Microsoft Student Programs

Everyone who knows "Computer" knows "Microsoft" and every techie would look forward to work in it. Every student would like to master its technologies. It'd be very cruel of Microsoft not to include Students in it. Students are those who develop something that people now haven't even dreamt of. Microsoft surely can't ignore them.

Microsoft has many student programs that connect it to the students. It's mission is to empower students to achieve their hopes and dreams. Here is a small list of its prominent initiatives:

[caption id="attachment_32" align="alignleft" width="230" caption="Imagine Cup Poland 2010"][/caption]

Imagine Cup is challenge for students worldwide and draws their talent, creativity and passion towards technology and helps them make a difference in the world. The Imagine Cup 2010 finals will be held in Poland and there are five Competitions: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Design, Digital Media, IT Challenge. Winners in each category will be awarded exciting prizes. You must register for Imagine Cup is you're enthusiastic about technology. (Please use my referral code while registering: codingtales)

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/STUDENT has everything to do with students. Students will find all they need, free software, discounted software, learning materials, news about latest technology, projects to participate in and everything they ever dreamed of doing. There is Windows 7 at $29.99! There is an all new Student Lounge for all the students with stuff related to students. You'll be blown up with all that /STUDENT has to offer. Do not hesitate for a second before you jump into it: A computer science student who is not connected to /STUDENT is not a student.

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Microsoft Student Partners are the most technical students in the world. They have exclusive access to technology; they coach their friends about new technologies; they know more than any other student about technology; they get a chance to work in Microsoft; they attend conferences with special privileges; they are just awesome!

I'd like to make an announcement here: I've been selected as a Microsoft Student Partner this year!

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Microsoft Dreamspark just provides software to students. Mind you, it's not normal software. Here goes the list:

Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2
Visual Studio 2008 Professional
SQL Server 2008 Developer
Windows Server 2008 (R2) Standard
Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2
and lots more...

Being a student does not need more benefits!



[caption id="attachment_34" align="alignleft" width="166" caption="Student Tech Clubs"][/caption]

Student Tech Clubs is a stop to organize tech clubs. You start a tech club and discuss technology among your friends. This way you make more friends and be a master in technology. You can collaborate with your friends and build software that you've been dreaming about and the world would be left wowing about. It's your chance to show yourself off!

Well students, this is what you must participate in it. If you don't you're really not a student. All the best with Microsoft.

ASP.NET MVC Vs ASP.NET Web Forms

Since when Microsoft released ASP.NET MVC in January 27 2009, there has been a lot of debate on this topic — Is ASP.NET MVC better than ASP.NET Webforms? Many developers think that Microsoft has taken a step behind, towards the days of classic ASP, by releasing ASP.NET MVC. But some argue that it will eventually replace Web Forms. But as far as I know, none is true.

ASP.NET MVC uses the Model-View-Controller design pattern and does not use the server controls that Web Forms uses. Many developers were quickly attracted to ASP.NET when it was introduced in 2001 mainly because the Web Forms provided Rapid Application Development ( RAD ). They said that the design was a bit complex and confusing for a newbie but once mastered it’s very easy. ASP.NET MVC removed the much hyped server controls and provided a clean MVC pattern to deal with the UI.

Advantages of Web Forms

1. Rapid Application Development


2. Very rich server controls


3. Easy data binding


4. Improves over the stateless protocol of HTTP

Advantages of MVC Model

1. The MVC pattern, by itself!


2. Separation of Concerns


3. SEO friendly URLs


4. Full control over HTML

Disadvantages of Web Forms

1. The complex design


2. TheViewstate sometimes reaches large values


3. Does not generate clean HTML


4. No separation of concerns

Disadvantages of ASP.NET MVC

1. Uses the same stateless HTTP


2. No support for the Server controls that provide the RAD

Which one to choose?

It’s your choice entirely! Choose what is the functionality that you need most, cleaner development or rapid development.

As of me, I’ve chosen ASP.NET MVC. Some of you may be thinking I am wrong because I lose the RAD part. But I’ve a justification for that. I must have lost the famous GridView, but I’d like to tell you that I never liked it! There are many server controls that I’ve never used. I’ve more importantly used the simple ones like <asp:TextBox>, <asp:Label> etc. Making my design more complex and losing my control over the HTML I (ought to) generate is not compensated by those server controls? ASP.NET MVC gives me much better. If you like ASP.NET Web Forms, I’d advise you to shift to ASP.NET MVC and ake a little trouble by yourself and make your customers happy. If you don’t like Web Forms, wait for my tutorial on a simple ASP.NET MVC application! I’ll be posting it soon enough. Till then do some googling for a while and get started.

Google Wave – Yet another *hot* product from Google

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Google has announced another wonderful tool that enables you to stay in touch with your friends more easily than ever before – Google Wave. This another tool from Google is sure to hand over online communication in it’s hands. Google could have a long list of reasons behind that or it could be just one more attempt to take over Facebook, Twitter and all since it’s Orkut is not that popular.

Google Wave is going to be bundled with a whole lot of new features that no application I know has. Google says that all the action happens as a Wave. You create it, you and your friends modify it so that you and all your friends can see it. That sounds pretty simple but Wave has many things in it to create and modify. A wave can contain

1. Richly formatted text


2. Photos


3. Gadgets


4. Feeds


5. And many more things (yet to be built!)

The main thing that makes it stand out from the rest is its concurrency. Any number of users can edit the Wave simultaneously and everyone will have their wave updated as the editor edits it. You can also rewind to see how the changes got effected. This is really a cool functionality that no application has.

However it’s going to be released on September 30 of this year only to a 100,000 special invites. It is perhaps going to adopt the GMail invite feature. But those 100,000 special invites are going to be very lucky.

Google Wave is completely open source so that the Developer community can dig in and do something that even Google couldn’t do ( Google doesn’t say that but it translates to the same )! Even a plugin for Wordpress is being developed.

Whatsoever, Google Wave, according to the hype it currently is creating, is going to make Google the real monarch of internet communcation.