Accessibility Award

There is another new award in Imagine Cup 2009, Accessibility Award. Although this award is not new, but the registration is open not long ago, but there is no direct link the the description page which hardy found by user.

Accessibility Award
The object of the Accessibility Award is to design a technology solution that leverages people’s diverse physical and cognitive abilities. Designing accessible technology means that it is beneficial and usable by everyone, and empowers people with disabilities, temporary difficulties, or the desire to personalize their user experience.

Link: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=33

For some reason, the hardware design award has taken out from the website, I wonder that award is cancel or not.

Imagine Cup 2009 - Malaysia

Imagine Cup 2009 in Malaysia is open to every student in Malaysia now. The champion of Malaysia final round in Software Design category will get a trip to Egypt with their mentor. The price is worth up to RM50, 000. Sound attractive right? Start brainstorm your idea and proposal your idea now.

There is some change in the term and condition in this time. The team must have at least 2 members and cannot more than 4 members. Mentor become a requirement for a team (written on website, but I will check it out). The final of Malaysia local final will be somewhere around May, but the website did not show the due date for proposal submission. I will just find it out.

Update 1:
The due date of proposal submission should be some where before 1st of March.

Register now!
Imagine Cup 2009 website: http://imaginecup.com/Default.aspx
Imagine Cup 2009 Malaysia detail: http://imaginecup.com/MY/SD.aspx

Live Meeting Experience

Yesterday, I have my first experience attending live meeting at home (I have experience attending live meeting at school with my bunch of classmate before). This time I have to set up software myself. Feel great. Too bad that the connection is not that smooth along the way, and the voice is kind of laggy.



I was attending Imagine Cup 2009 Software Design talk and Embedded Design talk using Microsoft Live Meeting 2007. It is pretty easy to set up and running. It has all kind of feature that you will use in meeting, such as Q&A that let you type the question, give feedback that you want to slow down or proceed and etc. Because it only show the presentation slide and no eyes contact with the speaker, it make me feel kind of bored. Maybe I will get use to it soon. Another thing which I hate is the slide load so slow usually after they talk a few sentence later I only able to see the slide. I think the software should preload the slide first but there is no option for me to do that. Sad.

Hope future I have more experience on this live meeting. To those who miss the Software Design Live Meeting, here is the link for the recorded video: Software Design Session 1

New Award for Imagine Cup 2009

There 4 new awards offer to Imagine Cup 2009 competitor this year + 1 award existing award. They are Multipoint Education, Design 4 Development (aka Unlimited Potential), Interoperability Award, Parallel Computing and Hardware Design. Where is Windows Live Award? Well, I also don’t know, maybe removed from Imagine Cup 2009, maybe not.

Come check it out:

Multipoint Education Award
In many classrooms in underserved areas, groups of students must share one computer—there are simply not enough computers to go around. While the existing solution to this problem is to acquire more computers, that is often difficult for schools with limited resources.
With the Windows MultiPoint SDK several mice can be attached to a single PC – allowing students to learn, interact, and collaborate on the same computer at the same time. This makes the MultiPoint SDK the perfect tool to create learning games designed to help achieve Universal Primary Education
Reference: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=28

Design 4 Development Award aka Unlimited Potential
At Microsoft, we believe that making technologies that are relevant, affordable, and accessible to more than 5 billion people around the world who make less than $8 dollars takes more than serious coding skills.
It takes spending time with underserved communities, interviewing and understanding end-users to learn about their needs, and the daily challenges they face with each day – the same challenges that underlie the UN Millennium Development Goals.
Reference: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=29

Interoperability Award
Temporary no information yet.
Reference: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=30

Parallel Computing Award
Many core systems hold the promise of delivering 10 to 100 times the processing power in the next few years. This technological advance has the potential to open a world of possibilities, from creating immersive 3D applications to addressing some of the world’s greatest challenges. Developing applications that harness the full power of manycore systems is difficult and requires software developers to transition from writing serial programs to writing parallel programs.
The objective of the Parallel Computing Award is to recognize the Team that develops parallel algorithms with demonstrable speedup on a manycore processor in order to help solve some of the world’s toughest problems.
Reference: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=31

Hardware Design Award
Temporary no information yet.
Reference: http://imaginecup.com/Competition/mycompetitionportal.aspx?competitionId=32

Imagine Cup 2009 will be fun.

Imagine Cup 2009

Imagine Cup is a competition organizes by Microsoft which invite more 100 countries to participate and given them the air ticket to fly to other country for the worldwide final competition. Each year, Imagine cup will held the final at different country. This year the world final will be held at Egypt. If you are currently a student of IT/Computer Science/Computer related Engineering/Art (yes, there is non-technical category, read below) and etc, come join the competition for a free ticket to travel to Egypt for FREE.

Imagine Cup is just like the Olympic, but it is not for sport, but for developer, or I should said for those with creativity people to crash their ideas together and compete for the world champion. This year theme is "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today". If you think you never do something big for this world, this is the time to show your talent. This year all participation are require to solve one of the 8 Millennium Goal .

There are 9 categories to choose:

• Software Design


• Embedded Development


• Game Development


• Robotic & Algorithm


• IT challenge


• Mashup


• Photography


• Short Film


• Design

In Malaysia, not much people know about Imagine Cup, only IT students in USM, KTar, UTar, MMU and KDU participate in this competition. Sadly, only 1 and only 1 local government university knows about this, what happen to those Microsoft student representatives in other university? It seen like Imagine Cup 2009 in Malaysia will still have the similar participation from those Universities only. There is also no participation for other category in Malaysia. Is the prices too little for them? Who knows? Maybe there is too many people anti-Microsoft I think…

With the sentence of participation in Imagine Cup in resume doesn’t mean you will get a better job in Malaysia, because they usually end up asking you what that is and they will just forget after you answer that. There is news that Malaysia is voting for Imagine Cup 2011. I’m not sure which states will held the event, any way, it just something not confirm yet.
“I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world.” - Bill Gate.
What are you waiting for? Imagine Cup 2009 website .