.com (it has other addresses too, so don't worry if you have another). ? Read More

This is the fact that tweeting about breakfast is a serious faux pas, on a par with "Liking" your own Facebook status updates. However, recent trends indicate that tweeting photos your breakfast was acceptable and in some cases, even encouraged. Your friends don't want to read about your oatmeal — but they would like to see it with my own eyes, preferably after it passes through the filter of "sutro.

Behold, the power of photography.

These days you can't navigate popular app, do not touch the feature that allows you to change or edit photos, and it seems a new photo service cropping up every week. That is why the aviary, a company that produces a set of powerful Web-based image editors, decided to help coordinate the hack day photo, you can use to build applications. And they were able to land sponsorship from NASDAQ pull it off.

Photos of the hack day will be 20-21 August and takes place in NYC in the General Assembly (which is also very involved in putting on the event). Tickets are free of charge to participating developers. You can sign up right here.

Aviary Alex Taub, who is the head of business development and partnership efforts of the company, said that it would be a great photo hackathon ever organized. And if things go well, the company intends to initiate a global hack day this winter, which will be held in New York City, SF, Israel and cities in Europe.

Of course, it's hard not to notice the big sponsor for the event: NASDAQ. This is a bit of a surprise (it's not often you hear about stock exchanges, getting involved with startups, if this help them IPO), but we were told, NASDAQ will have more to report on this front in the near future. NASDAQ also coordinates very cool prize for the top three apps built in hackathon: they will be showcased at the NASDAQ screen in times square.

Here's a quote from NASDAQ on today's announcement:

"NASDAQ has driven grassroots innovation, because he created the world's first electronic stock exchange 40 years ago," said NASDAQ OMX Senior Vice President, corporate communications, Frank de Maria. "NASDAQ is excited to sponsor the hack day photo by 2011, the General Assembly and support startup community in New York in their quest for innovation. We can't wait to see the results. "

The company will provide detailed information on their photo-based APIs for developers, in the hope that they will use them to their projects. Here is a list of companies-participants so far:

EtsyFace. BigstockSmugmugOpenphoto. comFoursquarePixableShutterstock and mePicStoryTwitpicLaunchrockImgurInstagram

Aviary is a joint creative suite for artists of all genres. And offline, through the Adobe Flex and air technologies respectively, Aviary allows artists to create ...

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