Microsoft Student Account Sign Up Tutorial

March 8th, 2013 Posted in Microsoft, Students, Windows 8, Windows Phone
No Comments

We’ve been running a ton events on campuses all around the Western US lately.  One of the things we try to do at these events is help students sign up for the variety of Microsoft accounts available to them.  In an effort to streamline this process, I have recorded a video that walks through the sign up process for each of the following accounts:

If you are a student, and would like to sign up for FREE to any of the above, this video is for you.  Also, If are having trouble getting verified in Dreamspark, and need help, let me know!

Enjoy!

Read More

FIRST Robotics Competition and Kinect

March 16th, 2012 Posted in Kinect, Students
2 Comments »

Yesterday (03/15/2012) I attended the first day of the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) LA Regional event at the Long Beach Arena.  This was my first FRC event and I was blown away by what these kids were able to accomplish in just six weeks.  I call them kids not be belittle them, but rather to humble myself.  It was truly amazing.  I brought my ten year old son along with me and were both enthralled with what we saw.

ReboundRumbleRGB

This years competition is entitled “Rebound Rumble” (see a video about it here) and it challenges the student teams to build a robot that can pickup compact foam basketballs, shoot them at one of four basketball baskets, as well as navigate a set of “teeter-totter” style “bridges”.

Microsoft-Kinect-Sensor

I was there as a Microsoft Developer Evangelist because in the competition this year, the teams were allowed to use the Microsoft Kinect both on the robots themselves as well as from special Kinect driver stations.  I found teams at the LA regional using one or the other.  One team in particular though, Team 987 from Las Vegas’ Cimarron-Memorial High School was using the Kinect both onboard for depth perception, as wells as from the Kinect Driver Station during autonomous / hybrid mode.

Team987KinectMounted

Team987WithKinect

 

Read the rest of this entry »

Read More