Team Walk2Help is a Bulgarian team entering the World Wide Imagine Cup with a neat Windows Phone 7 application. They aim to help reduce carbon emissions while helping out charities.

I was able to sit in on Walk2Help’s presentation, and got quite a bit of insight as to what the project is about. They built a Windows Phone 7 application that tracks the amount of CO2 you save when walking. When you walk, you earn “credits”, that you can then redeem on their website to help charities. The more people walk, the more carbon we save, and the more people we’re able to help.

While they may not have made it much further in the competition, they did an amazing job building their project. The app is available now on the Windows Phone marketplace. Just search fro Walk2Help and make a difference.

If you support Walk2Help, please vote for them in the People’s Choice Awards here.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

One of my favorite things about the Imagine Cup is the amazing goals many projects carry. The spirit of the competition is in the innovative thinking of each of the competitors. They come together with the common goal of “Solving the world’s toughest problems”.

Team LifeLens exemplifies this theme greatly. They have decided to tackle Malaria, hoping to make detecting the disease a relatively simple and affordable task. They developed a Windows Phone 7 application that takes pictures of different blood samples and sends them up to a cloud service for processing.

The cloud service then uses computer vision image processing to count the blood cells in the sample. It then goes through and searches for infected cells. The algorithm they developed is currently 98% accurate, as opposed to 62% accurate when they started.

Since arriving in New York for the finals, the team has been excited. They feel that they are “one of the stars of the show”, which they really are. They, along with the over a hundred competitors are all winners on their home turf. Whatever happens now, they’ve all succeeded greatly.

Team LifeLens was featured on CNN the day of the 2011 Opening Ceremonies. They, along with some other Imagine Cup competitors, presented their projects to the world. You can take a look at it here:

You can read the full article here.

LifeLens is already in talks with organizations to promote and test the solution they’ve developed. They believe that, after the Imagine Cup, they can change the world.

If you support their cause, please vote for them in the People’s Choice Awards here. I’ll be bringing constant updates about them, and other competitors, as a part of my coverage of the World Wide Imagine Cup Finals with the Student Partner Social Media Team. You can follow our coverage using the #mspsmt hashtag.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

I wondered what could possibly be in all of those boxes, especially with the Imagine Cup in New York City approaching quickly. Well, today I got my answer.

Introducing “Imagine a World”, a card game created by student Stuart Burton:

Andrew came up to me and handed me this deck of cards. It turns out each competitor will be receiving a deck of cards to play with throughout the competition. The rules of the game are as follows.:

First Turn:

• No effects can be played.
• Player 1 shuffles and draws 5 cards.
• Player 2 shuffles and draws 6 cards.

Every turn:

1. Draw a card.
2. Buy Tech, Effects, and Team cards.
3. Attack your opponent.

1. Draw a Card
You must draw a card if you have cards remaining in your deck

2. By Tech, Effects & Team cards
You may buy one Tech, one Effect, and one Team card per turn. Play cards you buy on your field.

3. Attack your opponent
Select one of your Tech cards and attack an opponent’s Tech card. If your Impact is greater than their Wow Factor, their card should be removed from play. Otherwise there is no effect.

Extra Rules

• World Event cards must be played immediately.
• You must use Money cards to buy Tech, Effect and Team cards. Other cards in your hand may be used in place of $1 Money cards.
• You may use multiple Effect cards on a single Tech card.
• You must wait a turn to use your Tech to attack your opponent unless it is the only Tech card on your field.

Optional Rule

For longer gameplay, players must choose to play cards OR attack per turn, not both.

Winning the game:

A player wins when their opponent can no longer make a play (draw a card, play a card from their hand, make an attack, etc.)

I think it’s really cool that the East Region Academic Team brought this card game to the Imagine Cup. If you enjoy the game, give a shout-out to the team members on twitter:

• Alfred Thompson
• Bob Familiar
• Erin “Ed” Donahue
• Edwin Guarin
• Lindsay Lindstrom
• Andrew Parsons
• Tara Walker

And remember to read the Microsoft Student Insider and the Microsoft Student Partner coverage of the Imagine Cup finals by using the #MSPSMT and #MicrosoftSI hashtag on Twitter.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

Before we get started, you need to make sure you have some pre-requisites installed:

• The previous sample
• Kinect for Windows Runtime Language Pack
• Microsoft Speech Platform – Software Development Kit
• Microsoft Speech Platform – Server Runtime

