(Click for larger view of the Via Artigo)The new contest's "Sparks Will Fly" moniker is a play on the name of Microsoft's
Spark Your Imagination, an initiative the company launched at April's Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) in San Jose. In that program,
Windows CE 6.0 R2 and
Visual Studio 2005 Professional are bundled with selected hardware, including the Via
Artigo shown above, and sold at a heavily discounted price to students, academics, and hobbyists.
Sparks Will Fly, launched at ESC Boston today, now promotes Windows CE 6.0 technology even more intensively, via a three-round competition touted as offering more than $50,000 in prizes. Open to people in all countries, the event resembles Microsoft's existing
Imagine Cup, billed as "the world's premier student technology competition."
And they're off ... According to Microsoft, the Sparks Will Fly contest formally begins today at noon PDT, and will end at 3 PM PST on Mar. 9, 2009. The company explains the three rounds in the competition as follows:
- Today, the website www.sparkcontest.com goes live. Contestants will have until Jan. 7, 2009 to use the site to submit a one- to three-page entry detailing a Windows CE-based idea for the home of the future.
- On Jan. 9, 2009, Microsoft will announce 50 contestants chosen to participate in round two. In order to build their devices, each will receive Windows CE 6.0. R2, Visual Studio 2005 Professional, and a Via Artigo computer. They'll be required to submit a four- to eight-page paper describing their solution, along with a three-minute video, by Mar. 11, 2009.
- On Mar. 13, 2009, the top three finalists will be announced. Each, receiving a $1,000 award and an "all-inclusive trip," will present his or her idea at ESC Silicon Valley, which begins Mar. 29.
Microsoft adds that the eventual winner will receive $15,000, plus a trip to the 2009
TechEd conference in Los Angeles.
Ilya Bukshteyn, senior director of Windows Embedded marketing at Microsoft, said, "This is a great chance for the embedded developer to have an impact on the innovation we will see in the future. We are eager to see the forward thinking that will shape the home of the future."
BackgroundAlthough it is open to individual hobbyists, academics, and enthusiasts, the Sparks Will Fly contest has clearly been inspired by Microsoft's successful
Imagine Cup, a Microsoft event designed for teams of three to four students and their faculty mentors. The yearly contest, whose 2008 version is said to have included more than 200,000 students from 100 countries, includes a Windows CE-based "Embedded Development" section, plus the following additional sections:
- Game development
- Robotics and algorithm
- IT challenge
- MashUp (Web 2.0)
- Software design
- Photography
- Short film
- Interface design
The 2009 Imagine Cup contest, already under way, challenges students to "Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today." The event culminates in worldwide finals, to be held in Cairo, Egypt in Jul. 2009.
eBox-4300
(Click to enlarge) | |
According to Microsoft, winners in the 2008 Imagine Cup were selected from a pool of 370 students, 124 teams, and 61 countries or regions. The four winning teams in the Embedded Development section, as well as other finalists, had been given Windows CE 6.0 R2 and Visual Studio 2005 Professional, along with DM&P's
eBox-4300, a compact PC that includes a 500MHz Via Eden processor, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, and a Type II/II CompactFlash slot.
Though teams were free to add equipment or additional software, use of Windows CE and the eBox was a required element in the competition. For details of how the winning teams employed these ingredients, see our previous Imagine Cup coverage,
here.
The Via ArtigoThe Sparks Will Fly contest will be run along similar lines, but the hardware of choice will be Via's
Artigo, a device that may already be familiar to many readers. Shown below in its component parts, the Artigo is a tiny PC based on Via's Epia
PX10000 pico-ITX mainboard.
How the Artigo fits together
(Click to enlarge)Compatible with both Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded, the Artigo has a 1GHz Via C7 processor, 10/100 Ethernet, a VGA port, four USB ports, and support for a 2.5-inch hard disk drive. Fully configured, the black-chassis system weighs 1.14 pounds and measures 5.9 x 4.3 x 1.8 inches.
As well as being one of the devices offered in the subsidized Spark Your Imagination program, the Artigo has already featured in two separate giveways. First, ESC organizers TechInsights
gave away the systems to an unspecified number of "all access" attendees at April's ESC Silicon Valley. Second, Microsoft is
giving away Artigos to the first 300 attendees at a keynote today by Kevin Dallas, general manager of the company's Windows Embedded business.
The keynote, scheduled for 9 AM EDT, is entitled "Delivering the future, faster," and will "detail Microsoft's vision for thriving in a connected, service-oriented market," according to the company.
Further informationFor more information on Kevin Dallas' keynote, plus additional Windows-related events at ESC Boston, see our earlier coverage,
here.
For more information on the Sparks Will Fly contest, see Microsoft's website,
here.
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