Imagine Cup WWF - Day 3 Preparation: Snapshots Behind The Scenes
It’s now almost 1 AM, unlike public press to take snapshots of the general events, I decided to take some snapshots of what’s going behind the scenes, maybe due to my position with team captains, competition admin crews…
Now I’ll leave you with photo snapshots taken around the day from different places.
Click View Full Album to view! Enjoy!
Imagine Cup Pre-Launch: Warming Up with Fun!
MSPs Suite – Snapshots from everywhere!
MSPs & Volunteers: Work, Rest, Fun!
Some snapshots of Ahmed Mahdy “That’s me!”
Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009 – Welcome to Egypt!
It’s 1 AM, after midnight of my the first day for preparing for Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals “WWF” in Cairo, Egypt. As I’m a Microsoft Student Partner for Microsoft Egypt, I was lucky to officially volunteer in organizing for IC WWF. The more luckier that I’ve arrived the first one, hence I’ve got a first come first served opportunity to choose my preferred room in the reserved suite for MSPs who are not residing in Cairo.
More luckier, I’ve got an Admin Assistant position, where I work with the Imagine Cup competition administrators. I really like the the team work, seems like a bee cell. Very quick brainstorming, very short briefs and quick effective decisions are taken.
I got my first task as admin assistant and I really liked it!
I had an important meeting for my graduation project in the far west of Cairo which took me an hour to go, 3 hours to get back on a 65 degrees temperature that heated the road much to burn our faces!
I just get panic from plane’s view from far landscape for Cairo’s International Airport which I can see through the glass of my room’s balcony beside the heads of CityStars compound.
I’m not going to give any details about the competition due to NDA and code of ethics.
Follow up with my blog, you’ll always get updated with all new about Imagine Cup!
Smart Devices in Visual Studio 2010 – Good News Coming?
In a previous article, I’ve make a preview about the new Visual Studio 2010 features and drawbacks. One of the key drawbacks is that Smart Devices is no more supported in Visual Studio 2010.
Some people think that Microsoft is going to build a standalone IDE for Smart Devices including Windows CE and Windows Mobile applications like major competitors in this field “Apple and Google” who released free IDEs for development of both iPhone and Android applications respectively. Those thoughts were confirmed after the release of a public beta of Microsoft’s main development IDE, Visual Studio 2010 in the last week. Microsoft did not include Smart Devices programmability features in all supported languages in Visual Studio 2010, which was a bad news for smart devices developers when they found that out, especially for Windows Embedded developers which became very certain that Visual Studio will no more work with BSPs after much complaints of forcing most of Embedded developers who upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 to stick back to Visual Studio 2005 since VS 2008 and WinCE 6.0 were not compatible.
The good news that Microsoft Windows Embedded team is not intending to build its standalone IDE for Windows Embedded and Windows Mobile development. They’re working with Visual Studio team in order to find a solution for Smart Device programmability options in Visual Studio 2010.
Hoping to see Smart Devices back in next builds of Visual Studio 2010!
Review: Windows Embedded Compact
Microsoft announced Windows codename Chelan at TechEd North America 2009. Windows Chelan is the codename of the upcoming Windows Embedded Compact, 
the successor of Windows Embedded CE 6.0.
Window Embedded Compact is expected to include new key features including:
- Dual Core Support (SMP, ARMv6)
- WIFI Positioning System
- Bluetooth 2.1 stack
- Cellcore
- DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance)
- DRM
- Media Transfer Protocol
- IE7 Rendering Rich Media Plug-Ins
- NDIS 6.1 support
- Multi Touch Input
- Rich UX* based on .NET 3.0/3.5
(*)UX include C++ XAML API using technologies like WPF and Silverlight for attractive and functional user interfaces.
Windows Embedded Compact OS has the same architecture and core of Windows Embedded CE 6.0, so the porting of WinCE 6.0 based BSPs “Board Support Packages” should be straight forward for compatibility issues.
Windows Embedded Compact will finally become a plug-in for Visual Studio 2008, however there is no news whether it will become a plug-in for the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 or not since the last one removed Smart Device programmability features from it.
Microsoft didn’t want to declare more news about the new Windows codename Chelan. I think they’re true in this step especially in the mean time.
