Academia Software Feed

Try Microsoft’s Cloud Platform for Free!

edunhill — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:02:25 GMT

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform allowing you to build and deploy scalable .NET applications online.

Cloud Computing is a hot topic and likely to be a key part of of many organisations IT strategy moving forward. As a student now is the time to learn more!

We are making a limited number of developer accounts available to students for free - all you have to do is register here being sure to select ‘Student’ in the audience category drop down and using the promo code ‘blog’.

Once you sign up you will receive an email with your login details and links to help you get started.

This offer is strictly limited so if you want to get ahead in the field of cloud computing you should register now!

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Windows Azure,.NET,Student

Student Celebration Day Videos

edunhill — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:13:00 GMT

Just as we’re heading off to Cairo for the Imagine Cup worldwide finals I want to give you a flashback to the UK final event…

Previously I published the slides from all of the Microsoft Research talks delivered on the day and now, finally I have the videos online!

Getting from A to B: Fast Route Finding Using Slow Computers from Ed Dunhill on Vimeo.

Curing Cancer, Halting Global Disease Outbreaks, Preventing Dangerous Climate Change from Ed Dunhill on Vimeo.

Proving that Software Eventually Does Something Good from Ed Dunhill on Vimeo.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Research,Students,Imagine Cup,Route Finding,Computational Ecology,Termination Bugs

Kodu is Here!

edunhill — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:56:44 GMT

Have you ever wanted to create your own game but don’t want to get your hands dirty with code? We now have the answer… Kodu!

Kodu allows you to build games using traditional programming paradigms such as conditional statements and loops but without having to fire up Visual Studio. Basically you start with a blank world which you can customise, add characters and set up interactions. Multiplayer is supported as is sharing created games online using Xbox Live Community Games.

Its great if you’re just looking for a bit of fun and its also a neat way to introduce children to programming.

Kodu is available for purchase (or demo) on Xbox Live Community Games. You can find out more here or watch a demo from GDC below:

Technorati Tags: Kodu,Xbox Live,Community Games,Games,Microsoft

The Ultimate Steal: Microsoft Office Ultimate for just £38.95 for students only ending on June 26th

ukacademia — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:28:33 GMT

The Ultimate Steal offer for students in UK Universities and Colleges is close to an end.

You have until June 26th to go on the Ultimate Steal website, validate yourself as a student by providing your .ac email address and you will receive an email with further instruction to pay and download the software.

What you will get is: the latest Excel, Word, PowerPoint and Outlook as well as Publisher, Access, Groove and OneNote. At £38.95, that’s 90% off estimated retail price. But you’ve got to have a student or faculty email address with a .ac domain from a UK higher education institution.

Office Ultimate for £38.95

edunhill — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:59:17 GMT

Just a quick signpost to the Ultimate Steal, a programme that allows UK students purchase Office for a seriously reduced price.

I’m sure I’ve blogged about it before but thought it was worth resurfacing as its a cracking deal and for those of you in your final year your last chance to grab a bargain.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Office,Student,Ultimate Steal

Getting Started with Azure #1

edunhill — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:06:27 GMT

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform allowing deployment of .NET applications with flexible scaling. My colleague Paolo recently wrote a great introductory article for our Faculty Connection newsletter which outlines the fundamentals.

Over the coming months I will be writing a series of posts focussed on getting you started developing with Azure. In this first post I will walk you through setting up the development environment.

The development environment for Azure consists of Visual Studio and the Azure SDK. You can user either the free Visual Studio 2008 Web Developer Express Edition or a full version of Visual Studio 2008 (such as those available through MSDNAA and DreamSpark). For this article I will be using Windows 7 as my operating system but you can also use Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008.

Once you have installed Visual Studio please update it to download SP1 which includes .NET 3.5 SP1 both of which are requirements for the Azure SDK. Finally, before installing the SDK you need to enable ASP.NET and WCF HTTP Activation. To do this on Windows Vista or 7 follow these steps:

1. From the Start menu, choose Control Panel | Programs | Programs and Features.

2. Click Turn Windows Features On or Off.

3. Under Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1, select Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation.

