Imagine Cup Check on Participants

Well, I hope everyone had a nice Christmas break. As we will be coming back to our respective colleges and universities some time within the next 2 weeks, I thought this might be a good idea to check in with everyone who is participating in the Imagine Cup competition in 2013.

If you don't know what the Imagine Cup is, it is a competition held annually by Microsoft in which students use their imagination and their knowledge to come up with a technology solution to a problem in the world today. The competition is broken down into different categories. If you participated in Imagine Cup in the past, you might be interested to find that the categories have changed from previous years. The categories for this year are: Games, Innovation, World Citizenship, Windows 8 Apps, Windows Azure, and Windows Phone

If you make it past the preliminaries in the Games, Innovation, or World Citizenship categories, you will get a chance to come to Microsoft for the US Finals. From there, the finalists in each of those categories from each country will go on to the Worldwide Finals, held, this year, in St. Petersburg, Russia in July.

If you have a team together, but haven't submitted a project yet, there's still time (but not much left). If you want to participate in the new US Imagine Cup Accelerator program this year, you have until January 6 to sign up. I will mention that participation in the accelerator program is optional. If you are not participating in the accelerator program, but still want to participate in Imagine Cup this year, you have until (at least, for the Games, Innovation, World Citizenship categories; dates for the other competitions vary) March 24, 2013.

For those of you who have already signed up and are working on something wonderful for the competition, I hope everything is coming along smoothly and I wish you all well. May the best project win.

If you want more information on Imagine CUP, just follow this link. If you need tools for the competition, Microsoft offers students free software tools via Dreamspark.

So, what are you thoughts on Imagine Cup, past or present? Please share them with me via the comment box below.

We all know that this competition requires hard work, and hard work can sometimes involve long nights, even if your tired. To help you stay awake during those long working hours, I recommend drinking some (tasty) Mystic Monk Coffee. Mystic Monk Coffee (use this link or click on the picture below to access the store and purchase) is what you really need when it comes to coffee. Trust me, it's good coffee (in most instances, much better than Starbucks coffee) and you won't regret buying some (just keep it away from your computer keyboard or laptop/tablet). If you like tea more than coffee, they also offer tea. Using the link (or picture below) to buy the coffee (or tea) helps the monks out and helps me with college expenses as well. The coffee (or tea) also makes for great gifts for friends and family as well.

For my existing Windows Phone apps, I will have updates to all of my existing programs submitted to the Windows Phone marketplace by next week (Christmas/New Years caused a delay, sorry). If you want to get my apps now while waiting for the update, use the following links:

BSA Eagle Tracker download: http://bit.ly/Mm1Upo
Mobile Media Manager (paid version) download: http://bit.ly/y3rf6V
Mobile Media Manager (free version) download: http://bit.ly/xGCsWE