A public beta of Windows Embedded Compact will be available in the next months.
Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1: A Stack of Bugs!
In a previous article, I displayed brand technologies in Visual Studio 2010. Since Visual Studio 2010 still in beta phase, some bugs and errors are found in this version of Visual Studio in just a glimpse about the product in less than 3 hours from first installation on a Windows 7 RC x64 machine.
Installation
Installation went smooth and fast without mentioned errors. I’ve tried several tests of installation on optical media "DVD”, local source and network source.
During network installation, I’ve powered off the network machine that include shared installation folder while installer was trying to extract a cabinet file. Installation considered file as corrupted and installation rolled back. During rollback, an error occurred stating that one of restoring computer to its previous state could not be found. Setup crashed because of absence of a Retry option during installation!
Smart Devices Developers
If you’re a smart device developer, Microsoft is telling you if you still in need of programming Windows Mobile and Windows CE application, do not rely on Visual Studio 2010 since it’s no more supported in this release of Visual Studio. As most of Windows CE developers expected a solution for the Platform Builder on Windows CE 6.0 that was only was available for installation on Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft didn’t include the whole smart devices programmability set!
That maybe since Google and Apple released a free IDE for mobile developers to develop their own application, I guess Microsoft is going to release a special IDE for mobile developers free of charge unlike Visual Studio 2010. Hoping Microsoft would make a declaration about this criticism as soon as possible.
Cursor Blink
A very strange issue in the Visual Studio 2010 IDE is that the Cursor blinks in a strange technique causing a shadow after every blink which might cause some eye problems especially developers can’t work except by tracking the cursor (The shown image illustrates the cursor “3rd line” in a snapshot and it appears scattered").
Non Functional Buttons
Let’s start a project from an existing code for all C++, Visual Basic and C#.
For C++
I’ve tried to open an existing code folder written on C++ to complete it. I tried to click the Browse button, it’s not functional! I tried to do the same for Add button to check validity of it, the same! Not working!
For Visual Basic and C#
I’ve tried to validate all buttons and actions on this wizard for both VB and C#, I clicked the Browse button (represented as …) and then a window appeared to Select Folder then clicked Cancel without adding an option. The bug appeared, the drive letter (c:\) was called back again but in a non-unicode character (Asian character) that was translated into a strange box or undefined character set. Also the whole path was converted into lowercase ignoring true naming of path folders and drive letters as well.
Visio 2007 UML Reverse Engineering
Microsoft Visio 2007 Professional is installed on my machine, since it’s installed, a plug-in used to reverse Engineer code into UML diagrams, the tool was not found in this release of Visual Studio 2010.
That was after 2-3 hours of installation. I’m going to get in depth with Visual Studio 2010 Team System to find more bugs and I’m going list them in following articles beside another series of articles as tutorials of the new product.
Visual Studio 2010: An Incredible UX Experience
Microsoft Corporation just released its most famous IDE tool for developers, Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 on May 20, 2009 for MSDN Subscribers and soon released another version to public. A CTP version of VS 2010 was released on 2008 in VHD format. Visual Studio 2010 was introduced by codename Hawaii.
Actually, I didn’t try to test VS 2010 on VHD since a runtime installation would work fine for me to debug errors during installation and working environments.
I’ve just installed Visual Studio 2010 (2 hours ago from posting this article) and here is the first impression.
First Look
As shown in figure, the Visual Studio 2010 IDE was redesigned for clear UI organization with support of multiple document windows and floating tools windows. The new that the IDE shell was rewritten on WPF “Windows Presentation Foundation”, Microsoft’s revolutions in graphics experiences was firstly introduced in .NET Framework 3.0, whereas the internals were redesigned using MEF “Managed Extensibility Framework” to allow rich add of add-ins.
New Technologies
.NET Framework 4.0
Microsoft announced the .NET Framework 4.0 on 29 September 2008. Public beta was released with Visual Studio 2010 on May 26. The new .NET Framework empowers the Azure cloud computing platform programmability by support of: Parallel Extensions, PLINQ, Task Parallel Library. It also provides full support for F#, IronRuby and IronPython languages. It also provides supporting the subset of .NET Framework and ASP.NET with Server Core as in Windows Server 2008 R2. Beside lots of enhancements on existing .NET technologies.