4. Under Internet Information Services, expand World Wide Web Services.

5. Under Application Development Features, select ASP.NET.

6. Under Common HTTP Features, choose Static Content.

7. Click OK to install the selected features.

You can now download and install the Azure SDK and the Azure Tools for Visual Studio. The Azure SDK provides a simulation of the cloud on your desktop so you can test applications locally and the Tools for Visual Studio include the Windows Azure project types.

We’re now set to develop our Azure web application, for this example we will build a simple ‘Hello World’ application but using the twist is that rather than running it as a single instance as you traditionally would we will fire it up with 5 instances.

First open Visual Studio, select ‘File>New>Project...’ From the ‘Project types’ box select Cloud Service and from the ‘Templates’ box select ‘Web Cloud Service’, enter a name for the project and click OK.

When the template loads you will notice in the ‘Solution Explorer’ we have a solution with two projects. The first project contains the cloud service which features two XML files containing the service configuration (.cscfg) and the service definition (.csdef). The second project is the web application itself where you will find a blank default.aspx file which is familiar in traditional ASP.NET development. For the purposes of this tutorial we will make a small change to the default.aspx file so double click it and in the left hand pane add the text ‘Hello World’ between the ‘<div>’ tags. You can now press F5 to setup the development fabric and deploy your application for local test.

Your application should then launch in your web browser and display ‘Hello World’. If you look in your system tray you should notice an icon displaying two gears, this represents the Azure Development Fabric. Right click the icon and select ‘Show Development Fabric UI’. In the interface you can expand the application we have just built and you will see that there is one instance running. A single instance is the default configuration for a cloud application but if we want to scale our application and run multiple instances it is a simple matter of changing the XML configuration file I mentioned earlier. To do this go back to Visual Studio, stop debugging and open the .cscfg file. In the left hand pane you should be able to see a tag containing ‘Instances count="1"’, change the 1 to 5 and press F5 to rebuild your application. If you reopen the Development Fabric UI you will now see that there are 5 instances of our application running.

As you can see it is very easy to run up multiple instances of our application and this works exactly the same when you deploy your application to the cloud which I will cover in my next post on Azure.

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,Visual Studio,Cloud Computing,.NET

Build on IE8 and Win a 360 Elite

edunhill — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:39:05 GMT

Microsoft are currently running a competition where you can build an IE8 Accelerator, Web Slice or Visual Search to win and Xbox 360 Elite as well as promotion for your project in a range of Future Publishing titles.

Mike Ormond has all the details - this is a great opportunity to grab yourself a cool prize and get something neat on your CV and best of all its really easy to get started.

Technorati Tags: IE8,Accelerator,Web Slice,Visual Search,Competition,Xbox

Free MCTS Certification Through DreamSpark

edunhill — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:08:28 GMT

For a limited time Microsoft is offering free vouchers to sit an MCTS exam through the DreamSpark programme. The MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) stream is aimed at developers and IT professionals and is available in multiple flavours relevant to a raft of developer and infrastructure technologies. Full list of MCTS certs.

DreamSpark is available to all HE students through direct verification as well as schools through an onsite admin. If you are a school pupil and would like access please direct a member of staff at your school to the sign up page so they can register the school for free.

As well as free exams DreamSpark provides a range of Microsoft products for free:

Find out more about the free MCTS offer.

Technorati Tags: MCTS,MCP,Microsoft,Student,DreamSpark

Student Celebration Day Slides

edunhill — Fri, 01 May 2009 10:31:00 GMT

To follow on from yesterday’s post I wanted to share the slides from the MSR talks:

MSR Overview - Andrew Herbert
Getting from A to B: fast route-finding using slow computers - Simon Peyton-Jones
Curing Cancer, Halting global Disease Outbreaks and averting Dangerous Climate Change - Drew Purves
Proving that programs eventually do something good - Byron Cook

Videos will follow next week.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Research,Imagine Cup,MSP

Student Celebration Day

edunhill — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:12:23 GMT

Yesterday we held a big event at MSR (Microsoft Research) Cambridge to celebrate the success of UK MSPs and Imagine Cup Contestants.

The day included a series of fascinating talks from MSR and Microsoft (slides and video to follow shortly) and culminated in an award ceremony for MSPs and Imagine Cup winners.

Team TKCL (Kings College) with their route finding application Pioneer won the Software Development competition and will be representing the UK in Cairo later this year. Runners up were Vision Creative from Reading/Aston with their CityCycle application and TravelPrint from Aberystwyth University.

