It’s been a fun few years working with the students of the UK, touring the country showing off the latest and greatest Microsoft technology.

I’ll keep this blog online for posterity. To stay up to date with student news, check out our facebook page, and for all the latest Microsoft developer news follow the UK MSDN blog.

Earlier today we held our press briefing at the E3 conference and showcased a bunch of very cool stuff including our Christmas line up, Kinect (formerly project Natal) along with a raft of great launch titles and a brand new sleek and quiet Xbox 360 console which will be available in the shops very shortly.

Head over to gametrailers.com to watch the full video:
0:00:00 - Our upcoming titles
1:04:30 - Kinect and launch titles
1:56:30 - New Xbox 360 console

Enjoy!

As of yesterday our new Office Web Apps functionality was made available as part of our free SkyDrive service.

For those of you who aren’t already using SkyDrive – it’s our free cloud based file storage system which offers 25gb of space for you to store and share files. As if that wasn’t enough with Office Web Apps functionality you can now open, edit and create Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files directly in the browser!

Office Web Apps also has some great collaboration features and if you want to open a document in the desktop version of Office its as simple as a single click!

To try out the service go to https://office.live.com/ and sign in with your Live ID.

The job descriptions and instructions on how to apply can be found in this doc.

Good luck!

MS Ireland.EDCJobs.Ad.docx

Interested in gaining professional qualifications and differentiating yourself from fellow students? Then read on…

Microsoft Certification offers you just that – an opportunity to demonstrate your technical ability to perspective employers and differentiate yourself from your peers.

There are a wide range of certifications available – you can find out more about how they align to different disciplines here.

Better still, until June if you sit a Microsoft certification with one of our IT Academy partners you will be entitled to a free re-sit (if you need it).

You can find out more and take advantage of this offer here.

This year we partnered with five leading UK charities to work with the student teams to align real-world needs with top technical talent. A series of project briefs were made available to competitors, with four of the final six teams representing a charity partnership.

This year we saw an incredibly high standard of entries at the UK final which meant that the judge’s deliberations ran well over schedule – it was simply too hard to pick a top three!

The final winners were:

3rd Place - Instinctive Input – Hull University

Our third place team devised a cost effective eye tracking system using readily available webcams to allow severely handicapped people to control a PC

2nd Place – MindPoint – Leicester University

MindPoint created a multipoint application which could be used by teachers to deliver highly interact lessons to their students.

1st Place - The Olive Appreciation Society – Manchester University

In the end the ticket to the worldwide final went to team ‘The Olive Appreciation Society’ from Manchester University who built a system to help reunite refugees.

If that has whetted your appetite you're in luck because its not too late to compete in this year’s competition. Check out the Windows Phone 7 "Rockstar" Award where you build an application using Silverlight or XNA for Microsoft’s new phone platform.

Just a quick post to let everyone know about a bunch of free webcasts aimed at students.

The topics are:

• Internet Explorer 8 & Bing – 10th March
• Technology Trends: Women in Technology – 24th March
• Introduction to C# Programming – 7th April
• Technology Trends: Career Opportunities in Technology – 21st April
• Analytics and Accessing Free Software Through DreamSpark and MSDNAA – 5th May

You can find out more and access recordings of past webcasts here.

You need an ac.uk email address and a voucher code to sign up. (You can request a voucher code here)

Once you have a voucher code you can sign up here - enter your voucher code at checkout to apply the discount.

This is a great opportunity to bag some top notch Windows hosting for a bargain price and don’t forget that all the tools you need to build powerful .NET web applications are available to students for free at DreamSpark.com.

“CM Group has created an environment that enables people to reach their full potential. Hard work is expected, but our graduates are free to satisfy their intellectual curiosity, think along new lines, explore truly exciting technologies and actually enjoy their work.

The people who flourish here are natural communicators with inquisitive natures, a passion for technology and an instinctive understanding of customers. But what really sets them apart is a drive that raises them above the average.
The graduate programme includes internally run courses as well as self-directed learning. They will be given real responsibility from the start, whilst also having the support of their manager’s and mentor’s advice throughout.

The basic requirements are a 2:1in a computer related degree, a proactive and positive attitude with the ability to work either independently or as part of a cross functional team is a must. Their organisational skills will be second to none, combined with accuracy, initiative and excellent written English. They should be creative with an enthusiasm for change and a passion for learning and technology. Good problem solving skills and leadership potential are also key.

They will find themselves in a working environment where everyone has an opportunity to fully participate in achieving success. They will work along side and in support of a group of world-class professionals in their chosen technology. For further details please visit https:// www.cm-group.co.uk or email vacancies@contentmaster.com.”

“Kodu allows you to build games using traditional programming paradigms such as conditional statements and loops but without having to fire up Visual Studio. Basically you start with a blank world which you can customise, add characters and set up interactions.”

The good news it that we have now released a free technical preview for Windows. This version has many changes from the Xbox version most notably a new keyboard and mouse UI so an Xbox controller is no longer required. You can find out about other changes on the Kodu blog. Or find out more and download it here.