Microsoft to give BizSpark to all Imagine Cup Finalists for free!

imageTonight at the finalist presentations at the Warsaw Opera House, Jean-Philippe Courtois, President of Microsoft International, announced that all of the Imagine Cup 2010 Finalists would receive membership in Microsoft’s BizSpark program for free.

The Microsoft BizSpark program provides members with access to the latest software development tools and platforms, connects members to investors, government agencies, and consultants worldwide. Members are also provided with support from a technical, sales, and marketing perspective. For more information about BizSpark, visit http://www.bizspark.com.

Through the Imagine Cup and the BizSpark programs these students are well prepared to take their games, embedded devices, Windows Phone 7 applications, and other applications to market, and to have the tools and knowledge required to build a successful business to promote and sell their software.

Congratulations to all Imagine Cup finalists and I look forward to seeing your businesses grow!

Imagine Cup 2010: Game Design Finalist Presentations

As I write this post, I’m sitting in the audience for the Game Design Finalist presentations. I must say that there have been some really awesome games presented. I give my congratulations to all the teams that are here in the final round.

All of the finalists here are presenting their games to 5 judges and an audience of a few hundred people, and they are holding up under all the pressure. These teams are truly showing their expertise in software development as well as their passion for helping the world in meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

The finalists are Team NomNom Productions from Belgium, Team By Implication from the Philippines, and Team Gears Studio from France. I’ve included trailers of their games below, and I’ll post the announcement of the winner tomorrow night. I’m also working on finding out from the teams if their games will be available for download and / or purchase.

Team By Implication

Introducing Team USA

Here at the Imagine Cup the United States is represented in the Software Design, Embedded Design, Touch and Tablet Accessibility, and Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar” competition categories. Here is a short description of each team and their project.

Software Design

Team Name: Team Mobilife

Team Members: Kayvon Ghaffari, Wilson To, Helena Xu

Project Description: Mobilife introduces innovative application technologies into the market of mobile medicine by pairing the Windows Mobile platform with computer-assisted intravital microscopy to provide on-field analysis of the human microcirculation to detect developing microangiopathy in children.

Embedded Design

Team Name: Team Vaccine

Team Members: Patricia Day, Shawn McGhee

Project Description: Project Vaccine Tracker helps children around the world. There is a potential to save tens of thousands (or more) children from preventable diseases by providing a solution to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders, Kenya Partnership and others to effectively record and track immunizations in remote regions of less developed and developing countries.

Touch and Tablet Accessibility

Team Name: OneView

Team Members: Shaun Kane, Kristen Shinohara

Project Description: OneView is a Tablet PC application that enables blind and sighted students to collaboratively solve problems. It combines a sketching interface with a synchronized audio-based interface to enable students with different abilities to work together effectively.

Team Name: Team Note-Taker

Team Members: David Hayden, Andrew Kelley

Project Description: The Note-Taker Project solves issues that students with visual impairment have by combining a custom-designed pan, tilt and zoom camera, and a Tablet PC that supports both pen and multitouch input. Users simultaneously view live video and take notes on a split-screen interface.

Windows Phone 7 “Rockstar”

Team Name: Beastware

Team Members: Christian Hood, Eric Lo

Project Description: Beastware is a 2-D game that involves the player controlling a machine that destroys other machines by using an accelerometer. The objective of the game is to destroy as many enemies as possible before your health runs out. Players have three actions they can perform: shoot, repair and defend. The shoot action fires bullets in the direction of the machine. The repair action restores a small amount of health instantly. The defend action reduces the amount of damage taken for a short period of time.

Imagine Cup 2010 World Finals have begun

clip_image002Last night marked the opening of the 2010 Imagine Cup World Finals at the Palace of Culture in downtown Warsaw.

400 students, plus mentors, judges, press, and Microsoft employees gathered at the Palace of Culture to celebrate the beginning on the world finals. Attendees were greeted by Jacek Murawski, General Manager for Microsoft Poland, who talked about the change of the world that students competing are contributing to. Murawski told the story of his family and talked about his two young children, saying that he was counting on the students here today to change the world for the better for his children.

Murawski then introduced Waldemar Pawlak, Deputy Prime Minister of Poland who thanked the students for coming to Warsaw, discussed the fact that Poland is the only nation in the European Union with a growing economy, and encouraged the students to talk to one another, to learn from one another, and to explore the culture here in Poland. Pawlak then ended his speech by congratulating the students and thanking Microsoft for its support of students.

Jon Perera, General Manager for Microsoft’s worldwide education efforts then addressed the students. He talked to them about their efforts so far, he congratulated them on coming this far, and he talked about the Imagine Cup as whole. Perera announced that 325,000 students from more than 100 countries competed in this year’s Imagine Cup. Perera said today’s students have access to technologies that didn’t exist just a few years ago. He talked about technologies like Windows Azure, Windows Phone 7, and Silverlight. As the competition begins, Perera encouraged students to take 20 minutes and either by themselves or with their teams, go off somewhere away from the noise and reflect on their journey, to take it all in, and to have a moment to themselves.