(Note: The SDK and Runtime are x86, as the Kinect Language Pack is only x86 for now)

Now let’s dive into it. First thing we need to do is add a few more using statements to the project:

using Microsoft.Research.Kinect.Audio;
using Microsoft.Speech.AudioFormat;
using Microsoft.Speech.Recognition;
using System.IO;

Next, add these variables under the variables we created last time:

KinectAudioSource kinectSource;
SpeechRecognitionEngine speechEngine;
Stream stream;
string RecognizerId = "SR_MS_en-US_Kinect_10.0";
bool speechNotRecognized;

These variables go with the rest of the fields we declared in the last tutorial. I’ll explain what each one of these does later. Next, take the Kinect code from our LoadContent function:

nui = new Runtime();
nui.Initialize(RuntimeOptions.UseSkeletalTracking);
nui.SkeletonFrameReady += new EventHandler<SkeletonFrameReadyEventArgs>(nui_SkeletonFrameReady);
nui.NuiCamera.ElevationAngle = 0;

And move it to a new function called InitalizeKinect. Your LoadContent function should look like this now:

protected override void LoadContent()
{
    spriteBatch = new SpriteBatch(GraphicsDevice);
    spriteFont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("hudfont");

    primitives.Add(new CubePrimitive(GraphicsDevice));
    primitives.Add(new SpherePrimitive(GraphicsDevice));
    primitives.Add(new CylinderPrimitive(GraphicsDevice));
    primitives.Add(new TorusPrimitive(GraphicsDevice));
    primitives.Add(new TeapotPrimitive(GraphicsDevice));

    wireFrameState = new RasterizerState()
    {
        FillMode = FillMode.WireFrame,
        CullMode = CullMode.None,
    };

    InitalizeKinect();

}

Let’s dive into that new InitalizeKinect function:

private void InitalizeKinect()
{

    nui = new Runtime();
    nui.Initialize(RuntimeOptions.UseSkeletalTracking);
    nui.SkeletonFrameReady += new EventHandler<SkeletonFrameReadyEventArgs>(nui_SkeletonFrameReady);
    nui.NuiCamera.ElevationAngle = 0;

    kinectSource = new KinectAudioSource();

    kinectSource.FeatureMode = true;
    kinectSource.AutomaticGainControl = false;
    kinectSource.SystemMode = SystemMode.OptibeamArrayOnly;

    var rec = (from r in SpeechRecognitionEngine.InstalledRecognizers() where r.Id == RecognizerId select r).FirstOrDefault();

    speechEngine = new SpeechRecognitionEngine(rec.Id);

    var choices = new Choices();
    choices.Add("color");
    choices.Add("shape");
    choices.Add("wireframe");
    choices.Add("exit");

    GrammarBuilder gb = new GrammarBuilder();
    gb.Culture = rec.Culture;
    gb.Append(choices);

    var g = new Grammar(gb);

    speechEngine.LoadGrammar(g);
    speechEngine.SpeechHypothesized += new EventHandler<SpeechHypothesizedEventArgs>(sre_SpeechHypothesized);
    speechEngine.SpeechRecognized += new EventHandler<SpeechRecognizedEventArgs>(sre_SpeechRecognized);
    speechEngine.SpeechRecognitionRejected += new EventHandler<SpeechRecognitionRejectedEventArgs>(sre_SpeechRecognitionRejected);

    Console.WriteLine("Recognizing Speech");

    stream = kinectSource.Start();

    speechEngine.SetInputToAudioStream(stream,
                  new SpeechAudioFormatInfo(
                      EncodingFormat.Pcm, 16000, 16, 1,
                      32000, 2, null));

    speechEngine.RecognizeAsync(RecognizeMode.Multiple);

}

This is a lengthy function, but each part is important. Notice at the top, we initialize our Runtime and Skeletal Tracking features like last time.

The next thing to notice is the KinectAudioSource, kinectSource. This is how we access the four microphone array on the Kinect Sensor in code. Right here we create a new instance of KinectAudioSource. We also turn off Automatic Gain and Echo Cancellation, so the speech recognition capabilities can work properly.

Now we need to grab our Kinect Language Recognizer. We do that by checking what speech recognizers exist on the machine, and grab the Kinect Language Recognizer.