We also highlighted the success we have had in Games, I'm positive that the 22 teams competing in round 2 of the competition will produce some awesome games and we’ll end up taking some of them to Cairo.

MSP awards were as follows:

Imagine Cup Registration Award – Andrew Smylie
Ultimate Steal Award – Andrew Smylie
DreamSpark Award – Gareth Young
Most Innovative Event – Honourable mention – Gareth Young, Winner – Warren Rieutort-Louis
MSP Star Award – Runner up – Sergei Golubev, Winner – Chris Alexander

We encouraged the use of twitter throughout so you can check out the reaction on the hash tag #imaginecup.

Congratulations to all those who won a prize and thank you to all the other students that travelled to Cambridge for the event.

As mentioned above I’ll shortly make the slides from the event available and we’re hoping to have the videos on Channel8 next week.

Technorati Tags: Imagine Cup,Students,Microsoft Research

Students to be able to develop apps for SkyMarket for free!

edunhill — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 13:21:20 GMT

Kudos to Paolo for getting to this one first.

Simply put when Windows Mobile 6.5 launches an accompanying app store dubbed Windows Marketplace for Mobile (codename SkyMarket) will also launch.

Developers will be able to build mobile applications and for $99 PA sell them through Marketplace receiving a 70% revenue split. What’s really neat is that for students this fee will be waived through DreamSpark.

This looks like it will be a great way to show off your C# skills and maybe earn some cash at the same time. Why not check out the Windows Mobile Developers Portal to brush up on WM development.

Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile,SkyMarket,Marketplace,Students,DreamSpark

MSDNAA Software HowTo Video

edunhill — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:43:55 GMT

MSDNAA is Microsoft's subscription for technical schools/colleges and universities which allows them to offer their students access to a whole raft of Microsoft Software for free.

Access is granted in one of two ways - either physically (an administrator downloads and burns relevant software and then lends the discs out to students) or online (the administrator uploads students email addresses into the system which generates and sends credentials to each student so they can login and download the software they need directly). If you're a member of staff at a secondary school/college/university who wants to find out how you can get MSDNAA then drop me an email, if you've already got it and want to start administering it online then take a look at this video.

If you're a student and want to find out if your institution has MSDNAA then you can do a search (if you can't find your institution then why not send your tutor an email with a link to this post ;)).

If you have been emailed a login for the online system and are wondering how to get started and download some free software then you're in luck, one of my counterparts in the States Hilary Pike has put together a great video tutorial.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Software,Students,MSDNAA,ELMS

IT Academy Student Pass - Free eLearning

edunhill — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:31:54 GMT

A little while back I posted about a great new programme we launched which gives students free access to official Microsoft eLearning courses.

To sign up you need a unique code which authenticates you as a student, the great news is these codes are now available (along with a bunch of free software) from DreamSpark. For more information about DreamSpark take a look at my posts here and here and to see exactly what's included in IT Academy Student Pass take a look at the official site.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft eLearning,DreamSpark,IT Academy,Certification,Student Pass

Silverlight on Linux - Moonlight

edunhill — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:02:00 GMT

Yesterday Miguel de Icaza posted on his blog that Moonlight version 1.0 (the open source implementation of Silverlight for Unix) has now been released. Moonlight is a collaboration between Microsoft and Novell as part of the Mono project and is a great example of Microsoft's commitment to Silverlight's cross platform compatibility.

If you are running any Linux boxes why not head over to the the Moonlight download page to get the bits and try it out.

Technorati Tags: Moonlight,Silverlight,Mono,.NET,Microsoft,Novell

MSDNAA ELMS and Windows 7 Beta

ukacademia — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:31:37 GMT

Hello Everyone,

There has never been a better time to move your MSDN AA subscription to ELMS (e-academy License Management System) because as from Thursday 5th February Windows 7 Beta will be available for distribution.

To make Windows 7 Beta available on your storefront please follow the steps below:

Step 1: Login as the Administrator
Step 2: Click on the Hosted ELMS icon on the right side of the administration page
Step 3: Select Windows 7 Beta from the product list
Step 4: Click on the button Enable Selected

(Please note that Windows 7 Beta is only available in English, German and Japanese.)