Perera was then joined on stage by Murawski and Deputy Prime Minister Pawlak for the ribbon cutting with marked the official opening of the 2010 Imagine Cup World Finals. After the ribbon cutting, students were then treated to a concert by local band Zakopower.

Today students will begin competing and tonight an announcement will be made for the teams that are advancing to the second round.

I’m leavin’ on a Jet Plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again…

I’m at the airport here in Phoenix waiting for my first flight into Chicago, then it will be on into Warsaw from there.

The 2010 International Microsoft Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals start tomorrow evening at 6pm, Warsaw time. I’ll be joining the delegation from the United States, and will focus primarily on competitions that teams from the US are in.

I’m really excited as one of the teams competing this year is a team from Arizona State University (Go Devils!), so expect a little bit of bias. Winking smile (Just kidding!)

I plan on taking tons of photos, and hopefully uploading them daily. They’ll be uploaded to my Picasa Web Album, which is accessible at the following link, http://picasaweb.google.com/taziegma.

Teams competing in the Imagine Cup finals from the United States are:

Software Design – Team Mobilife
     -Wilson To – University of California – Davis
     -Jason Wakizaka – University of California – Davis
     -Helena Xu – University of California – Los Angeles
     -Kayvon Ghaffari – University of California – San Diego

Embedded Design – Team Vaccine
     -Shawn McGhee  – University of Arkansas – Little Rock
     -Trish Day  – University of Arkansas – Little Rock

Touch & Tablet Accessibility – OneView
     -Kristen Shinohara  – University of Washington
     -Shaun Kane  – University of Washington

Touch and Tablet Accessibility – Team Note-Taker
     –Andrew Kelley – Arizona State University
     -David Hayden – Arizona State University

Windows Mobile 7 Rockstar – Beastware
     -Christian Hood – Advanced Technology Academy
     -Eric Lo – Advanced Technology Academy

I’ll be updating next from Warsaw!

Getting Ready for Warsaw

Next week in Warsaw, Poland, Microsoft is holding the 2010 international Imagine Cup World Finals. I’ve been invited to attend and write about the competition as a member of the Microsoft Student Insiders program. (Full disclosure: Microsoft’s PR firm, Waggener-Edstrom, is covering the expenses associated with this trip.)

The Imagine Cup is a competition in which students create software that can be used to potentially change the world for the better. Each year the competition is held there is a theme, and this year’s theme is “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems.”

Based on this theme, Microsoft has chosen the United Nations Eight Millennium Development Goals as the set of tough problems that students have the opportunity to help solve. For a list of the goals, visit the Imagine Cup website.

Students compete in one of five categories. Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media, and the IT Challenge. The top finalists in these categories will be in Poland next week competing for the top prizes in each of their competitions.

I’ll be there along with the finalists reporting on the competitions and taking in the sights and sounds of Poland. Follow along here on the blog, on Twitter by searching for the hashtag #ImagineCup or myself @tziegmann.

Windows Home Server “Vail” Public Preview – In-Depth – Part 2

Welcome to part two of my in-depth review of the Windows Home Server Code Name “Vail” Public Preview.  Today I’ll be diving in to the new Launchpad and the redesigned Dashboard (was Windows Home Server Console).

Launchpad

Windows Home Server “Vail” introduces the Launchpad. This launchpad provides a central location for launching key tasks on a computer connected to Vail. Out of the box the Launchpad provides access to starting and monitoring backups, accessing the Remote Access website, accessing Shared Folders, and the Server Dashboard. I personally don’t see the point in having the Launchpad. With the Launchpad it requires more clicks to monitor backup status, there is already an icon created on the desktop for both the shared folders and the dashboard, and I can create a shortcut to my Remote Access website in Internet Explorer. While the centralization might be nice for some, I think that for people who are using the current version of WHS they will find it to be more annoying than useful.

Dashboard

In keeping in line with Windows Home Server being a consumer friendly product, Microsoft has updated the dashboard for Vail. My first impression of the Dashboard was that this feels a lot like Dashboard for Small Business Server. In some ways it is. The Home and Small Business Server teams are now one team and development is done by the same group that built SBS. However, the UI is far from complete, and I think it will be safe to expect some major changes to the UI between now and the final product. Vail, being that it’s built on Server 2008 R2, leverages Terminal Services RemoteApp to provide access to the Dashboard from a client computer. A new feature of the dashboard that I think will be useful is the Alert Viewer, which provides detailed information about any issues on the network and provides solutions to the issues. What is interesting to note is that there is now a dedicated Add-ins tab. However, it looks like that this tab is currently functioning as a placeholder as there is nothing on the Add-ins tab currently. Being that this is pre-beta code it’s unclear at this time how add-ins will work in Vail and whether or not add-ins written for v1 will be able to easily be ported over to Vail. From a storage standpoint, Microsoft has added some new buttons that provide easy access to checking the health and integrity of the storage pool and shared data. Another new Vail feature, which I will discuss separately, is the ability to create a HomeGroup on Vail. Using Vail as the HomeGroup hub has the ability to provide further integration with Windows 7. There are some welcome changes to the Vail Dashboard, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like with some more polish.

