Tech
So why is there Imagine Cup?
Imagine Cup, so you might be starting to hear more and more about this competition and actually wondering what do you have to do to enter? I thought to try and make it easier to understand, to explain it in a few posts 
Imagine Cup: Why the competition?
Technology as you would know is a great enabler of things in our everyday lives in first world countries. What is even more impressive is the potential impact which technology can make in countries which don’t share the same luxuries. Imagine Cup encourages students to challenge themselves to create solutions to what the United Nations have stated are the 8 Millennium Development Goals. These goals are:
Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger
- Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day
- Target 2: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people
- Target 3: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education
- Target: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
- Target: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
- Target: Reduce by two thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
- Target 1: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio
- Target 2: Achieve universal access to reproductive health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases
- Target 1: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
- Target 2: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
- Target 3: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
- Target 1: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources
- Target 2: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
- Target 3: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation
- Target 4: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dweller
Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Development
- Target 1: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
- Target 2: Address the special needs of least developed countries
- Target 3: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing states
- Target 4: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries
- Target 5: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
- Target 6: In cooperation with the private sector, make available benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
For more information visit http://www.imaginecup.com to learn more about the competition and its’ goals and look out for future posts going into more detail the different categories!
Imagine Cup Smackdown!
Imagine Cup is the premier student technology competition in the world challenging students to create solutions for the worlds toughest problems.
Imagine Cup Smackdown brings students a prime opportunity to learn about Imagine Cup and learn from experts on what will assist you with solving those tough problems using technology!
Taking on the concept from the highly successful Smackdown 2010 event held at QUT last year, Imagine Cup Smackdown will showcase some of the latest technology and amazing demo’s which will blow attendees away.
Imagine Cup Smackdown will not only hold a keynote event but will provide attendees the opportunity to deep dive into tracks including Software & Technology, Business and Design & UI.
See below for the confirmed awesome speakers of Imagine Cup Smackdown!
- Lawrence Crumpton – Microsoft
- Bronwen Zande – Soul Solutions
- John O’Brien – Soul Solutions
- Ben Place – Microsoft
- Danny Rowe – Microsoft
So when is it? Wednesday 23rd of November kicking off at 9am sharp
and where is it? QUT Gardens Point S Block Room 403
and how much? FREE
So register here to be apart of this awesome event! http://icsmackdown.eventbrite.com/
Windows 8 Unveiled – Here’s a sneak peak!
AshMan Says…
Windows 7 has been a resounding success for Microsoft and for their customers all over the world including students, home consumers and businesses. Windows 7 has been the fastest selling operating system in history and is predicted to overtake the reigning Windows XP as the most widely used operating system.
Windows 8 Touch Start Screen
Eventhough Windows 7 seems quite young, this is technology we are talking about and technology moves fast. So as we are just getting used to Windows 7 on our machines Microsoft has been kind enough to provide a sneak peak at what the next version of Windows will look like. Microsoft and most people are calling the new version by its codename which is Windows 8.
Windows 8 Touch Lock Screen
Windows 8 Side Keyboard Layout
Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 8
Windows 8 brings a new way for consumers to interact with the operating system. The most notable change is the new touch layer for tablet/slate devices called the immersive interface. But why keep writing when I know you want to see the demo for yourself?
Windows Phone 7.1 ‘Mango’ – It’s Coming!
AshMan Says…
Following the successful launch of Windows Phone late last year it has started to make its impact within the market. Since that launch there have been a number of updates with the most notable being ‘NoDo’ which brought Copy & Paste to the platform. Just recently Microsoft released information for what will be known as Windows Phone 7.1 or more publically known as ‘Mango’.
Windows Phone 7 Mango Start Screen
Mango is the first major update for the platform and is bringing 500 new features and 1500 new API’s. When they mention 500 new features they aren’t just a few minor updates to features which are already there, they are 500 new additions to the platform.
Windows Phone 7 Mango Multitasking
Some of the additions are:
Multi-tasking: Users will be able to press and hold the Back button to see minimised thumbnails of all their running apps, a view that will look very familiar to webOS and Blackberry PlayBook users. Like Android, but unlike iOS, there won’t be any restrictions on what apps can do in the background.
Unified Email Inboxes: Attention has also been paid to email. It’s now possible to set up multiple unified inboxes, such as one for your personal Hotmail and Gmail accounts and another for your Exchange accounts, keeping professional and personal separate.
Conversation Threads: Long text message and email conversations are now threaded in a conversation view that will be familiar to iPhone and PalmOS users. Like some Android apps, Mango will thread together conversations even if some of it takes place on different services, such as SMS, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
App Jumplist Search: Finding apps among a massive list can be a problem if you’ve installed a lot of them, so Microsoft is adding a jump list and a search function to its app menu. The former takes you to all apps that start with a given letter, and the latter is a traditional text search, with the option to jump into the Marketplace.
Internet Explorer 9: Currently, WP7 phones are running a version of IE Mobile, known as IE Mobile 7, which that is a variant of IE 7 with some IE 8 functionality added. But Windows Phone 7s running Mango will be running a mobile version of IE 9, Microsoft’s latest, HTML5-compliant IE browser.
Windows Phone 7 Mango and IE9 with HTML5
To have an indepth look into all of the new features in the upcoming update preview the video below which shows how much Mango brings to Windows Phone 7.
Skype 30,000 feet in the air? Yeah, sure!
AshMan Says…
I’m going on exchange to Slovenia over the Winter holidays to study at the University of Ljubljana. However what surprised me was for a country of just over two million people and a capital city with just a mere three hundred thousand people, the country has one of the largest universities in the world.
