Technology

Udacity today announced a new partnership with Google that will make a number of career courses freely available to recent graduates and mid-career professionals. The free career courses, which mark a first for Udacity, will focus on helping employees improve their chances of getting a job, no matter whether thata first job or we are talking about a mid-career course change.

The two companies trialed this approach with the &Networking for Career Success& course, which launched in March. At the time, they made that course available to 60,000 Grow with Google scholarsand itnow part of the 12 courses Udacity and Google are launching together.

The new courses cover a wide swath of topics that range from helping you refresh your resume and write a cover letter to giving you tips for optimizing your GitHub profile and strengthening your LinkedIn Network. But there also are more technical topics, and Udacity will offer a &Data Structures and Algorithms in Python& class, as well as a course on using Swift for technical interviews.

&This next generation of talent will enter the job market possessing a diverse range of skills, but facing a lot of competition, and a rapidly-shifting hiring landscape,& writes Udacity VP of Careers Kathleen Mullaney. &They&re going to need every resource they can get to make sure they&re able to compete successfully for available roles. They are not alone in benefiting from this kind of support. Mid-career professionals pursuing career change, older workers returning to the workforce, and anyone looking ahead to a job search, will find these courses valuable as well.&

Udacity has long partnered with industry partners, so itno surprise the company is now working with Google again. Google itself has worked with both Udacity and its competitor Coursera over the years for launching both career-oriented courses and more technical classes that range from introductions to programming and IT skills classes to in-depth machine learning courses.

Grab, the ride-hailing firm that acquired UberSoutheast Asia business, is aiming to catalyze the early-stage startup scene in Southeast Asia after it launched an accelerator and investment unit called Grab Ventures.

The six-year-old company has already made investments and acquisitions — backing startups like Drive.ai and buying IndonesiaKudo and India-based iKaaz— and Grab Ventures will build on that by making 8-10 investments over the coming 24 month period, but it is also offering different kind of support. The firm will offer an accelerator program for &growth-stage& companies and play a hand incubating new services inside Grab, according to Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures.

That accelerator effort — called ‘Velocity& — will launch its first intake before the end of the year with around four to six companies per batch.

&Ittimefor us to reflect on the tremendous support we&ve seen over the years and give back to the community,& he told TechCrunch in an interview. &We have aresponsibility to empower the next generation of startups in Southeast Asia. We have astrong belief in taking a partnership approach, we know we can&t do it alone.&

On the partner side, Grab has recruited Singapore government agencies Info-communications Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) and Enterprise SG to aid its efforts.

Taken together, Grab said it is aiming to help build an ecosystem of companies in Southeast Asia, a region of over 600 million consumers where the internet economy is tipped to grow from $50 billion per year in 2017 to over $200 billion by 2025, according to a recent report authored by Google. Ride-hailing as a segment is forecast to rise to $20 billion by 2025 up from $5 billion last year.

Grab believes that now it has reached scale with over 100 million downloads and more than 200 cities, the firm can help other startups rise up.

&Our object is to build new startups inside Grab and scale existing promising growth-stage startups. &Our hope for them is to grow from local leaders to regional champions and maybe global challengers,& said Yeo.

Grab Cycle is one business that Grab Ventures has incubated

Unlike traditional accelerator programs, Velocity isn&t aimed at a particular type of company while it is fairly general in terms of the stages that they are at. Yeo said the idea is to be flexible and work with companies that can benefit from Grabregional business and its various business units, which beyond taxis include food delivery, mobile payment and financial services.

&[Selection] depends on the startup, sector and industry,& Yeo explained. &Ideally they&ve got funding and are looking to scale up their business — which means typically going into more countries or accessing a larger customer base.&

However, Velocity will not take equity/offer investment as part of the program, although there may be investment opportunities with Grab Ventures further now the line, according to Yeo.

On the investment side, the focus is also broad, too.

Yeo said that Grab ventures isn&t a dedicated VC arm. Thereno set check size per investment (nor a total fund size) but it is broadly looking to back 8-10 companies in areas that align with Grabbusiness, although financial services looks like being a major focus since Grab has already built a strong business in taxis, logistics and (most recently) food delivery.

Yeo said Grab would back more startups than that target if it finds the right opportunities. He said the business will identify opportunities using its teams in the eight markets that Grab is present. While Singapore, where Grab is based, is a key focus for the business alongside Indonesia, Southeast Asialargest economy and the worldfourth most-populous country, Yeo said Grab Ventures will look for investment opportunities across the Southeast Asian region.

A group of Apple developers recently banded together as a group called &The Developers Union& in order to plead with Apple, en masse, to allow them to offer free trials of their apps to end users. While not a traditional union with dues, it represented the first time a large group of developers pushed back at Applecontrol of the App Storepolicies. Today, it seems, the developers are having their voices heard.

In Applenewly updated App Store guidelines, the company has changed its policy around free trials. Previously, it allowed free trials of subscription-based apps, but now any app can offer a free trial.

The change, spotted by 9to5Mac, clarifies how this system will operate.

Apple says developers of non-subscription apps may offer a &free time-based trial period& before presenting a full unlock option by setting up a non-consumable in-app purchase that doesn&t cost any money.

The in-app purchase must specify the time frame the trial is being offered, and clearly explain to users what content and services it includes.

While Apple may have already been considering support for free trials for all apps, itnotable that the change followed The Developer Unionopen letter on this matter. That gives the appearance, at least, that the developers had some sway. This is important because the group says they plan to advocate for other changes in the future, including a &more reasonable revenue cut& and &other community-driven, developer-friendly changes.&

As for the request for free trial support, there are currently 636 apps backing this cause on the unionwebsite & and the majority are indie developers looking to grow their businesses, not the major players.

Their letter specifically asked Apple to commit to &allowing free trials for all apps for the App Stores before July 2019.&

The updated support for free trials wasn&t the only significant change in the new App Store guidelines.

Apple also added a new section that requires apps to implement &appropriate security measures& for handling user data & a rule that could allow it to boot out shadier applications. Another privacy-related change said in-app ads can&t target &sensitive user data& and have to be age-appropriate.

The company addressed the situation with the rejection of the Steam Link app, as well, by saying that cross-platform apps may allow users to access content acquired on the other platforms, but only if italso available as an in-app purchase.

And Apple spelled out that apps cannot mine for cryptocurrency in the background, and explained how crypto apps should operate:

(i) Wallets: Apps may facilitate virtual currency storage, provided they are offered by developers enrolled as an organization.

(ii) Mining: Apps may not mine for cryptocurrencies unless the processing is performed off device (e.g. cloud-based mining).

(iii) Exchanges: Apps may facilitate transactions or transmissions of cryptocurrency on an approved exchange, provided they are offered by the exchange itself.

(iv) Initial Coin Offerings: Apps facilitating Initial Coin Offerings (&ICOs&), cryptocurrency futures trading, and other crypto-securities or quasi-securities trading must come from established banks, securities firms, futures commission merchants (&FCM&), or other approved financial institutions and must comply with all applicable law.

(v) Cryptocurrency apps may not offer currency for completing tasks, such as downloading other apps, encouraging other users to download, posting to social networks, etc.