What: Hackathon for Metro Styled Apps on Win8 or Windows Phone
When: 10am – 4pm, May 11, 18, 25 (come and go as you need to)
Where: Microsoft offices in the area, see below for specific dates
Who: Anyone. We’ll be there, you should too!
Registration: Just email eddonahue@live.com that you’re in

Ideas on what you could do

• Publish your app during the hackathon! (this qualifies you for some special drawings!)
• Evaluate your app for SDK 7.1.1 256mb emulator compatibility
• Work on a project with experienced folks to help you
• Jump start your Windows 8 or Windows Phone developer experience, cowork for a Day!

Install the dev tools before you show up

• Windows Phone SDK
• Win8 Consumer Preview
• Azure SDK
• Azure 90-day Trial
• WebMatrix
• VS11 Express Beta for Win8

Dates and Locations:

• May 11 – Microsoft Chevy Chase Office, 5404 Wisconsin Ave, Chevy Chase, MD (room 7027)
• May 18 – Microsoft Reston Office, 12012 Sunset Hills Road, Reston, VA (rooms 3026 & 3028)
• May 25 – Microsoft Chevy Chase Office, 5404 Wisconsin Ave, Chevy Chase, MD (room 7027)

See you there!

GOT XNA?
WRITING AN WINDOWS PHONE GAME?
WANT A SHOT AT THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS?

Here’s the short version. Over 14? Write a cool Windows Phone Game and submit it to the Dream.Build.Play site. You could win up to $20,000. Yep, that’s it. In a nutshell. So on to the long-winded stuff.

Windows Phone the prizes are $20k, $10k, $5k, and $2500 respectively. The top 20 finalists will also get Phones. Want some inspiration, check out last year’s XBOX winners at https://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/winners.aspx . Obviously the competition is going to be tough. Make something good. And if you publish it, let me know. I’m always looking to brag about our phone devs!

RULES – SHORT LIST
Registration until May 15, Submission until June 12
Judging on fun/innovative/quality
Must be greater than 14 years old
All submissions are in English
You cannot submit if you live in Cuba, Iran, North Korean, Sudan or Syria
Official Rules – https://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/officialrules.aspx

Here’s another contest that you can vote for! Check out the videos that have been made for the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Video Challenge. You can vote every day from now until April 16th. There will be winners in individual and group categories who will receive prizes.

Don’t know who to vote for? Watch The Virtual Reality Room by Allison, a local student.

Since we’re on the topic of voting, don’t forget to vote for your favorite team for the Imagine Cup People’s Choice Award!

The Imagine Cup team with the most votes will win a an all-expense paid trip to Sydney, Australia for the Imagine Cup Worldwide Finals this July.   Additionally, anyone who vote will be entered for a chance to win weekly prizes including Acer ultrabooks, GAEMS Xbox bundles, Beats by Dr. Dre headphones and more!

There are three ways to vote

1. Visit the Facebook page and click “vote” on your favorite team
2. Send this tweet: “@mstechstudent I am voting for #<TEAMNAME> in #ICPeoplesChoice. Rules: http://bit.ly/H4vrRl”
3. Text your favorite team name’s code (listed on their team page) to 45444

You can vote every day, on each platform, for each of the teams!

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC) is the world’s largest technical conference for women. Attending is an amazing experience, however sometimes it’s not possible for all women due to location and/or travel cost. That’s where the Regional Celebrations come in. Throughout the country there are Regional Celebrations of Women in Computing that are like GHC, but on a smaller scale. These smaller celebrations are great. They’re very welcoming, they provide tons of opportunities to participate, they perfect for forming local support networks and they cost less to get to.

So, now that you’re familiar with what I’m talking about, here’s a short story. When I was a student at DePauw University, I went to the Indiana Women in Computing Celebration. My first year I gave a Lightning Talk, I lead a Birds of a Feather table and I conducted a hands-on robot workshop. These were all opportunities for me to practice public speaking & everything that comes with it (preparation, anyone?), plus they wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t a local conference. All of my sessions were great! I got to meet so many women in the area. INWiC wound up being super beneficial for my career too! Even after I moved out of Indiana, I still went back for INWiC because I want to help make it a great experience for other women.

This brings me back to the point, CAPWIC is coming up!! I’ll be speaking and presenting at CAPWIC this year and I’m so excited to be contributing to such a great event. If you’re in the DMV area, I highly encourage you to go! With that being said, here’s the spiel, hope to see you there!

In about a week, the first Capitol Region Celebration of Women in Computing (CAPWIC) will take place in Fredericksburg, VA: April 13-14, 2012. See: http://www.capwic.org for the conference website. It is not too late to register!

We encourage your participation in the conference and hope that over half of the attendees will present a short talk! It’s not too late to sign up for a Lightning Talk or 20 minute presentation and get to participate in the conference. Don’t forget, you can include the Lightning Talk presentation in your resume. Having a presentation in your resume demonstrates initiative, motivation and academic competence. Developing and giving the presentation provides you with benefits too: confidence, encouragement and an introduction to the professional world. Brainstorm ideas for proposals with your advisers and friends, occasionally two women share a Lightning Talk. More info on Lightning Talks.

