Congratulations to Jamie Clarke and Rob Sammons who were 1st and 2nd prize winners in Round 1 of the competition. A web cam and Windows Phone 7 t-shirt is on its way to Jamie and a t-shirt to Rob. Jamie will go forward to the final draw as a round winner for a chance to win an HTC 7 Trophy
There are 4 more rounds so still a great chance to win – see here for all the details of how to enter.
If you haven’t entered yet you may want to check out these key resources
Download the Windows Phone Developer Tools
Understanding the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools
Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements
Round 3 is now open – round 2 saw no entries that qualified so you will have a good chance of winning in Round 3
An interesting winner in round 3. Congratulations to Stephen Muir, studying at University of Hull doing a MEng in Computer Science with Games Development. Be honest Stephen – did Rob Miles encourage you ? A web cam and Windows Phone 7 t-shirt is on its way and Stephen will go forward to the final draw as a round winner for a chance to win an HTC 7 Trophy
There are 3 more rounds so still a great chance to win – see here for all the details of how to enter.
Round 4 is now open.
We are into the final round of our Windows Phone 7 App Development competition, students only, while the incentives programme, available for all developers, stays open till June 30th.
If you are a student then write your app, publish it into Windows MarketPlace, email a screenshot of your Windows Phone 7 application together with its name, your publisher name and email address to ukstucom@microsoft.com and you are done! Round winners get a web cam and a Windows Phone 7 t-shirt and runners up get a t-shirt. The overall winner will receive an an HTC 7 Trophy. See the full Terms and Conditions below for further details and you can see Jamie’s Round 1 winning entry below or another winner here.
The incentives programme, and you could use the same app, is exclusively for UK Windows Phone developers. The purpose of this programme is simple, get rewarded by building an original and unique Windows Phone 7 application. There is a massive line up of prizes developers can redeem including XBOX360 consoles, LG 22” LCD TVs, Samsung Home Theatre Packages. In addition, by simply earning one point in the rewards programme, developers are automatically in the draw for an awesome weekly prize draw including Alienware, Acer & Dell laptops. For more information and conditions then click here.
For more guidance to help you get started you may want to check out these key resources
Satisfy yourself that entry doesn’t constitute selling your soul by reading the terms and conditions below.
1. ELIGIBILITY: This competition is open to UK students who are 16 years of age or older at the time of entry. Employees of Microsoft or its affiliates, subsidiaries, advertising or promotion agencies are not eligible, nor are members of these employees’ families (defined as parents, children, siblings, spouse and life partners).
2. TO ENTER: To enter, you have to have published a Windows Phone 7 application into Windows MarketPlace. Email a screenshot of your Windows Phone 7 application together with its name, your publisher name and email address to ukstucom@microsoft.com. All entries submitted during the 2 weeks of each round of the competition and by midnight on the closing date of each round will be entered into a random draw, overseen by three Microsoft employees. At the end of all 6 rounds the individual round winners will be entered into a separate prize draw. Any number of entries per person is allowed BUT only one entry per application published in MarketPlace will be accepted. Incomplete, damaged, defaced or illegible entries may be deemed invalid at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Entry constitutes full and unconditional acceptance of these Terms and Conditions. Microsoft reserves the right to disqualify anyone in breach of these Terms and Conditions.
3. TIMING: The competition timings are as follows (all timing are BST)
Round 1 Saturday 00:01am April 2nd 2011 until midnight on Friday April 15th 2011
Round 2 Saturday 00:01am April 16th 2011 until midnight on Friday April 29th 2011
Round 3 Saturday 00:01am April 30th 2011 until midnight on Friday May 13th 2011
Round 4 Saturday 00:01am May 14th 2011 until midnight on Friday May 27th 2011
Round 5 Saturday 00:01am May 28th 2011 until midnight on Friday June 10th 2011
Round 6 Saturday 00:01am June 11th 2011 until midnight on Friday June 24th 2011
The closing date of the entire competition is midnight BST June 24th 2011. Completed entries will be entered into the prize draw for the applicable round based on when the email arrives in the Microsoft inbox.
4. USE OF DATA: Personal data which you provide when you enter this competition will not be used for future Microsoft UK marketing activity.
5. SELECTION OF WINNER: Three Microsoft employees will perform the random draw and the winner will be notified by email on during the week after each round closes. The winners agree to have their publisher names and application names published via the Microsoft UK Students Facebook page, Microsoft UK Students blog and Microsoft UK Students Twitter.
6. PRIZE: The winning entrant for each round will receive one Web cam and a Windows Phone 7 t-shirt and one runner up will receive a Windows Phone 7 t-shirt. At the end of all 6 rounds the 6 first prize winners of each round will be entered into a separate prize draw to win a Windows Phone 7 HTC Trophy Device. Prize is as stated and non-transferable. No cash or other alternatives available. Microsoft reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal or greater value. The prizes will be dispatched within two weeks of the competition’s closing date for each round. Prize may be considered a taxable benefit and the winner will be directly responsible for accounting for any tax liability arising on their prize.
7. WINNERS LIST: The winner consents to their surname being made publicly available. The winner’s name and application name will be available for a period of 3 weeks after the closing date by emailing ukstucom@microsoft.com
8. OTHER: No correspondence will be entered into regarding either this competition or these Terms and Conditions. In the unlikely event of a dispute, Microsoft’s decision shall be final. Microsoft reserves the right to amend, modify, cancel or withdraw this competition at any time without notice.
9. Microsoft cannot guarantee the performance of any third party and shall not be liable for any act or default by a third party. Participants in this promotion agree that Microsoft will have no liability whatsoever for any injuries, losses, costs, damage or disappointment of any kind resulting in whole or in part, directly or indirectly from acceptance, misuse or use of a prize, or from participation in this promotion. Nothing in this clause shall limit Microsoft’s liability in respect of death or personal injury arising out of its own negligence or arising out of fraud.
Lee Stott, one of our evangelists, has been posting a lot on the Faculty Connection blog about Windows Phone 7, MSR and the cloud, amongst other posts, as he is more prolific writer than me. This one stuck in my mind though as its a great example of research, a consumer device and a real world example coming together for potentially practical use.
The MRC Engineering team has released the fourth and final cloud service for Windows Phone 7 development: Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This OCR service is the next step in the evolution of Project Hawaii and with Hawaii OCR, you can use your smartphone's camera to take a picture of an object that contains text (in Roman characters), send the image to the cloud, and in return receive a Unicode string of the text. This text string can be used in a number of interesting scenarios, such as translation of street signs or restaurant menus.
You can download the SDK and start building Windows Phone 7 apps today. For more details, read the Aloha: Text from the Cloud blog.
So whilst some people write “sound apps”, you know what I mean, there are some very clever people thinking about more useful applications, though I have to admit having sound apps on my phone .
If you need help getting started connect with us on Facebook.
Two new winners in Round 5 of the Windows Phone 7 Application Development competition. Winner was James Mundy with his Travelnapp app built whilst studying Physics at Sheffield University. James proves you don’t have to be a computer science student to love technology and be able to write great applications. Well done James and a web cam and t-shirt on its way.
Runner up this time is Josh Crowley and even though he won in the random draw I think his publisher name deserves some reward - Rusty Spoons – where did that one come from? A t-shirt is on its way – when he lets me know his size
Last round is currently open and in 2 weeks time we will announce the round 6 winner and the overall winner who wins an HTC 7 Trophy. Details on the last round and T&Cs are here plus the details of how to enter.
Congratulations to both and let us know what your experience of developing for Windows Phone was like and we’ll share it here.
Round 6 is now open.