As the deadline is fast approaching for the online Imagine Cup Games competition, we thought it might be a good idea to quickly cover what we’re looking for during the judging. If you’re in a team competing in the Games competition and are looking for...

I’m truly excited about WOWZAPP 2012: Worldwide Hackathon for Windows , and it’s great to see all these cities from all over the world joining the party. But what happens if you want to be part of this thing but don’t have a local place to go? Why not...

I’ve been quiet the past few months. Really ever since Imagine Cup, I’ve been head down, planning, scheming, organizing and generally hiding away while I got ready. Ready for what? Ready for this: WOWZAPP 2012 – the world’s first worldwide hackathon for...

We just announced that the Windows Store is now open for individual developers. This means that now ALL developers, regardless of their status as indie dev, corporate coder, student or startup programmer, in any of the 120 supported countries, can register...

  With the general availability of Windows 8 rapidly approaching (October 26, if you missed the news ) I thought it might of benefit to publish a number of handy links for people to use if they’re getting into developing their own apps. First up...

If you’re teaching development in a school or college and want to bring your content up to date with the latest technologies, Microsoft has published three courses you can use directly in your classes. The three courses are of different lengths and are...

The World Festival of Imagine Cup 2012 is on right now in Sydney, Australia and I'm ecstatic to announce the winners of the two Game Design competitions! Xbox/Windows First Place - TANG Thai - Thailand - Verdant Fantasy Second Place - The...

Just minutes ago the top six teams were announced for the Software Design competition of Imagine Cup here in Sydney, Australia. Congratulations to all of the teams who participated but for the top six, a big extra WELL DONE and GOOD LUCK! The six are...

Congratulations to the top five teams in the two Game Design tracks for progressing to the final round of presentations! I thought all twenty games at the Worldwide Finals here in Sydney, Australia completely rocked and the judges were constantly raving...

Just moments ago we announced the top twenty teams at the Imagine Cup worldwide finals in Sydney, Australia! Congratulations to ALL of the teams that competed today and good luck to the top twenty who have to prepare and continue to compete over the coming...

Just as impressive as the games in my last post, here are the ten finalists headed to Sydney to compete for the Game Design Phone category of Imagine Cup . You’ll see a great variety of countries, game concepts and pretty much everything else, and...

Here we are again! Another year and another brilliant batch of games that have wowed the judges. This year we only have two tracks, recognition of the increased quality of games built in HTML5 and Windows 8 providing native support for HTML5 development...

I’m totally excited for this weekend. It’s the annual GlobalGameJam where hundreds of places all across the globe all spend 48 hours creating video games for a multitude of platforms. I love GGJ because it grows organically – each...

Normally I like to write my own text for my blog posts, but my team mate, Peter Laudati , has done a great job of telling you what’s going on so, in his words…   Week #3 of the Rock Paper Azure Challenge ended at 6pm EST on 12/9/2011. That means...

I am constantly discovering super cool apps for the Windows Phone and a team mate suggested I should start highlighting them so that others might find them too. Parcel Tracker is an application that does one simple thing, and does it well. It allows you...

One question that crops up a lot when I talk to students about the Game Design competitions is how will their games be scored. It’s an understandable concern – if you know what the judges are going to be looking for, then you know how to build your game...

In a recent post , I walked through the process of getting up and running with DreamSpark , AppHub , finding the tools, and ultimately publishing your app or game to the marketplace. There was one step I half-skimmed over though, because it’s one of those...

I truly love my job. It takes me to exotic places like Cairo, Warsaw and Paris. It gets my adventurous spirit going when I get to fly to Colorado, Texas and DC. It makes me smile when I drive through Binghamton, Ithaca, and Syracuse… Yes, it does – every...

Want to make a game with little to no code? Read on! Want to make a game with little to no code that you can run on a Windows Phone? READ ON! Want to make a game with little to no code that you can run on a Windows Phone and publish to the Marketplace...

We’re holding another game camp, this time a mega-one! We have four different activities to choose from – learning XNA from scratch, learning how to build Windows Phone applications and games, discovering HTML5 games and applications and finally, if you...

To make it easier to ask questions about Imagine Cup and Game Design, I’ve set up a series of “virtual office hours” where anyone can connect in, online or on the phone, and get in touch with me directly. These are scheduled for approximately...

The sixth New York City Code Camp is just around the corner – have you registered yet? It’s going to be held on October 1st at Pace University, conveniently located in downtown Manhattan. And whenever an event is held at a university I like, little birds...

A Phone Camp is an all day event where you get to go hands on with Windows Phone 7.0 and 7.5, learning how to develop for the phone platform and build both applications and (I’m sure you won’t be surprised with my predilection for entertainment) games...

The Imagine Cup 2011 finals will be held in New York City next week and I'm completely looking forward to meeting the teams as well as seeing how the competition turns out! To finish the puzzle off, I am ecstatic to announce the last piece in the...

Every year we need to randomly select the order teams will present in at the Imagine Cup finals. Rather than do the traditional "name out of a hat" style drawing, last year I started a tradition for the Game Design category; to actually write a simple...