Madd0's Tech Blog

The award ceremony of imagine Cup 2008 took place on Tuesday, July 8th in the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. SUPINFO teams were competing in two different categories: Game Development and Software Design.

Traditionally, prizes are handed out to the three first places in each of the nine categories of the competition. However, this year many special prizes were also awarded. One of these, an invitation to participate in the “BT Innovation Accelerator” program was won by Régis Hanol and Gauthier Chanliau–SUPINFO Languedoc Roussillon in Montpellier, Sébastien Warin–SUPINFO Nord-Pas de Calais in Lille and  Jean-Noël Gauthier–Ecole des Gobelins, of team Well’k Home.

The winners of this program, growth catalyst for innovative projects, are invited to work directly with the BT teams that will help them take their student project and transform it into a business plan. For them, Imagine Cup is only the beginning of the adventure!
I would also like to congratulate Frédéric Pedro, Anthony Chen Kuang Piao and Nicolas Gryman – SUPINFO Ile de France, and Maximilien Paitel – SUPINFO UK of the ECOThink team, who were able to distinguish themselves among 200 000 competitors and made it to the world finals with a few other privileged teams.

Finally, I’d like to encourage all students to follow these exemplary teams by registering today for the next edition of the competition, the world finals of which will take place in Cairo and Alexandria, in Egypt. The theme will be “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today.” Students will be asked to create software solutions that are aligned to one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). More information about the MDGs can be found at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals.

Registration for Imagine Cup 2009 is already open. You’ll find more information at http://www.imaginecup.com.

It has been two days since students from all over the world got to Paris to participate in the Imagine Cup 2008 finals and we just got the first intermediate results:

From 50 teams, the list of competitors in the Software Design category has been brought down to only 12 and our Well’k Home team, of Régis Hanol, Gauthier Chanliau and Sébastien Warin (SUPINFO) and Jean Noël Gauthier (Gobelins) is among them!

There's still plenty of work to do before the final results are revealed on Tuesday, so I wish plenty of luck to the Well’k Home team as well as ECOThink (Game Development) for the rest of the competition. I'll keep you updated on how our teams move forward and will post pictures from the podium as soon as I have them.

It's July 3rd and the Imagine Cup World Finals start today!

I'm not a finalist this year—but only because I didn't participate at all ;) Still, after being at last year's finals in Korea, I just couldn't stay away. I needed a plan.

So here I am in Paris, the competition is taking place in my own back yard and, even though some Microsoft Student Partners are invited to come visit for a couple of hours, I needed to be there all week. Well, it seems that if you want something strong enough (and work hard to get it) the universe helps: I'll be present from July 3rd through 8th at the Imagine Cup 2008 finals!

What am I going to be doing there?

Well, first, there are two teams I've been kind of coaching for the last few months, SmartCooking and ECOThink. I'll be supporting them the best I can. Even though, at this stage, everything is mostly up to them.

Second, I'll be covering the event with Channel 8! That's right, for a whole week you'll be getting exclusive insider information both on the Channel 8 site and, of course, right here. Did I show you my badge?

Come back soon and often for more information about the teams, the competition, the venues, the city, etc. ;)

No, these are not lottery or horse numbers, it's the order in which the teams from SUPINFO that are going to the Imagine Cup finals next week in Paris!

There are two kinds of competitions going on next week:

• Software design, embedded design and game development, in which teams must basically sell a finished product to judges from different countries and backgrounds;
• The rest, in which teams have 24-36 hours to create something new from scratch (that's what I had to do last year).

6 will be the position of ECOThink, our Game Development team.

54 will be the position of Smart Cooking, our Software Design team.

Watch Max, Rogerio and Tim as they draw the teams and they explain what's going to happen.

Imagine Cup 2008 Worldwide Finals Drawing

Oh, by the way, did I already mention I'll be covering the finals? More on that soon ;)

If you're slightly into racing, you'll know that I'm talking about some of the top Formula One drivers of the moment. Actually racing with them in real life is next to impossible, but doing it virtually won't have to be if the Dutch company iOpener Media has it its way.

No, I'm not talking about an artificial intelligence (AI) called Lewis or Kimi. The technology that iOpener Media is developing will allow video games to retrieve precise live data from real-life races that can then be used in simulation games so that you can race "live" with your favourite drivers. This is done using high-tech positioning such as differential GPS (DGPS) and inertial measurement units (IMUs) on the cars that that place them with a precision of 30cm on the track.

The company will provide software to game developers that will allow better integration of the real-life data into the virtual world. Advanced AI will be needed for Hamilton to overtake you properly to reclaim his first place if he cannot see your car at all. And let's not forget crashes, which, the company says, will not really affect real drivers, but may not end that well for the player.

Although I have no idea how well all this real-life data will integrate into video games—after all, if I ever raced a real-life Raikkonen, I probably wouldn't be able to see him for long, not until he laps me, that is—I really do look forward to testing this. I can already imagine myself logging into Xbox Live and qualifying for a grid that goes: Hamilton, Diaz and 20 of my closest friends.

(Source: BBC News)

(Photo credit: Yann Lautrédou)

So, the "Fox" (I know it's not a fox) is coming out for the third time today, but someone decided that "today" starts sometime when the sun hits the American continent...