We then use the recognizer information we grabbed to create a new instance of SpeechRecognitionEngine. We then create a new Choices object, and add all of the words we want the speech recognition engine to recognize.

Next, we need to create a GrammarBuilder that will help us build the Grammar object used by the SpeechRecognitionEngine object. We set the GrammarBuilder’s Culture using the Speech Recognizer we got earlier, and add our words to the GrammarBuilder.

Next we’re going to wire up a few event handlers. I’m not going to dive into each event handler here, as the only one that’s really important is the SpeechRecognized handler. I’ll explain that in a bit.

Finally, we want to set our stream variable equal to the Kinect’s audio stream. We then tell to use the speech engine to use this stream for audio recognition. The last thing this function does is call the RecognizeAsync function, which tells the SpeechRecognitionEngine object to start looking for recognized words.

Let’s dive into our SpeechRecognized event handler:

void sre_SpeechRecognized(object sender, SpeechRecognizedEventArgs e)
{
    speechNotRecognized = false;
    if (e.Result.Text == "color")
    {
        currentColorIndex = (currentColorIndex + 1) % colors.Count;
    }
    else if (e.Result.Text == "wireframe")
    {
        isWireframe = !isWireframe;
    }
    else if (e.Result.Text == "shape")
    {
        currentPrimitiveIndex = (currentPrimitiveIndex + 1) % primitives.Count;
    }
    else if (e.Result.Text == "exit")
    {
        Exit();
    }
    Console.Write("\rSpeech Recognized: \t{0} \n", e.Result.Text);
}

This function is where the processing work of the recognized audio happens. The SpeechRecognizedEventArgs contains the result of the recognized speech. In the Result property, there is a Text property which you can use to compare against your choices. The code in here is pretty self explanatory. We simply change our rendering properties, currentPrimitiveIndex, isWireframe, and currentColorIndex, to be used later in the Draw function.

Those are most of the important changes. Take a look at the attached sample to see the rest of the minor changes to the Draw function and the other Event Handlers. You can download the entire sample here.

Let me know if you have any feedback on these samples, or if there is anything you can add. I’m always looking for advice, so I’m happy to hear from my readers.

Until next time,

Patrick Godwin

The SDK for Windows has many features, from hundreds of pages of API Documentation to multiple samples, the Kinect for Windows SDK is a great way to interact with your technology. The Kinect SDK supports skeletal tracking and audio processing, as well as raw access to the data from the Kinect Sensor.

You can go ahead and download the Kinect SDK for free, educational use from here.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

The most exciting feature announced, for me at least, was the XNA and Silverlight integration. They didn’t elaborate on it much during the keynote, but it should allow XNA developers to build easy UX Experiences within their games, or allow Silverlight developers to deliver high quality 3D Content in their projects. I’ll be going to another session today on the topic, and will bring more details when I can.

The first session I went to yesterday was What’s Coming Next to the Windows Phone Application Platform. This session covered a full list of everything we saw in the Keynote, giving itemized lists detailing what we would be seeing in Mango. They didn’t go too far in depth, but the pointed us in the directions of the sessions that would be relevant to our interests.

I moved onto a lunch session, which was unique in that it addressed the issue of a lack of Women in Technology. The session was led by Lynn Langit, Sr. Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, and Thomas Mueller, who works extensively with databases. The lunch session was interesting because it had attendees building Lego models that represented issues related to Women in Technology.

After that, I moved down to the Connect area to speak with Clint Rutkas about his Kinect driven chair. They had two of the chairs set up in the Coding4Fun area, one functioning and the other taken a part for people to look at the internal guts of the chair. I’m sure that many people are interested in building something something like this, and the instructions on how to do so will be available on Coding4Fun when the Kinect SDK goes public.

The next session I attended  was Windows Phone Architecture: Deep Dive. It was a rather interesting, informative session, where the speaker, Istvan Cseri, delivered information about all the changes coming quite in depth. He spoke about the new Gyroscopes, the new chipset, and other hardware and software updates we will see in Mango. If you’re into the deep details of the Windows Phone platform, I highly recommend you take a look at the streamed version on the MIX Website.

The final session of the day that I attended was Multitasking in the Next Version of Windows Phone: Part 1. This was a slide intensive talk where they went over how multitasking in Mango is going to work, and what we as developers have to do to take advantage of the rich new feature set related to Multitasking. He broke down the four basic types of Multitasking and gave a brief demo of them. The second part will be today, and is a much more code-intensive session.