F#
Full support of the multi-paradigm programming language F# which was included into the new version of .NET Framework 4.0. F# would be a replacement of J# that was no more included since Visual Studio 2008 as a sign that Microsoft will no more provide support for JAVA programming language. F# was developed in Microsoft Research Labs and firstly appeared in 2002 and it’s a language that provide rich support for both functional, imperative and object oriented programming aspects.
Oracle Database Programmability Support
Since Visual Studio 2010 provides extensibility and providing rich support for adding add-ins for third parties, Quest announced that they will provide an add-in that provide Oracle Database programmability support within Visual Studio 2010.
The new tool enables Oracle developers to perform offline design, development and change management in VSTS, and integrate their changes into the application's automated build schedule. This capability ensures that all database changes are managed and tracked in the system, unifying Oracle professionals with the rest of their organization's VSTS team.
"We are pleased to have Quest Software supporting Visual Studio Team System 2010," Jason Zander, general manager of Microsoft's Visual Studio Developer Division, said in the statement. "With this forthcoming solution, Oracle developers will be able to take full advantage of the benefits of Visual Studio Team System."
Code Editor
The Visual Studio 2010 code editor now highlights references; whenever a symbol is selected, all other usages of the symbol are highlighted. It also offers a Quick Search feature to incrementally search across all symbols in C++, C# and VB.NET projects. Quick Search supports substring matches and camelCase searches. The Call Hierarchy feature allows the developer to see all the methods that are called from a current method as well as the methods that call the current one.
IntelliSense in Visual Studio supports a consume-first mode, which can be opted-into by the developer. In this mode, IntelliSense will not auto-complete identifiers; this allows the developer to use undefined identifiers (like variable or method names) and define those later. Visual Studio 2010 can help in this also by automatically defining them, if it can infer their types from usage.
Visual Studio 2010 Team System
Visual Studio Team System 2010, codenamed Rosario is being positioned for application lifecycle management. It will include new modeling tools, including the Architecture Explorer that graphically displays the projects and classes and the relationships between them. It supports UML activity diagram, component diagram, (logical) class diagram, sequence diagram, and use case diagram. Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes Test Impact Analysis which provides hints on which test cases are impacted by modifications to the source code, without actually running the test cases. This speeds up testing by avoiding running unneeded test cases.
Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes a Historical Debugger. Unlike the current debugger, that records only the currently-active stack, the historical debugger records all events like prior function calls, method parameters, events, exceptions etc. This allows the code execution to be rewound in case a breakpoint wasn't set where the error occurred. The historical debugger will cause the application to run slower than the current debugger, and will use more memory as additional data needs to be recorded. Microsoft allows configuration of how much data should be recorded, in effect allowing developers to balance speed of execution and resource usage. The Lab Management component of Visual Studio Team System 2010 uses virtualization to create a similar execution environment for testers and developers. The virtual machines are tagged with checkpoints which can later be investigated for issues, as well as to reproduce the issue. Visual Studio Team System 2010 also includes the capability to record test runs, that capture the specific state of the operating environment as well as the precise steps used to run the test. These steps can then be played back to reproduce issues.
I’m going to display a list of backdraws and bugs found in this release of Visual Studio in a later article.
Vista SP2 – UX Approach
I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I’m going to give my personal user experience “UX” using Windows Vista SP2, and here I’m going to give an approach to it.
Installation
Installing Windows Vista SP2 requires Windows Vista SP1 to be installed, that’s unleashes any wonders why the size of SP2 is about 600 MB for x64 Bit while SP1 was about 700 MB, that means SP2 not yet including features and fixes found in SP1.
For optimum performance, I’ve installed a clean copy of Windows Vista Ultimate x64 then installed Vista SP1 and disabled automatic updates to prevent any Hotfix to be installed before SP2.
Setup process is very fast (less than an hour unlike SP1) and clean without any errors mentioned. SP2 doesn’t consume much space as SP1 does.
Performance
Computer's performance was amazingly increased by about 30-40% with fast access to applications, slightly faster startup due to some improvements in ReadyBoot feature.
GUI Updates
I’m very pleased with the new Bluetooth File Transfer new GUI. It has the common Vista’s look and feel with new icons, images and comfortable clean windows.