Coming up in Part 3, Remote Access, Media Sharing and Media Center, HomeGroup support, and final conclusions.

Windows Home Server “Vail” Public Preview – In-Depth – Part 1

After playing with the Public Preview of Vail for a few days now (Full Disclosure: Microsoft released it to myself and select others last week) I’m ready to provide an in-depth review of the Public Preview.

To provide some background for those that may be new to Windows Home Server, it is a product that Microsoft released in the Fall of 2007 as a way for consumers to have a central location to protect their data, connect family and friends, organize their precious memories and important data, and would grow with them. This first version of Windows Home Server has proved wildly successful and almost three years later it’s due for a new version. (For more information about the current version of Windows Home Server visit http://www.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver)

Enter Vail. Vail is the next major release of Windows Home Server. Vail will be a 64-bit only release based on Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft has not said anything about the feature set for Vail yet, so I’m only able to go off of what is in the Public Preview build.

Let’s dive in to Vail.

Server Setup

As the current version of Windows Home Server is designed to be a headless (no keyboard, mouse, or monitor) system, we can also expect that Vail will be the same. Judging by the way that Server Setup is done, it looks like Vail is designed to continue being a headless system. One major change though between WHSv1 and Vail is that instead of installing the Connector software first and then walking through OOBE (Out-Of-Box Experience), setup is performed via a web browser first, and then you will be directed to the Connector software installer. In this build, setup is fairly straight forward. Setup asks for the usual items, server name, password, Windows Update settings, etc. However, one thing that it does not ask which surprises me somewhat is for date and time settings. Mismatched date and time settings between server and client can cause many problems.  According to the release notes provided by Microsoft, this is a known issue and we can expect to see it resolved in a later release. After the server is configured, it reboots and then prompts you to browse to another built-in webpage to download the Connector software.

Connector Installation

Not much as changed between WHSv1 and Vail when it comes to installing the Client Connector. Currently, you navigate to http://servername/connect which then redirects you to the same http://servername:55000/ website that exists in v1. The look of the installer has changed, and I expect it to change up through the Beta release. As a part of the installer it will install .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 if you don’t already have that installed, and it will verify that your system meets the requirements for installation. According to the release notes, Vail supports Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

In Part 2, I’ll discuss the new Launchpad and Dashboard features.

Announcing Windows Server Code Name “Vail”

VailLogo

Today Microsoft has announced the release of a public preview of Windows Server Code Name “Vail.” What is Vail, you may be asking right now. Vail is the successor to Windows Home Server which was released almost three years ago.

Expected in this new release of Vail is DLNA compliance, media streaming over the internet, improved backup and restore functionality, improved storage technologies, and other new features.

Today’s release is of a pre-beta public preview. This build is not intended for use by everyone. I strongly suggest that you ensure that you have a backup of all data that you plan on storing on Vail as there may be unknown issues with Drive Extender in this release.

As expected, Vail is a 64-bit only release, requires 1GB of RAM or more, and minimum 160GB hard drive for installation. If you are interested in trying out today’s release, visit the Microsoft Connect website for details on how to download the build. If you are having issues with the build or want to discuss this release, head on over to the Vail Beta forums. (I’ll be there to help answer questions as best I can.)

Microsoft has also published a Getting Started guide for Vail, which I have mirrored and you can download by clicking here (Right-click to download as some browsers interpret the .DOCX file as a ZIP file).

For those that may be wondering, the build number of today’s release is 7495 and I’ve posted both the CRC and SHA hashes below for the ISO.

To check the CRC of the downloaded ISO, follow these instructions.

To run MSCDCRC against an ISO file that you have downloaded follow these steps.

  1. Download MSCDCRC to the same folder that you downloaded the Vail ISO to (Click here to download MSCDCRC)
  2. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to the folder from Step 1
  3. Type "MSCDCRC InstallDVD.iso" (without quotes)
  4. The integrity check will take a few moments to complete. After the check is complete compare the CRC and SHA hashes to the hashes posted below
  5. If the hashes match then you have successfully downloaded the ISO

Volume label : GB1SHSxFRE_EN_DVD
CRC             : 0xA7798933
SHA1            : 0xB10EBB38B9A758D67DC70CC3F815A2F65390A570