Submit your proposal for a Lightning Talk today! Email the title & abstract (a few sentences to a paragraph) to information@capwic.org or to lparker@vcu.edu.

If you’re still wondering whether to attend, you should! We want to see you there! Here are the top 5 reasons to attend CAPWIC:

1. Informal Dress Code. Wear your jeans and participate in some old-fashioned face-to-face communication.
2. Food and fun! We will have snacks at breaks, nice meals and an ice cream social on Friday evening. We will play a version of Bingo that will allow you to win prizes.
3. Other women have benefitted, why not you? Over 95% of participants at other Women in Computing conferences said that they would come back.
4. Networking is one of the most important reasons to attend CAPWIC! There will be opportunities to meet professors, lots of students and industry professionals.
5. We have a very exciting program. There are research talks, poster sessions, lightening talks and more. Hear pointers on how to give a presentation from a theatre professional. Learn about parallel programming from an expert. See what other students are working on. Even give your own lightning talk!

Lightning Talks are very short (5-6 minute) talks. We’ll know the exact length, after we see how many proposals come in. Here are some examples of previous Lightning Talks:

· Socialization in an Online World

· 5 Ideas in 5 Minutes for Women in CS Organizations

· Appealing to Different Learning Styles in Computer Science

· One Laptop Per Child

· Gender Differences in the use of Social Networking Sites

· Collaborative Learning Environments: Reducing Dropouts in Public Schools in Chennai, India

· Variations on Matrix Multiplication Algorithms: Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates

· Inner Peace in Outer Space: An HCId approach to habitability in a high stress environment

· Self-Healing Database Management Systems

What is @home with Windows Azure?

Microsoft provides a 90-day free trial of Windows Azure where you can kick the tires and run an application in the cloud 24×7, cost-free. Why not use that free compute time to give back to a deserving cause?  The @home with Windows Azure project is an online activity where you use those 90-days of free compute time (or your MSDN Subscriber benefits) to contribute to Stanford University’s Folding@home distributed computing project.

The Folding@home project helps scientists provide insight into the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow disease, ALS, and some cancer-related syndromes, by running protein folding simulations on thousands of machines world wide.

You will deploy Stanford’s Folding@home application to Windows Azure, where it will execute protein folding simulations in the cloud, thus contributing to the research effort. In essence, your participation is a donation of your free compute time to the Folding@home project!

Get Started

It’s easy to get started in 4 quick steps. The @home with Windows Azure site has a series of short, easy to follow along to, screencasts that walk you through deploying Folding@home to the cloud!

Learn The Cloud

Want to go deeper? Join the @home team for a live webcast or catch one of their recordings on demand to learn more about Windows Azure, including: compute & storage services, debugging in the cloud, and patterns for achieving scale.

Make A Difference

In addition to directly contributing CPU cycles to the Folding@home project, from the start of March 2012, Microsoft is donating $10 (up to a maximum of $5000) to Stanford’s Pande Lab for everyone that participates!

See Your Impact

You can see your impact by visiting the detailed World Stats page on the @home with Windows Azure site.  For example, to date, over 6,300 VMs have contributed over 3.5 million compute hours!!!

Learn more about the project and join in at the project’s website: http://distributedcomputing.cloudapp.net

Join us for HackReady, the new online learning series designed for developers to bring you the vital bits you need, without the fluff you won’t miss. Full of key information and demonstrations, this series gives you a solid understanding of the tools, techniques, and resources you need to become HackReady.

The HackReady.Phone series brings you seven episodes, from start to marketplace. Whether you are a new Windows Phone developer thinking about your first app or well on your way to publishing, these sessions help you get there. Join us for one or the whole series—pick and choose as you like.

(Tue 4/3 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 1: Introduction to the Windows Phone Platform (Level 100) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone1

(Thur 4/5 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 2: Working with Internal and External Data in Windows Phone (Level 200) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone2

(Tue 4/10 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 3: Understanding Windows Phone’s Application Lifecycle and State Management (Level 200) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone3

(Thur 4/12 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 4: Working with Windows Phone Sensors and Other APIs (Level 200) -http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone4

(Tue 4/17 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 5: Enhancing the User Experience and App Usability with Live Tiles, Push Notifications, and Background Agents (Level 200) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone5

(Thur 4/19 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 6: Enhancing Performance and Application Testing (Level 200) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone6

(Tue 4/24 10AM PST)
MSDN Webcast: HackReady.Phone, Episode 7: Ready, Set, Publish: Everything You Need to Know About Releasing Your Apps (Level 200) – http://aka.ms/HackReadyPhone7

Get ready for the series and download the Windows Phone SDK!

Core77 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone teams challenged the international design community to design apps for Windows Phone 7.5 that would help users do their work—where ever it takes place. Five winning app designs were selected and the designers connected to established Windows Phone app developers to advise or partner with to help develop their ideas into functioning apps.

The remaining Finalists were also provided resources and interested Windows Phone developer contacts, and the first to develop and launch their apps by the end of February became the Notable Finalists. Find out more at the original Fast Track App submission site.

