Micorsoft's Imagine Cup 2009 is back....

Hey friends Microsoft's Imagine Cup is back. Most of us are in B.E.(last year); so it's our last chance. It's your best oppurtunity to gain and to prove that there's more which lies within you then just books. This competition is for non-students(i.e. Mentors/Guests) as well.

Q] So what is Imagine Cup...?

A] The Imagine Cup is a global student technology competition focused on finding solutions to real-world issues like Poverty, Terrorism, Unemployment, Shortage of Basic Amenities, etc with the help of technology, software etc.

Q] And how the problems can be addressed...?

A] The Imagine Cup challenges the world's most talented students to "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." Some might use technology to help a brother or sister get an education. Or find entirely new approaches for medicine. Or discover ways to counter the inequalities that exist between genders around the world. These students might ensure the sustainability of our planet or help deliver universal primary education. Yeah, it's that important.

Q] What are the Competition categories in which I can participate...?

A] This is a very subjective question and it depends very much on your own liking. For example, there's IT Challenge which includes a small Round 1 quiz on technologies like Windows XP/Vista, SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, Sharepoint Server 2007, Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Dynamics, IIS 7.0 etc. You'll require a score of 15 out of 30 to qualify for the Round 2. Round 2 will start in February, 2009 and will have a similar Quiz and a small case-study. Ample time is given for case-study so don't need to worry. Students qualifying for 3rd round will get an all paid trip to global finals in Cairo, Egypt. Similarly other categories have their own rounds.

The above is just the road-map for just "IT challenge". Similarly, there are different rounds for various other categories with different tasks. You can also form your team of upto 4 members.

Some other categories are:

--> Software Design

--> Embedded Development

--> Game Development

--> Robotics and Algorithm

--> IT Challenge

--> MashUp

--> Photography

--> Short Film

--> Design

Steps to Register:

1] Goto www.imaginecup.com and click on Register.

2] Fill up the all the reqd. credentials of the form and insert hardikguru as the referral code.(Plz. do that else I won't be able to report/administer your scores).

3] On successful completion you'll see another form.

3] Select the categories in which you want to participate.(For IT and Comps. people select IT challenge and rest is your choice). Complete the required fields.

4] On successful completion of this form, you'll get an activation link on your E-mail address. Plz. click on the sent link to complete the verification process.

NOTE:

1] Registrations will close on February 31st, 2009.

2] Plz. don't forget to insert hardikguru as the referral code.

3] I need to drive atleast 40 entries so pass on the link to other college students if possible to help me.

[----------------------------------- Guru™ -----------------------------------------]

If I were to be the guy at Microsoft wanting to handle this browser-war situation, what would be my strategy ?

If I were in Microsoft and were given the target to endorse IE v8 then following would be my approach:

1] There are various pro's/features in IE v8 which have been made especially for developers which, either have not been publicized or not put under immediate public glare. There are also many cases where people have failed to realize the importance of these features. Though Microsoft is trying their best through it's own web-site, MSDN and virtual-tech-days, it has not been completely successfully. Some of these features are accelerators, web-slices, loosely coupled browsing, recovery(fail-safe) mode, developer tools, miniature based tabs, WPF(in affiliation with silverlight), WCF etc.

The strategy to publicize the above features can be adopted due to the fact that developers pave the path for future innovation in WEB v1.0 and the incoming WEB 2.0 for users/surfers and hence they need access to some superior/extraordinary tools to achieve their intents.

Now comparing the above feature offered to developers by IE v8, Mozilla's Firefox doesn't provide any of that sort(except add-ons and customised search tags). Google's Chrome doesn't even come close to a touching distance(BETA people made it FINAL recently). Opera, Safari and Flock are in their league of their own.

2] Secondly, while trying to benchmark/compare all the browsers, people always first try to compare the speed of execution of an HTML page on every browser and subsequently then on each tabs and then conclude which of them is faster. Obviously that the most simplest method of judging.

Going by the above criteria, FF surely wins the medal. Similarly, Chrome is excellent in Javascript handling. Microsoft can actually take a cue from this, refine it and implement the same feature in IE.

Though, personally I feel speed of a web-page should not be the only benchmark on which a browser should be judged.

3] Thirdly, Microsoft's policy in embedding IE with it's imposing Live search with all of it's Operating Systems shipped till date is very much onerous on the part of it's customers. Personally speaking it's also not going down well with me and I'm sure with everyone.

Microsoft can actually plug a solution to this long-lasting problem by giving options to the users at the time of installation on which intended browser he/she wants to install.

Though the above is quite impossible but surely nothing is with Microsoft. I believe.

4] Microsoft has always been running straight like a horse fitted with flaps fitted around it's eyes to prevent any abberation. We expect Microsoft to do the same this time round as well. This browser-war is just a farce for MS and surely it will resolve this and come out victorious. We believe.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
There are several more aspects which Microsoft can look into but for now, I can only think of the above three aspects.
SIGNING OFF.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Steps to make a JAR file....

There are innumerable times since many people have posted questions on how to make a JAR file and what it can help in.....So I thought I'll myself help you out.....

You can create JAR files for two things:
1] For packaging together .class files to be used as applets, servlets, JSP or other purposes. Here only .class files have to be included in the JAR file. Here manifest file is not required.
2] For creating console applications(i.e. For applications which have void main() in one of the class files). These applications can be executed by just double-clicking the JAR files(provided JRE is installed). ".class" files along with a manifest file has to be included, in the JAR file.

----------------->To Create Manifest File:
1] Manifest file has two attributes:
---> Manifest-Version: 1.0
---> Main-Class: ABC.class (i.e. this means ABC is the entry class file which has void main())

Other optional attributes are:
---> Created-By: Guru (i.e. Name of the developer)

Include the attributes in notepad and save with .mf extension. Make sure Type of file is "All files" rather then "text file".

========================

----------------->To Create JAR file:
--> Goto DOS prompt and to the location where your .class files are. Make sure 'set path' has been set. Now enter this command to create the JAR file.

jar cvfm mmm jjj 1.class 2.class 3.class

where,
mmm --> Manifest file (mmm.mf)
jjj --> JAR file to be created (jjj.jar)
1.class, 2.class,3.class --> Files to be included into JAR

=======================
Similarly, for Servlets, Applets, JSP or other purposes use the above command:

jar cvf jjj 1.class 2.class 3.class

NOTE: Here manifest file won't come

Example of a console application:

Assuming there's an application with ABC as the main class. 1.class, 2.class and 3.class are the other class files required to run the application....

So the manifest file would look like this:

-------------------- Manifest.mf ---------------------
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Main-Class: ABC.class

JAR file named "PQR" can be created with the command:

jar cvfm Manifest.mf PQR.jar 1.class 2.class 3.class

Example of an Applet, JSP, servlet etc:

All the above steps will be same minus the manifest file and the manifest attribute...


=======================
Guru says Lolz......