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
One of the big decisions which I had to make was to find a way to get myself from Australia to the little southern European country. After doing a number of searches online and trying a number of different travel dates I had found the dates I wanted to travel on, now all I had to decide was who I wanted to fly. I had worked the options down to two airlines, Singapore Airlines and Emirates Airlines. With having a 28+ hour flight I wanted to make sure that I was going to try provide myself with the best and most comfortable flight (as I also have a history of not sleeping much at all/if any on long haul flights).
Emirates A380
This is where I started to do a little bit of research on what both airlines offered and was surprised to see how far inflight technology has come. I was particularly hoping that Singapore Airlines had improved their inflight entertainment since I last flew them to Europe in 2008/2009.
I discovered that Singapore Airlines has come a little way in updating their entertainment hub with a new remote control and an updated screen, however apart from that things haven’t really changed. What really blew me away was the inflight technology which Emirates offer on their A380’s. Offered is access to wireless internet via WiFi as well as the ability to complete calls and send SMS’s via your GSM Mobile. Unfortunately the A380 is unable to currently land in Brisbane so takes the direct flight option out of the equation for me, though the 13 inch screen, 1200 channels and the power adapter for laptops are the icing on the cake from what I have heard to be the Emirates Experience from fellow travellers and might just be enough to entice many.
Emirates ICE System
What really got me thinking however was the overall embracing and improvement of technology; and how it enables passengers to use what was once considered a very dangerous device to even have on board with the wireless feature is disabled! What is a huge plus too is that the technology and speed of the wireless service is really good. A friend of mine during State of Origin Game 1 was streaming the game online, and didn’t experience any serious buffering issues, which flying almost 30,000 feet in the air traveling at approximately 900km/h is pretty impressive to me.
Emirates and Wireless a match made in the skies!
Makes me wonder why I still can’t get good 3G speeds when travelling on the bus to work in the city! Thanks to another technology (that being YouTube) I was able to find a copy of the inflight entertainment system which Emirates has on their planes and I think sums up pretty well just how far that technology has come! Enjoy the link below!!
And by the way…I made the decision and AshMan is flying Emirates!
Imagine Cup – World Finals are coming to Australia in 2012!
AshMan Says…
The Imagine Cup – Australian Finals were held last night at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney with the crowning of ‘Brain Speller’ from University of Canberra as the champions.
Judged by a panel of five, the judges were industry experts including a past winner of the World Finals. The 2011 Imagine Cup World Finals will be held in July in New York, with 400 other students from around the globe competing against Team Australia.
Queensland University of Technology at the Australian Finals
Following the announcement of the winners for the local finals, Pip Marlow, managing director of Microsoft Australia announced that the 2012 World Finals will be held in Australia.
“We have the brightest and smartest talent in Australia, and by hosting the worldwide finals here next year, we hope to help inspire a new generation of student inventors and imagine-makers.”
Judges at the Australian Finals
The Imagine Cup 2012 will challenge students to come up with ideas to help solve the world’s toughest problems – inspired in part by the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals – and to use the power of software and technology to help bring those ideas to life. This year, the Imagine Cup has attracted over 300,000 students and more than 400 student finalists will compete.
For more information about the Imagine Cup, visit: www.imaginecup.com.au
Uni Students and Lenovo = WIN!
AshMan says…
I’m a strapped for cash uni student, just like every other uni student out there. Now when it comes to buying a laptop for Uni finding one which doesn’t break the bank but meets our needs can be a hard task.
Now what if I told you that Lenovo (the guys known for making incredibly tough killer laptops) were giving you the chance to win a Lenovo Ideapad Z570? Pretty awesome hey? What if I said it’s easy to enter too?
All you have to do is jump onto twitter and Facebook follow Lenovo Australia and New Zealand and share why you deserve yo win!
I’ll be entering as well, but it’s all about sharing the love isn’t it?
CES 2011: Surface 2.0 makes appearance at CES
AshMan says…
At the special Microsoft Press Conference held before CES, one of the things shown off to the crowd was Surface 2.0.
In case you don’t know what Surface is, just think of a big touch screen sitting in your coffee table. It can handle hundred of touch points, recognise fingers as well as being able to interact with objects which you place on the screen.
Surface 2.0 is an evolution of that, featuring a new pixel sense technology which enables it to not just identify finger tips but your entire hand. You are also able to scan items into the software, by simply sitting the item on the screen. The hardware has been developed with Samsung and features a AMD CPU/GPU combo. It is physically a lot smaller, with the unit only being 4 inches thick.
Today, when Microsoft showed off it’s new “Surface 2.0″ device, it was a mountable interactive LCD screen, with the “largest piece of gorilla glass in any device” according to CrunchGear, who say that “You can drop a beer bottle on this this from 18 inches without making so much as a dent.” Every pixel in the new Surface device is a sensor, using a technology called “Pixel Sense” which allows the device to “see” things, though Microsoft isn’t letting on how that works yet.
With the original Surface unit priced at $25,000, it was unreachable to most however Microsoft have said that Surface 2.0 will be cheaper…
CES 2011: ‘Avatar Kinect’ leaked before Microsoft Keynote
AshMan says…
Well here is some new news about some shots being snapped backstage at what seems to be a rehearsal. I mean hey, even the pros have to practise to deliver an awesome keynote right?
What ‘Avatar Kinect’ appears to be is a social hub for people to watch movies and tv (such as Foxtel) as well as possibly listen to music and play games all within this social hub.
This ofcourse is nothing confirmed, but we can be pretty safe to assume some of those things happening.
See below for the images taken by Glimpse Dog.
Avatar Kinect
Avatar Kinect
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