Back from TechEd 2010

Here some pictures of my session at the TechEd 2010 in Berlin. Here I met Jochen Dieckfoss, a funny guy MVP on embedded, you can find a link to his blog on the right. I need to thank all Microsoft staff, from Sam Craig to Pierre Cauchois, embedded technical evangelist, for their support during the event. See you soon!

Speaker @ TechEd 2010

I'm very pleased to announce that I will be a speaker at the TechEd 2010 in Berlin.
TechEd is Microsoft's premier technical education event providing the most comprehensive technical training on Microsoft's suite of products, technologies, solutions and services. If you are a technology professional involved in building, deploying or maintaining IT solutions using Microsoft technologies, TechEd is the conference that will help you solve today's real-world challenges and prepare you for tomorrow's innovations.
During my session I will show you my guitar switch project, going deep into development details and answering to questions.

For more details go to http://europe.msteched.com/topic/list?keyword=wem204

Grand Prize Winner of the embeddedSPARK 2010 Challenge!

I'm very happy to announce that last week I won the first place at the Embedded Spark Challenge 2010!
My project was a guitar switch developed on the embeddedSPARK kit provided by Microsoft at the first round to 75 selected participants. Microsoft announced earlier this month that three finalists in its embeddedSPARK 2010 contest had been chosen and would present their projects at ESC (Embedded Systems Conference) Silicon Valley: I was one of them, with Wally Nehls and George Mallard.
After our LIVE on Stage at ESC in San Jose, the judges decided to give me the FIRST PRIZE!
If you want to know more about my project, you can read previous posts, about the code I will write in the next days... Stay tuned!

Embedded Spark Challenge: 2 round passed!

I'm very happy to announce that I've passed the 2° round of Spark Embedded Challenge! The international competition started with more than 150 partecipants, now we are only three and we are preparing to the third round directly at ESC Silicon Valley, April 26th - April 29nd, at the McEnery Convention Center in San Jose.
I have to thank all the people helped me, from Sridhar that pushed me to make this project, Beppe for borrowing the screen, Stefano for the welding job, Gianni for graphics suggestions, my guaranà friends for the video and my girlfriend for her patience... Thanks again, I'll do the best in the last round!

earned Windows Mobile 6.5, Application Development certification!

12 weeks ago I partecipied at the beta exam of Windows Mobile 6.5, and now I have received the result, so I have to update my signature :-)
for more information http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-580&locale=en-us
I have to thank Giorgio for the voucher!

Embedded SPARK 2010 Challenge: adding audio input and output jack to Vortex86DX

Sometimes I think the pictures explain better than words, so here you can see what I did, and amazingly it is working!
The connector for the pins J40 and J41 are unavailable in stores around me and I have no time to wait for me to come by mail, then with the help of my friend Stefano, who has paid attention welding the wires directly on the board, I ran this change, bringing out the inputs for MIC and LINE-IN-OUT.

4 IN A ROW submitted on Marketplace!

Last weeks me and Giorgio developed a simple game to submit on Marketplace: now it is online and you can download! http://marketplace.windowsphone.com/details.aspx?appSKU=e4dbe42d-73f0-4116-aca0-f953373ea132&retURL=/categories.aspx%3FcategoryId%3D50101%26pid%3D50069
The name of the game is "4 IN A ROW" and you fight against the artificial intelligence of the phone, trying to get four of your colored checkers in a row either horizontally, vertically or diagonally.
It has been developed with NETCF and can run over Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional and 6.5.
Follow the link and try it!