I love Project Mosaic, 1tap2send and MetroDiff! Which ones are your favorites? Let me know in the comments!

Check out this list of apps that are available in the Windows Phone Marketplace today!

Winners

	car-pal+ car-pal+ is the ultimate app for any vehicle, anywhere. Helps vehicle owners track fuel efficiency, find the nearest gas station, and log maintenance reminders. Get the app!
	Social Mints Social Mints is a FREE powerful app that allows you to easily monitor the Web and Social Media for interesting and trending content in real-time. You can track & measure what people are saying about a topic that interests you, get the latest on a celebrity or event and keep tabs on your favorite sports teams. Get the app!
	Cash Hound Cash Hound helps you quickly make informed spending decisions while you’re on the go. Equally useful for both personal and business finance, Cash Hound shows you, at a glance, how much money you can spend today and still have enough left over to pay your upcoming expenses. (formerly Rhythmatic) Get the app!

Notable Finalists

	Travel Trove When you tap the plus sign at the bottom of the screen you will add a scheduled notification about a place to visit. Get the app!
	Project Mosaic Ever wanted to make a mosaic using thousands of photos? Project Mosaic will use your pictures that you have on your phone, plus all the album art of any music you have, plus the profile pictures of all your contacts (from Facebook etc.) and will place them in their correct place to make up a larger image. Get the app!
	1tap2send 1tap2send lets you define template messages and when you’ll need them, just use them instantly. You can create new messages or customize the templates. Set the title, the message and choose a contact. You can select from a list of icons and colors for a quicker overview. Get the app!
	YouTube Download YouTube Download allows you to download all YouTube videos you desire on your smartphone. You can watch them again each time you want and each time you are offline. Get the app!
	Meeting Planner Meeting Planner helps to find the next available time slots to create a meeting. Meeting Planner will search between all your calendars on your Windows Phone. Get the app!
	Get Reimbursed Now, you can track your expense reports, your mileage records and all your receipts right from your phone using this app. Just take a picture of your receipts, attach them to a transaction quickly or plug in your mileage records and you are ready to submit your expense report. Get the app!
	MetroDiff MetroDiff is a differencing and merging tool for Windows Phone. MetroDiff can compare files and raw text. It can also be used as a simple text and webpage sourcecode viewer. Get the app!
	mHealth mHeath is a Windows Phone 7 game which engages users to adopt a virtual pet within the application; it will mimic many real-life health issues within the game. Get the app!
	SMS Scheduler Using SMS Scheduler you can schedule a text message to be sent to any number of recipient at any time. Get the app!
	TASKMASTER TASKMASTER is an app to plan and organize your everyday tasks and long time plans. Get the app!
	SlickFlow SlickFlow is a workflow software designed for the Windows Phone platform. With SlickFlow, users will be able to identify, at any time, at which stage a process is, who is the owner of the current stage and when the project was last updated. Get the app!
	Days Until Days Until takes the complexity out of knowing how many days a left for a particular event. It lists the events in a simple interface, so you can check out the days left for an event at a glance. Get the app!
	Draw & Tell Draw & Tell will make it easy for everyone to draw and share storyboards, even for people who cannot draw for nuts. This app will increase work productivity especially in the creativity aspects. Get the app!

Seek

Go on an epic voyage through time, infinitely scalable from the Big Bang to today, exploring all of history through this master timeline of the cosmos, Earth, life, and human experience

Learn

And gain insight from different historical perspectives, specialized timelines, and media resources, courtesy of the cloud

Discover

Unexpected relationships and historical convergences that help explain the sweep of Big History—and the relationship between the humanities and the sciences

Read more…

• Try ChronoZoom 2.0 Beta
• ChronoZoom Tutorial Video
• ChronoZoom Lesson Plan

Moderator

Mr. Jeffrey R. Young, Senior Editor, Technology Coverage, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and writer of College 2.0 column (@jryoung / chronicle.com)

Panelists

• Ms. Ed Donahue, Academic Developer Evangelist, Microsoft (@creepyed / creepyed.com)
• Mr. Ron Yaros, Professor at the University of Maryland, (http://www.merrill.umd.edu/directory/ronald-yaros)
• Mr. Jeff Meade, Mobile Learning Programs Lead, Smithsonian Institution, (http://www.edlab.si.edu/)
• Ms. Sophie Willis, Director of Mobile Business Development, Blackboard, (www.blackboard.com)

This event will also feature a Mobile Job Market Consulting Lounge presented by Profiles:

During the networking hour, the Profiles DC team will be available to answer your questions one on one. Whether you are seeking ways to advance your career or have questions around enhancing your Interactive department, expert Recruiters and Business Management Consultants are available to answer your questions.

Go to www.dcmomo.com to learn more our organization! Register for the event today at http://momodcmarch2012.eventbrite.com.

Mobile Monday Washington DC (www.dcmomo.com) is a networking group of 1000+ digital media professionals in the DC area. About 6-8 times per year, we host various panels on mobile related topics from 6-8pm (one hour of networking, one hour of program). These events are free and open to the public. We encourage all of our attendees to donate one cell phone – proceeds from which benefit women in poverty through the Grameen Foundation.