Visual Studio–What’s wrong with this picture?

Simon and I think this is stoopid. Do you know why?

Tie Power

I’m thinking of starting to wear a suit for work (a vain attempt to add more perceived value for students who will soon be paying an arm and both legs to study with us). While I was in NYC I bought some ties. Three for ten bucks. Which tie would look best do you think?

The Coming of Mango

This is how the campus looks today. Feel free to compare it with Harvard Yard any time you like….

The latest version of Windows Phone Mango is now trickling out to developers. If you’ve upgraded to the first developer version of the platform you should soon get a message telling you an upgrade is available. Indeed there is. This one is really close to what people will be getting when Windows Phone 7.5 (to give it its proper name) will be released. It now has the Twitter integration which works really well, along with a whole host of extra goodies that I’m having great fun playing with. If you are not into Windows Phone development then you really should be.

Imagine Cup Thoughts

Now that the dust has settled a bit I’ve had time to reflect on the Imagine Cup this year. Here are some random observations:

• It gets better every year : the teams, their ideas, their implementation and their presentation seems to improve with every world final. This year was the best ever. I get the impression that teams are really thinking about how to not just make their ideas work, but how to make them real so that the outside world can make use of them. This is great.
• Making stuff is much easier : quite a few teams had made hardware. The winners even used the .NET Micro Framework to power their in-car device. In the old days using hardware meant messy wooden boxes and dodgy looking devices. Not so now. With fabrication machines appearing at very low prices it is now possible for a team to make a case for their device which looks as good as any shop-bought item. There was some highly impressive, consumer ready, hardware being shown off.
• Teamwork is still vital : the teams that did best did it as a team. The ones that played off each other and made use of all the team members in presentation and development were the ones that did the best.
• The judges had a great time too – every judge that I spoke to really enjoyed seeing what had been made and talking to students. I said at one of the briefings there was only one group of people more determined than the students to come to the next Imagine Cup, and that is the judges. This is absolutely the case. And I’m including myself in that..

Meeting Alfred Thompson

Alfred and I, conveniently name tagged for your convenience. No idea who the bloke in the background is though…

One of the really nice things about going to the Imagine Cup was that I got to meet up with some friends I’d never met. One of them was Alfred Thompson. I’ve known Alfred since the days of “the Spoke”, an early network community where we used to via for visits to our respective pages. This was way back in 2003, when the idea of community sites and stuff was just taking off. I was very proud of the fact that I’d had more visitors to my page, right up to the point where Alfred overtook me and headed off into the distance.

Alfred works hard to promote Computer Science as a “good thing” and it was nice to finally meet up and swap some stories.