There is a competition held annually, open to academia, particularly post-secondary institutions within British Columbia. Hosted by BCNet, the competition is called the Broadband Innovation Challenge and the spirit of the competition is to find the best and most innovative student-built application which utilizes BC's super broadband research networks. Myself, and three other classmates (Victor Chan, Andrew Tjia, and Jason Hui), had an idea for such an application and were encouraged by our Distributed Systems professor to enter.

Our idea, essentially, was to utilize broadband connections more efficiently by distributing the load of sharing media (such as pictures or videos) amongst different machines. Pursuing this, we eventually created a peer-to-peer network utilizing the concept of distributed-hash-tables. In doing so, such a network becomes resilient to node failures, applies replication to backup media, as well as uses the network topology to make efficient use of the existing connections.

Four months later, and many, many long nights in front of the monitors, we presented our final application, we dubbed Picture2Picture, to a panel of judges prior to the BCNet conference in April. Low-and-behold, we managed to take home first prize in the undergraduate category! We each received plaques, a cash prize, and even more surprising, an invitation from Apple themselves to join them at the Apple Wordwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this June! This is a great honor and we're very excited to be able to attend this conference. Thanks BCNet and thanks Apple!

^*Update: Our project has just been mentioned on the UBC Computer Science website as well as the BCNet website :)

I just received my Microsoft business cards in the mail today and what do I see? My Gmail address is printed as my point-of-contact! Oops :) Kinda seems like doing a presentation for Windows, but on a Mac. Ah well. Better than the last batch they sent me where they put the wrong e-mail address entirely...no joke :P

Charles

Microsoft Dreamspark has launched and is now being pushed out to UBC students! What does this mean for you? You get access to Microsoft software and development tools...for free!

Retail Price: $599 You're Price: Free	Retail Price: $599 You're Price: Free
Retail Price: $49 You're Price: Free	Retail Price: $999 You're Price: Free
Retail Price: $99/year You're Price: Free	included with XNA Creators Club

I will be hosting a Microsoft mixer this Thursday at UBC to commemorate this launch as well as to celebrate the end of the school year! Everyone's welcome, so I hope to see you all there!

Microsoft Mixer

• Room DMP110 in the Hugh Dempster Pavillion @ UBC
• 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Charles
Microsoft Rep

As I mentioned in a previous post, Microsoft has just announced a program to give software to students at colleges and universities for FREE! Well, Adobe has just followed suit!

Adobe is now offering a copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional Edition, free of charge to students, staff, and faculty at post-secondary institutions all over the world. This is a really exciting initiative because it will put enterprise-level development software into the hands of today's bright and innovative students...free of charge! Not only is this good for Adobe, as a way of promoting their brand to tomorrow's industry leaders, but I also expect to see a flourishing in rich-Internet application development.

Download your copy and apply for your serial today!

http://flexregistration.com/

For more information, see what Ted and Duane have to say: )

Charles

Microsoft has been making a lot of publicity lately, what with their recent acquisition of Danger (the folks that brought you the Sidekick), and their new attempt at taking over Yahoo!, but there are two moves that are of particular interest to college and university students. I'll lay them out and talk about them in detail...

Microsoft releases a Microsoft Facebook SDK
Microsoft has just entered into a partnership with Facebook in terms of building Facebook up as a platform. In doing this, Microsoft has released a Facebook SDK which will allow the use of any .NET language to be utilized on Facebook as a Facebook App! The goal of this of this partnership is beneficial to both parties. From a CNN article¹...

"We want to make Facebook into something of an operating system so you can run full applications," Zuckerberg told me, saying it would be analogous to the platform that Microsoft Windows provides for developers. Outsiders can now develop Internet services on Facebook's infrastructure...This is likely to result in an explosion of creativity

So how does this relate to college and university students? Well, it's estimated that up to 90% of students have a Facebook account²! Ninety percent! On top of that, the average user on Facebook spends 19 minutes on the site. So, if you do the math, that means a whoooole lot of students perusing Facebook every day...and counting. With 24 million registered users now, the site grows 300% each year. That's 150 000 new members every day! So, if Microsoft can get any piece of this pie, it'll be significant. This partnership is a win-win for both sides. Microsoft gets more young developers using and building applications with their tools, on one of the largest and most popular social networks on the Internet (not to mention the millions of people who'll use these applications too). And Facebook gets to re-iterate its dominance as an online (social) platform.

Microsoft Facebook SDK

Microsoft DreamSpark
Microsoft just recently announced a new program called Microsoft DreamSpark, the purpose of which is to put development, design, and platform tools in the hands of students across the world...for FREE! How is this different from MSDNAA? It's not. Rather, it's a compliment to the service. Offered worldwide, students verifiable in Canada, United States, the United Kingdom, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium all have access to the program and hence the software!

Students are able to download professional-level Microsoft products, such as...