Bugs
Since the Windows Vista SP2 is still in the beta process of SDLC, it should contain some bugs until they’re all fixed by RTM. These bugs found with my UX till now include:
Sidebar
Windows Sidebar doesn’t keep its past state, it keeps loading gadgets randomly by priority of loading. For example, if you listed the Clock, Notes and Calendar gadgets, you may expect to get an arrangement like (Notes, Calendar & Clock) after restarting or maximizing, minimizing some windows..etc.
Screen Saver
To quit Screen Saver mode, I’ve use the mouse cursor to quit it, the desktop freezes and I am unable to navigate between windows and it takes some time to quit the non responding screen saver application or wait for it to respond.
System Configuration Utility
I was surprised once when I started up the computer and got a tray notification that some of startup programs are disabled by the System Configuration Utility, I’ve opened the window to try to figure which of startup programs Windows disabled, however, I found all startup program are unchecked, that means that nothing was disabled by Windows.
Recommendations
My recommendation is to wait until the pre-release beta of Vista SP2 is released if you are interested to beta test SP2 or wait till Vista is RTM.
I’ll follow up with several articles while I finish evaluating the Windows Vista SP2 :).
I’m still messing in depth with Vista SP2 and I’ll follow up in case something new appeared :)
Announcing the Microsoft Student Partner – MSPs Technology Club – Tanta University
The Microsoft Student Partners program recognizes top young minds from around the world that are passionate about technology. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to develop real world skills to help MSP succeed in your future career, to help others learn about technology and to connect with other likeminded students, all while having a ton of fun along the way.
MSP is encouraged to share your passion and knowledge and to undertake a number of fun activities on campus. And in return MSP will get access to numerous benefits including Microsoft software, reference materials, and training, as well as privileged information about future career opportunities. For further information visit www.student-partners.com
Microsoft Student Partners – Tanta University
Microsoft Student Partners “MSPs” is currently activated at Tanta University, Egypt starting from the academic year 2008-2009. MSPs Club is the official channel for students to contact MSPs and Microsoft, as well. MSPs Club at Tanta University consists of several top minded students who are passionate towards technology with leadership of the official MSPs chosen by Microsoft. MSPs Technology Club – Tanta University is an academic nonprofit program and it’s a Microsoft Egypt DPE Division Subsidiary.
Major Initiatives within Club (Activities)
- Technology based sessions and workshops concerns Microsoft products/technologies or any technology that students are interested in.
- Encouraging students to register and compete in the Microsoft Imagine Cup student competition through the official website through a huge in campus road show via posters, flyers, brochures, newsletters and a main event and session explains the Imagine Cup in an amazing visual show.
- Mentoring, guiding and continuous support for the competing Imagine Cup students.
- Working with CS staff to update some certain courses (Operating Systems, Software Engineering and Computer Graphics) with the (WAP: WRK + ProjectOZ + OS Curriculum, Visual Studio 2008 as part of MSDN AA package and Microsoft Expression products) through workshops.
- Giving Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Science (Computer Science and Statistics Department) ELMS “MSDN AA Licenses” to the interested students through filling a special form including full name, faculty, grade, a valid e-mail (Tanta university’s official mail for enabled faculties) to send the username and password and SSN for authentication to download MSDN AA package legally and free.
- Distributing a bimonthly CD/DVD developer tools and materials created by Microsoft EMEA DPE team as known as Microsoft MSDN Community Distribution.
- Developing human skills and increasing awareness with IT industry environment through the Microsoft Student 2 Business “S2B” sessions.
- Distributing posters, flyers and brochures for MSP program and other Microsoft advertisements.
- The main communication channel between Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Egypt and Tanta University’s staff and students.
- Inviting and registering interested students and staff who’re willing to attend Microsoft hosted events especially Microsoft Student Festival and Microsoft Egyptian Developers Conference “EDC”.
- Releasing a monthly wall magazine titled: Microsoft Tech-Zine to keep most faculty students updated with the Microsoft different divisions, products and technologies.
- Organizing midyear and final year .NET University sessions.
I’m very glad to manage this work. I really like it since I’m part of the Microsoft DPE “Developer & Platform Evangelism” Division and it’s my most favorite division at Microsoft after Windows Sustained Engineering team in Redmond.