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Are you interesting in public service, of using you computer science, web development, information technology and other “hacking” skills for the good of mankind? If so you may be interested in participating in Random Hacks of Kindness. What is RHoK?
Random Hacks of Kindness is a community of innovation focused on developing practical open source solutions to disaster risk management and climate change adaptation challenges. Random Hacks of Kindness was founded in 2009 in partnership between Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, NASA and the World Bank.
Since then thousands of volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact. I’m OK, an SMS service that lets people inform their families of their status, was used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean. Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world. How it Works RHoK works by bringing together experts in development and volunteers with a broad set of skills in software development and design. The goal is to produce practical open source solutions to development problems. Events give the community an opportunity to sprint on projects, but the community continues to collaborate around the year.
Since then thousands of volunteers have worked on applications that are already making an impact. I’m OK, an SMS service that lets people inform their families of their status, was used on the ground during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010. The World Bank is piloting CHASM, software for visualizing landslide risk, in the Caribbean. Other apps have received support and interest from governments, NGOs and international organizations around the world.
How it Works
RHoK works by bringing together experts in development and volunteers with a broad set of skills in software development and design. The goal is to produce practical open source solutions to development problems. Events give the community an opportunity to sprint on projects, but the community continues to collaborate around the year.
The group is in the final stages of planning RHoK #3, next weekend on June 4th and 5th, where hackers and subject matter experts will assemble in 18 locations around the world to address challenges relating to disaster risk and climate change.
On the east coast of the US events will be held at RHoK Philadelphia at Drexel University, RHoK Hartford at Trinity College, and RHoK Atlanta at Georgia Tech. A full list of worldwide events is below or visit the web site at http://www.rhok.org/
Tara Walker is running a three-day Microsoft Mobile Development appLab at the Library at the Atlanta-Fulton County Library June 7 - 9th : 9:30am - 4:00pm
This is a Three-Day Mobile Development Camp that will take you from beginning to learning how to build robust Windows Phone applications and games. You will learn how to get started on that next great app for the Phone using Silverlight and XNA. This is your chance to learn how to design and build mobile applications and games or put the finishing touches on your idea mobile app masterpiece. The final day we will get into using Ad SDK for revenue making mobile applications and building Mobile applications for multiple mobile platforms.
You will learn how to get started on that next great app for the Phone using Silverlight and XNA. This is your chance to learn how to design and build mobile applications and games or put the finishing touches on your idea mobile app masterpiece, and learn how to get your app on multiple mobile platforms so bring your ideas and get ready to code. As you are designing, writing & testing your apps onsite, there will be guidance from a Microsoft professional to help you get things right.
Oh and there will be free food and prizes too!
Students will need to bring laptops running Windows or a Mac running Windows (Bootstrap partition)
Registration is REQUIRED
Since yesterday was Memorial Day I posted something just a bit fun and saved my links post for today. I hope those of you in the US enjoyed a three day weekend and also found time to remember those men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. I spent time with family including my World War II combat veteran father. I cherish all the time I have left with him as so many of his generation are now gone.
Now for some links.
Here is a bit of the real world of software development that they don’t teach you in school. This was tweeted and retweeted a lot last week. “ And the award for "Most Legally Encumbered Hello World Program" goes to Oracle for http://goo.gl/gpWFR” A few lines of code and a lot of lines of legal boilerplate.
A number of good articles in the Microsoft Boston blog including this one about how Microsoft’s Elevate America Community Initiatives are making a difference in the lives of Bostonians. And this All About the Boston MTC – Q&A with Sven Ingard, MTC Director The MTC is one of Microsoft’s interesting field offices that works with customers before large projects get rolling.
The big summer doings for Microsoft’s international academic relations teams are the 124 student teams who are competing to solve the world's toughest issues. See GOOD Magazines' favorite five projects
New Game Development Education on App Hub for the Windows Phone Mango Tools Release. This is where I am learning things for my posts like XNA and Visual Basic–Your First Lesson and Windows Phone 7 Games in Visual Basic
Have you read about the Microsoft Tech Student of the Month for May 2011? – Kevin Ballinas
I saw this interesting Tweeted link from @weemooseus “Red Hot: The Computer Science Job Market: (Ok HS, where are your CS teachers when your students need them?)” In spite of news stories like this I keep hearing of schools cutting back on computer science education. It doesn’t make any sense to me.