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
• Expression Studio Expression Studio including...
  • Expression Web
  • Expression Blend
  • Expression Design
  • Expression Media
• SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
• Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
• XNA Games Studio 2.0
  • with 12 month free membership to XNA Creators Club

This is a fantastic move that Microsoft is making, as both a statement and an investment. I've always been a huge proponent for getting development and productivity tools in the hands of students, for free or as cheap as possible. I think that there is a great deal of value in investing in the pioneers of tomorrows technology, today! The makeup of a student is changing and what was once a go-to-class, do-work, go-home student has transformed into the student-by-day, entrepreneur-by-night student. These are the people that will decide what technologies will live and die tomorrow and to give them the tools to access, manipulate, and mold your technologies is nothing but a good move. I really applaud Microsoft for pushing through with such an initiative and I hope that other companies follow suit!

Microsoft DreamSpark

¹http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/24/technology/fastforward_facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007052417
²http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.educause.edu%2Fir%2Flibrary%2Fpdf%2FELI7025.pdf&ei=N8bQR_OWFIn8pgTwnoTuBA&usg=AFQjCNHN_pOmyQ6e8nexKtUVi_yNY5utyA&sig2=fYNrtMrjbIKsmz8EIgzjnA

This year's Student Leadership Conference has finally come to an end and it has made a resounding impact on campus. We had a record attendance (over 1200 attendees from roughly 700 at last year's event) including some phenomenal leaders and speakers in attendance.

Nestor Korchinsky, for whom after the Nestor Korchinsky Student Leadership Award is named, was present and made a very motivational speech. As well, Ike Barber, of the Ike Barber Learning Center and another of the major contributors to the conference, was there to give an entertaining and welcoming introduction to our keynote speaker, Stephen Lewis. One of Canada's most honored humanitarians, Stephen Lewis gave a truly inspiring keynote speech and it really made an impression amongst those in attendance.

The conference was a tremendous success and I encourage everyone to take part in next year's conference. It has been toted as the "best SLC yet", and it will only get better.

Charles

As some of you may or may not know, I'm part of a student group here at UBC responsible for an annual student-driven event called the Student Leadership Conference (SLC). This event is in it's 6^th year and focuses on leadership among students. It's a great event that's growing every year, increasing from last year's attendance of roughly 700 to an expected attendance of over 1200!

We have enlisted some fantastic leaders from across North America as guest speakers and workshop leaders, most notably, Stephen Lewis, one of Canada's most celebrated humanitarians. Our theme for this year is "Activation Energy - what does it take to reach your potential". It is happening on January 12^th, 2008, and open to all UBC students.

If you are a student at UBC and are interested in developing your leadership skills as well as knowing and growing your potential, do sign up on the website! If you're not a UBC student but are interested in attending, we have set up a non-UBC interest list for such individuals. I can put you on that list and in the case that registration opens to non-UBC students, you will all be the first to know. Anyways, it's a great event and this year is going to be the best yet. Hope to see you all there!

Charles

Thanks, everyone, for coming out to the party! It was a great success! There were roughly 60 people there, quite a bit more than I expected (or prepared for), but that's a good thing. There was a huge tournament at the end; 24 person ladder match, announcing the winner and true elite, Keegan Bursaw. Anyways, I'm hoping to throw more like these in the future, so if you had any suggestions or feedback, feel free to let me know. The happier you are, the happier we are :)

Happy Halo'ing

Charles

That’s right, Microsoft is sponsoring a Halo 3 Party at UBC! What does that mean for you? Food, prizes, and lots of gaming ;) Here are all the details so mark them down…

When: Friday, October 12, 2007 from 5:30pm - 9:00pm
Where: Board Room on the 7th floor of ICICS X-Wing (2366 Main Mall)
Dempster 110 (6245 Agronomy Road)

Schedule

5:30 pm
-Gaming and XNA Talk
-Raffle

6:00 pm
-Tournament (must register to join)
-Winner and runner-up get prizes
-Round-winners get prizes as well

* Ends whenever!

There will be giveaways so make sure you register here to be eligible for the raffle (your names get put into the draw upon registration)…

Also, at 6pm there will be a Halo 3 tournament where the winner will receive their own copy of Halo 3! To ensure your spot in the tournament, register early. Space is limited, so it’s first-come-first-serve.

Hope to see you there!

Charles

^*UPDATE: The location has been changed from the Board Room on the 7th floor to Dempster 110, just across the street. Because of the room change, the start time has also changed, from 5:00pm to 5:30pm. If anyone needs directions, just e-mail me or comment here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Halo 3 is being released next week. Microsoft is doing a lot to promote this launch, and one of those things is to hold a Halo 3 party here at UBC! I’m working out the event details now, so I’ll just say that it’ll be on Friday, October 12th. So, mark that date off, get all your work done, and until I settle all the finer details, enjoy these teasers ;)

• Halo 3 Museum - interactive halo 3 diorama
• Halo 3 Interactive Manual - learn the controls and the history before you finish the fight.
• Halo 3 Video Launcher - see every trailer, commercial, and documentary for Halo 3…if you haven’t already

Charles