Interesting Links 4 April 2011

I always worry about posting things on April 1st. So I didn’t post anything last Friday. I could say it was just because it was April Fool’s Day but honestly I was just flat out too busy with other things. It was a heck of a week.  Speaking of April Fool’s Day and joke posts, the best April 1st posts are those with a feeling of plausibility mixed with some implausibility. Check out this "product" from Dan Waters- My Super Secret Kinect Project Honestly it may give you some ideas about how interacting with computers might just develop in the future.

Have you been voting for the Imagine Cup People’s Choice Awards? Not much time left so I hope you will take a look at the teams and vote for your favorite. If you are not sure who to vote for there is always the one high school team going up against all those college/university teams. Their Idea: defend the world from a global pandemic!

Student programmers make money! Did I get your attention with that? Read more about that story atStudents cash in putting ads on Windows Phone 7 apps (PDF) And let developers you know about how they can Monetize their Windows Phone 7 Apps by downloading and using the Microsoft Advertising SDK for Windows Phone 7 for mobile applications using the XNA Framework or Silverlight.

Geek is Chic Microsoft’s NERD also held a DigiGirlz event on March 18, which you can read about here. According to Abby Fichtner aka @HackerChick “250+ high school girls converged on NERD to play w/ toyz! I mean,to learn about STEM careers :) ” I’m only sorry I couldn’t make one of these this year.

Want to have students experience cloud computing and a coding challenge? Check out the Rock Paper Azure challenge that is open now at rockpaperazure.com

Microsoft Research showed a lot of cool technology at SIGCSE recently. An interesting blog post about the what and why may be found on the Microsoft Research blog. See Computer Science Research Tools Excite Faculty at SIGCSE

Some interesting things from Vicki Davis, one of my favorite and most innovative teachers, (Twitter @coolcatteacher) who tweeted “My students are getting gung ho on Kodu https://ow.ly/4prGG - Talking about entering @alfredtwo and @microsoft 's Kodu Cup” I hope they do. The Kodu Cup is a fun contest for students 9-17. Vicki also makes a great Case for Digital Citizenship in Schools

From the  @MSTechStudent account on Twitter “Check out this tutorial on #XNA for #Silverlight Developers: Music and Sound. ” And this WP7 "XNA for Silverlight Developers" Series More for me to learn :-)

Oh and a few other good Imagine Cup Teams to vote for (as recommended by my manager )

Geek League NYU Game Design	Drexel Dragons Drexel University Software Design	TTHV Harvard University of Pennsylvania Central Connecticut State Software Design