In addition to Windows 7 Beta, the following products are also available for distribution:

· XNA Game Studio 3.0

· Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 Academic Edition

· CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008

Information about ELMS and Hosted ELMS

Host MSDN AA software remotely through Hosted ELMS (e-academy License Management System). Hosted ELMS provides administrators a remote server to enable direct download distribution without a local server on campus. Transition your ELMS Account with these how-to guide and videos.

How-to Guides for accessing MSDN AA software. Help your students help themselves with these how-to guides and videos.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email on ukacinfo@microsoft.com.

Best wishes,

Allison

Student Technology Day - Microsoft Research Talk on CS Inside Halo 3 True Ranking System

ukacademia — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:53:11 GMT

For those of you who joined us at the Royal Festival Hall on 1st October and, especially for those who were otherwise engaged, please find below the session by Thore Graepel, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela and Ralf Herbrich on Microsoft Research Talk on CS Inside Halo 3 True Ranking System:

If you are unable to view the above clip, please do let me know.

Best wishes,

Allison

Microsoft Student Technology Day Videos Online - SteveB and more industry/MSFT greats

markjo — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:49:35 GMT

On 1 October 2008, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and a host of industry professionals discussed the next generation of computer science innovations with more than 300 students and lecturers from across the UK - the event was the Student Technology Day.

The videos are now all online in glorious Silverlight. And I've embedded the big man here, he was on fire that day:

The videos:

There is embed code on the site for you to put the videos on your blog/site/etc - Student Technology Day

Enjoy!

UK High Performance Computing Award

ukacademia — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:11:22 GMT

Hello Everyone,

The Windows Server HPC team have created a special award for UK Software Design competitors who use the Windows HPC Server in their Software Design solution of the Imagine Cup.

Microsoft want to stimulate the thinking of UK students about how HPC can change the world. We want students to think big, and to use the world’s fastest systems to solve the world’s biggest problems. That’s what the HPC prize in the Imagine cup’s about.

You know how mutli-core is about writing a program that uses more than one cpu? Well HPC (High Performance Computing) is the next step up: it’s about programming for hundreds or thousands of CPUs. This is for all the stuff that needs more compute than you can get from a single server. Think about online gaming, when you have hundreds of people simultaneously modifying a visual database – that needs more power than you can get one a single CPU. Think about calculating the temperature over 20,000 land sites in the UK and then projecting that forward into the future, one minute at a time, for 500 years. This all needs heavy duty computing – and that’s HPC. It’s the A380 of the computing world.

To win the HPC prize you don’t need to have a working system – but tell us how your design would scale-out from one CPU to a thousand. And explain how all that power would help. The award will be given to the Software Design teams who demonstrate technical competency with HPC, have a real world need for high performance computing and present the commercial viability of their implementation.

HPC is used in lots of places – last year the two winners used HPC for genetic engineering and motorway design. People in the UK use HPC for everything from theology to thermodynamics, archaeology to aerodynamics, gaming to genetics. How could you use it?

If you’ve got questions please contact your local HPC or SuperComputing Centre. Or email Michael...

Good luck and hope to see you at the finals.

Best,

Allison

DreamSpark

ukacademia — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 18:33:17 GMT

DreamSpark is a Microsoft program for placing key tools into the hands of students. It includes:

Visual Studio 2008
Expression Studio 2
Windows Server 2008
XNA Creators Club memberships
…and more

These tools are available to provide students with the equipment they need to build the next generation applications whether they are games, rich internet applications, desktop or server based applications.

To help you spread the word about DreamSpark we have put together a promotional kit for you to place in communal areas on campus:

The kit includes:

Banners for email and web
Posters
Postcards
Laptop stickers

To request a promotional kit, please email ukacinfo@microsoft.com with the following information:

Name
Institution Name
Address
Telephone
Email Address

(This offer is only open to UK universities and colleges. We will not use the details provided for any other activity unless you ask us to).

MSDN: What’s New in Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1?

ukacademia — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:32:02 GMT

Hello,

I want to invite you along to a free half day event taking place in Exeter on 23rd October 2008 and which was created with developers in mind.

Technical experts from the UK MSDN team will deliver a range of demos and provide insight into the latest enhancements across many areas of the .Net Framework. This is your opportunity to broaden your knowledge base and stay ahead of these latest developments.

If you think this is something you’d like to attend, you can find out more or register by clicking here.

In the meantime, have a lovely weekend.

Allison