February 2007 - Posts

• Web 2.0, Ajax, mashups, WPF/E and Gadgets - Oh my!

  I'm not certain what academics make of some of the latest technology trends. Word on the street is that mashups are being taken seriously by developers, Javascript is driving todays web user-experience, and having DHTML scripts running on your desktop is proving rather popular. Do we just focus on teaching the principles underlying these technologies (which I guess would be SOA, web services and dynamic languages), or do we help students understand what the marketplace implementation looks like? If you're leaning towards either the "both" or latter answer, then there's a great resource we've just launched that provides a one-stop-shop for learning about (or even teaching about) Microsoft's technologies emerging in this space. It's called Mix University. Enjoy.   Andy Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 7:02 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments

• Imagine Cup Web Developers? Get your starter kit here!

  New for the Imagine Cup 2007 is the Web Developer competition.  It's what we call an online competition - where you submit your entry, err, online. (The upshot of this is that you're competing against the whole world!).  The best part of this competition is that it is being run by our (i.e. he's from the UK) very own Phil Winstanley - ASP.NET community guru and all round hero.  He's posted some sample code here.   Andy Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2007 5:13 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments

• System Architect Conference

  This is an interesting one.   I recently joined a debate between academics and Microsoft's Architect Council, where we explored the role that universities should play in job readyness.  A fascinating debate, the results of which we'll share elsewhere (sufice to say that there were a, err, range of outcomes), made more so by the scale of what some of these architects do - from multi-country software projects, through to massive multi-user scale infrascructure work, I really gained an appreciation of how good you have to be at software development to see beyond it.   Anyway - they're holding a conference, and for those of you who teach large scale comuputing - it's almost certainly worth rubbing shoulders with these guys.   What: Architect Insight Conference Where: Celtic Manor Resort, Newport When: 5-6 March, Who:  senior enterprise, solutions and infrastructure architects, CTOs and senior IT decision makers What: Tracks covering: Dynamic Systems, Web, Identity, Collaboration, Real World, Enterprise and Lifecycle. How much: £795 + vat (includes all sessions, accommodation and meals) More details at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/architectinsight   Andy Posted Thursday, February 15, 2007 11:27 AM from UK Academic Team Blog | 0 Comments