Sunday, July 06, 2008

Imagine Cup 2008

So, recently, I recieved great news about being nominated to attend Imagine Cup finale in Paris and cover the event for Microsoft’s Channel 8. I didn’t want to announce anything until I got updates. I wasn’t their final choice, but boy it was wonderful being nominated. Getting that oppurtunity means you get to interview awesome people and talk to the anxious teams that want to WIN!

What is Imagine Cup?

Imagine Cup is an annual competition that Microsoft came up with years back. Any student above the age of 16 from anywhere around the world can join simply by signing up at the website (imaginecup.com). There are various categories to choose from: Software Development, Game Development, Embedded Dvelopment, Interface Design, Web Design, Photography, Short Film and the IT Challenge. You do not have to be an IT student and the most important rule is to stick to the theme and use Microsoft technology to come up with your solution. The key to win is to come up with something innovative!

This year, the theme is: “Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment”.

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Saturday, May 03, 2008

IT event at University of Bahrain, and I am presenting!

First off, today is Shutdown Day and apparently, I will not be participating this year. I need every minute I can with all the CPUs around me today.

April has been such a crazy month! Which brings me off to announce that tomorrow an IT event (a.k.a. Supernova) will kick off at the University of Bahrain in Sukhir campus. This event has been organized by the students of the IT department in the same university.

I was invited by Microsoft to present two sessions during the 5 day event that begins on May 4th until May 8, 2008. A closing ceremony will be on the 11th of May.

My first session will be tomorrow, at 11am, so if you’re around drop by! I will be talking about Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and in my second session on May 7th, also at 11am, I will be rambling about XNA Studio 2.0. Hopefully they’ll have some gamers out there in the audience, I have no idea! It will definitely be fun, I am bringing in an XBOX 360 for a lucky winner.

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Bahrain Air, SharePoint and E-Gate!

The past few days have been really awesome. I was able to attend the first Microsoft SharePoint Conference in Dubai. (link: http://www.sharepointconferencedubai.com )

I bought my tickets online from Bahrain Air since it was the earliest flight available. Arrival would be 9.20am and the conference starts at 9am. The good news was that it takes place at Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel - just five minutes away from the airport. The booking process was very similar to Jazeera Airways, except that you don’t get to choose your seat on the flight.

This was my first time on Bahrain Air. The plane was small and packed with people. Once we landed, I decided that Jazeera was way better in comparison! First, Dua’a elSafar (travel supplication) was announced on speaker so fast by some attendant’s voice and I couldn’t follow up! Then, after the plane took off, TV screens were all up and running shows like “Just kidding” followed by an Arabic comedy. But that wasn’t the problem at all, they had the audio playing on speaker, so no one could get any rest if they’d wanted to. The plane had a weird smell to it, and it wasn’t because it was packed. I was glad I had the conference to look forward to, so I just tried to be patient. Yes, water was served - in the smallest plastic cups possible. Other than that, everything was good.

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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Microsoft Heroes Happens {Here} - Bahrain

Microsoft has been touring the Gulf region to show off and launch the new Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. On March 17, the launch kicked off in Bahrain at the Gulf Hotel Convention Center. It was great!

The program begins with the keynote, where Joseph Landes, the Director of Marketing from Redmond introduced, with great sense of humor, whats new and whats happening. He also went over who this new technology is already in use worldwide and even in Bahrain - by Batelco.

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Thursday, December 06, 2007

Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?

Microsoft recently commissioned a children’s book titled “Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?” to help parents explain to their children everything about their new stay-at-home Windows Home Server, a.k.a HP EX475 MediaSmart Home Server. You have to admit it’s a really great marketing campaign! People usually describe servers as a stack of some ugly hardware in a storage room of every company and NOT something lying around at home. So, Microsoft brought up this new technique of bring it home in a very “home-friendly” manner. They even put together a series of short videos of a “techie” going into a house and interviewing everyone in the household about the “new member” of the family - the server. There are two videos out, and they are very funny! You can watch them here.

The whole idea is: it’s not less of a server now that it’s a stay-at-home server, by getting Windows’ stay-at-home server you will improve your home network security and capabilities. Some of the highlight features are that you can connect your Xbox to it and access videos and audio files stored in the server and play them on your TV (just like the Apple TV). With a few clicks, you can also set it to automatically backup files on the computers connected to it on the local network (wired or wirelessly). This release allows you to connect up to 10 users and 1 guest account.

Microsoft really knows how to reach out to non-tech savvy people, bringing them the latest technology in a simple way. I know I am going to get something with that last statement, but hey, Microsoft is in every house and that should say something. Here’s a preview of the book:

The book will be published and sold on Amazon in the near future.
Currently, the server is available in 500GB HD but I was expecting a lot more than that! It costs around $700. A 1TB is not yet in-stock but should be very soon - now that will probably be enough for some families. Of course expanding the capacity of the HD is possible and it can be reach up to 9TB - which is a relief. The storage appears as one large volume, so whenever you add a drive it will expand the same drive, no partitioning allowed. One downside, you can NOT load a program on the HP MediaSmart Server and share it among multiple PCs, which is a bummer. Maybe there will be a work-around hack for this…

You can check out the flash interactive video available here to see how the server can be used in your entire house, room by room.

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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Bahrain to host Imagine Cup 2008

The World’s Premier Student Technology Competition

Microsoft encourages young people to innovate by using their imagination, creativity and passion for technology in order to make a difference in the world. Currently in its fifth year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a global competition focused on finding solutions to real world issues. Last year, the United Arab Emirates hosted the preliminary contest to select a winning team. A group of students from UAE‘s Zayed University won the contest and headed off to the World Finals in Korea to represent the Gulf.

It was recently announced that the Kingdom of Bahrain will host Imagine Cup 2008 for the Middle East preliminary competition and the winning teams would compete at the 2008 World Finals in Paris, France.

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