Over 400 college students from around the world gathered this week in New York City for the 2011 Finals of the Imagine Cup. Microsoft's student technology competition. On stage this evening, the awards were handed out to the winning teams in a variety of categories. You can read the full list of winners below.
The participating students aren't simply showcasing their technology skills. They're applying those skills to tackle some of the world's most pressing problems: child mortality, disease, hunger, poverty, pollution. Listening to these students' presentations, I was struck by what was often a personal motivation for solving these issues and their passion, again not just for the tech, but for making the world a better place.
This is the ninth year for the Imagine Cup, Microsoft's student technology competition. Teams from all over the world, representing 70 countries, have gathered this week in New York City for the Imagine Cup finals. It's down to the final round today with those making it to the very last round of the finals presenting the projects they've designed and built.
These projects do not simply highlight new technologies or innovative applications. As part of the Imagine Cup mandate, the students' projects must tackle some of the world's most pressing issues, as outlined by the United Nations' Millennium Goals. These include combating disease, ending hunger and reducing childhood mortality, to name a few.
Skype has released a new update of its Android application that will bring video calls to a select batch of devices. Skype video calls will be available on the Google Nexus S, HTC Desire S, Xperia Neo and the Xperia Pro with more devices to be added to the list eventually.
The rollout of video calling on Android for Skype is limited because of the system requirements. A phone must have a front-facing camera (of course) and be running version 2.3 (Gingerbread) or higher. As more devices upgrade to Gingerbread, the more will be able to take advantage of Skype video chat. Can Skype remain relevant in the mobile ecosystem as services like Pinger, Google Plus/Talk, Facebook and others become more prevalent?
The video and voice calling service Skype is coming to a TV near you, thanks to a new partnership with Comcast, a leading provider of cable TV services here in the U.S. This morning, the two companies formally announced a deal that will allow Comcast customers to use Skype's HD video calling on their HD television sets, made available through a Comcast-provided adapter box which works in conjunction with an HD video camera.
Customer trials of the new service will begin in "the coming months," but no exact date was given for the service's wider launch, only that more details will be made available "later this year."
Just because Microsoft has its own mobile operating system called Windows Phone 7, that doesn't mean it's above using the popularity of Apple's iPhone to attract new users to its up-and-coming Bing search engine. For example, this week, the company highlighted a recently added Bing feature called "auto app discovery" by way of a company blog post that describes how the Microsoft search engine is a great tool for finding new iPhone applications.
In a none-too-subtle PR move, Microsoft posted on its official Windows Live Blog yesterday about its own cloud service called SkyDrive, which will be integrated deeply into the Windows Phone handsets with the next software update known as code-name "Mango." This news comes just after Apple announced "iCloud," a new cloud backup, sync and storage service that will be available with the release of iOS 5, the next version of the Apple mobile operating system. The timeframe of the two releases - Mango and iOS 5 - are practically the same. Both will arrive sometime this fall.
But what we want to know is this: is SkyDrive really all that similar to iCloud? Or is Microsoft hoping the Apple news will bring more awareness to its years-old service?
Today at the D9 conference, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its Windows operating system. Code-named Windows 8, in a surprise move Microsoft is incorporating touchscreen technology into the Windows UI. Windows 8 will be used across a wide range of computing devices - PCs, laptops, tablets and more. One OS for all of those devices. This runs counter to Apple's philosophy, which has separate OS's for its desktop / laptops (Mac OS X) and tablets / mobile phones (iOS).
Recently, a neuroscientist scanned the brains of an Apple devotee with an MRI machine. What he found was that each time the Apple logo was flashed onto the screen, this acolyte's brain lit up in exactly the same region that lights up when a religious person is shown an icon of their faith.
Alex Riley, in his documentary, "Secrets of the Superbrands," set out to figure out "how (the world's most powerful technology) brands - such as Apple, Microsoft and Google - have grown so explosively to become some of the world's biggest companies."
Tracking what you click on has been one of the fundamental pieces of Web analytics. But your clickthroughs represent only part of what you actually do online. Eye-tracking studies have often been seen as the best way to determine what people are actually thinking as they browse, but these sorts of experiments - until recently - have been either technology- or cost-prohibitive for many people.
But now researchers at Microsoft may have found an easier way to track where people are looking as they browse the Web. The new process doesn't actually utilize eye-tracking hardware, but rather uses the position of the cursor as a stand-in - where your cursor moves, where you hover, and of course sometimes where you click. According to their research, the cursor's position as actually a pretty good sign of what you're looking at and what's important, particularly when it comes to search results.
This morning in New York, Microsoft held a VIP Preview event showcasing the next major release of its Windows Phone mobile operating system (OS), known by its code name, "Mango." The press conference, intended for media and analysts, comes on the heels of a string of updates about the next-gen version of Windows Phone. These included features developers will appreciate, like multi-tasking and programmatic access to the phone's hardware; consumer-facing features like turn-by-turn navigation and built-in barcode scanning; as well as features for business users, like conversation views in email and mobile access to documents. In total, over 500 new features are due to arrive in Mango, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced earlier this week.