I personally didn't want to wait until 7pm to get software that must definitively be ready right now (I sincerely doubt that Mozilla would put "finishing touches" a couple of hours before release) so I went to spreadfirefox.com to see what could be done.

It turns out all you have to do is play around with their download URLs a little and you can the fresh bits before their links are up. Since I'm nice, I'll share a couple of them and then let you figure out the rest:

• Firefox 3 for OS X in English: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx&lang=en-GB
• Firefox 3 for OS X in French: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx&lang=fr
• Firefox 3 for Windows in English: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-GB
• Firefox 3 for Linux in English: http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=linux&lang=en-GB

That wasn't hard, was it? ;)

Have fun!

But only because I want to be just like him when I grow up :P

OK, maybe not just like him, but I'd love to be able to find the balance he seems to have reached of enjoying life fully and using his wealth to help worthy causes.

If you don't care about who my role models are, just take a look at the video. It's very interesting by itself too.

Do you know the Sysinternals tools?

You probably do if you're an IT pro or a developer. For those who don't, it's a series of free utilities written by Mark Russinovich that are essential to manage, troubleshoot and diagnose your Windows systems and applications. I even need one of the Sysinternals tools for my classes: ZoomIt allows you to zoom and draw on the screen.

Microsoft acquired Sysinternals some time ago and since then the tools have been available, always for free of course, from the TechNet website. I, like many others, downloaded the whole suite and keep it in USB drives and my "Utils" folder. Even though the website's fine to learn more about each of the individual tools, it's not very practical when it comes to downloading and keeping them up to date.

Fortunately, the Sysinternals Team had the brilliant idea of actually sharing these files like you probably share your files on your home or office network, allowing you to run the tools from any computer connected to the Internet without having to navigate to a webpage, download and extract them. All you have to do is visit http://live.sysinternals.com/, which is simply a website with "Directory browsing" on or, even better, use the direct UNC link (\\live.sysinternals.com\Tools\) and run the tools directly. You'll probably want PowerShell installed for command line tools then, but those are the exception and all of the Windows apps will execute fine.

After the French Final which took place last week, where we learnt that our own Well K’Home team qualified for the finals of the Software Development category, we received today in a more discrete but not less important manner the results for all the other categories. I am therefore glad to announce that a second SUPINFO team has qualified for the worldwide finals!

I’m talking about the ECOThink team composed of Frédéric Pedro, Anthony Chen Kuang Piao and Nicolas Gryman – SUPINFO Ile de France, and Maximilien Paitel – SUPINFO UK, who will be representing the colors of SUPINFO and France in the Game Development category.

Only 6 out of the hundred or so teams that participated worldwide have the privilege to attain this final round that will take place from July 3 to 8 in Paris. I therefore congratulate this team for their exceptional work and this well deserved reward.

It is also thanks to these two teams that SUPINFO will be the French school sending the most students to these “Olympic Games” of Computer Science.

I’d like to thank teams Well K’Home and ECOThink once more, but also all the other participants in all the other categories for their efforts.

I hope that those for whom the adventure stops here were able to take advantage of it and will retry the experience next year. To our two finalist teams, I wish them the best of luck for the next stage and would like to remind them that they have our full support until the end.

Last night took place the French finals of the Software Design category of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. Seven finalists, two of which came from SUPINFO, were competing for the first place that would allow them to represent their school’s and their country’s colors in the worldwide finals that will take place from July 3 to 8 in Paris, France.

It was before notably Eric Boustouller–General Manager of Microsoft France, Jean-Louis Missika–deputy of the Mayor of Paris, in charge of innovation, research and universities, and Chantal Jouanno–President of the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, but also our President, Alick Mouriesse, that this much desired first place was attributed to our own Smart Cooking team, composed of Régis Hanol and Gauthier Chanliau–SUPINFO Montpellier, Sébastien Warin–SUPINFO Lille, and Jean-Noël Gauthier–Gobelins.

Months of hard work have borne fruit, even if the show is far from being over. These four students must still step up to their biggest challenge during the first week of July, when they will have to convince judges from around the world that their project is the most relevant from a technological, economic and environmental (this is the competition’s theme this year) point of view, amongst the fifty other countries participating in the international finals.

I’d like to congratulate personally, but also on behalf of all of SUPINFO, Régis, Gauthier, Sébastien and Jean-Nöel for their victory!

I’d also like to congratulate Team Plastid, made of Sylvain Bruyère, Romain Léveillé and Steven Bailly-Maître–SUPINFO Toulouse, who managed, despite their young age, to qualify for the French finals. I wish them good luck in continuing their project and hope to see them on the podium next year.

Finally, last night only the Software Design category was at stake, however we have great teams still participating, especially in the categories of Embedded Design, Game Development, Project Hoshimi and IT Challenge. Some of these teams were there yesterday evening and were able to showcase their projects and benefit from the opinion and advise of visitors, including Alick and Olivier Comes. These teams have submitted their projects hoping to grab a place in the worldwide finals, however in these categories the competition is already taking place at the international level. We will therefore know the definitive list of SUPINFO finalists by the end of the month.

Once again, on behalf of SUPINFO, I wish luck to all the teams who are still competing and would like to congratulate and thank Régis, Gauthier and Sébastien for all their work.