I’ll have more information related to the third day of the conference, covering each session I attended and giving more technical details hopefully.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

For the Windows Phone announcements, Joe Belfiore took the stage to announce the updates made for the Windows Phone developer experience. They announced new features related to “Mango”, such as the ability for application multitasking and fast application switching, deeper integration with phone features so apps can better use Live Tiles, and access to different sensors, such as the camera and Motion Sensor, to build augmented reality experiences. The tools for these features will be available to developers soon.

They then announced some forthcoming apps, which should be available in the next version of Windows Phone. These apps included Skype, Spotify, Layar, Qantas, Kik Messenger, and Amazon Shopping for Windows Phone 7.

Up next was  the Kinect for Windows SDK, which was presented using demos  of Microsoft research’s WorldWide telescope, as well as a PC game called “Wall Panic”, which utilized the Kinect Sensor through the new Kinect for Windows SDK. Clint Rutkas, owner of the successful Coding4Fun blog on Channel9, was a part of this section of the keynote. To learn more about the Kinect for Windows SDK, and to sign up to be notified of the beta release, take a look here.

Finally, the Silverlight team, set to demonstrate some of the new features present in the Silverlight 5 beta, which is available for developers now. They demonstrated a new XNA-based form of 3D Virtualization on Silverlight, and showed never before seen HD video from the U.S. Navy Blue Angels using Silverlight 5. More information is available here.

Overall the Day 2 keynote was very interesting, and contained plenty of great bits for developers to use and expand upon. Take a look throughout the day on Twitter for the latest information related to the MIX event.

Until Next Time,
Patrick Godwin

Before attending my first session, I took a look around The Commons, an area where development teams from all around the convention had booths set up to demo their technologies. I stopped by the Windows Azure booth,  the Windows Phone 7 booth, the ReSharper booth, and the Internet Explorer booth. One of the main reasons to visit these booths? Swag, and lots of it. T-Shirts, buttons, and all sorts of other goodies were handed out for free, so it’s a nice touch.

From there I moved to my first breakout session, which was presented by Rob Miles, a professor of computer science from the United Kingdom. He demonstrated XNA 4.0 in the context of Windows Phone, and gave quite an amusing presentation. His demoes from his presentation are available over at his blog.

After this session, I went with Kenny Spade, an Academic Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, to the lunch room to meet with a Microsoft Student Partner who was present at the event. I introduced myself to Jennipha-Lauren Nielsen, and hope to continue to work with her throughout this event.

After that I relaxed for about an hour in The Connect room, learning about Netduino, a microprocessor running on the .NET Micro Framework. If you’re interested in learning more about Netduino, take a look here. I also caught up with Clint Rutkas, of Coding4Fun, sat with Dennis Delimarsky and I for a bit, just trying to find some time to relax before heading back to the busy events.

The last event I sat in on was a session related to the Rx extensions for .NET, more specifically how they apply to Windows Phone. Jim Wooley, owner of ThinqLinq.com, showed some cool demos on how to move your current applications to a model that uses the observer pattern, using the Reactive extensions for Windows Phone 7. For more information related to his presentation, check this out.

That’s a rough breakdown of my first day at MIX. Remember to continue to follow my blog, as well as my Twitter and the #MicrosoftSI hashtag for the latest information related to the Microsoft Student Insiders at MIX 2011.

Until Next Time,
Patrick Godwin

Full Disclosure:
My trip to the event, as well as my badge and all other expenses were paid for by Microsoft as a part of the Student Insider program.

<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c624e8830f” _mce_href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php/option=com_mobile/task=viewaltcast/altcast_code=c624e8830f”>MIX 2011 Microsoft Keynote Day 1</a>

Software Design:

1. Note-Taker
2. LifeLens
3. UCA Ursus
4. TTHV

Game Design – XNA (Xbox/Windows):

1. Bloom
2. Plump Pixel
3. Righteous Noodle
4. XozGaming

Game Design – Mobile (Phone/Zune):

1. Big Impact Bear
2. AAMP
3. Mintus
4. EDO

Congratulations to everyone who worked hard in the competition to get this far. Everyone has worked hard to change the world, and it shouldn’t stop here. I’ve had a great time covering the event with Microsoft Student Insiders, and hope you enjoyed reading my coverage. Look out over the next few days for my coverage of the MIX Conference.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin