Swedish Game Awards Final Ceremony

We, as Sun Campus Ambassadors, represented Sun Microsystems at Swedish Game Awards 2009 final ceremony on 13th of June at KTH main campus. Game awards is one of the biggest game development contest and Sun Microsystems is one of the biggest sponsors of this event.  This year around  200 people visited the stands and talked with us about Java and Java FX. We encouraged students and professional game developers to use Java FX and distributed Java books and mugs.

The competition started in 2002 as a sub-project to Excitera, the student-driven entrepreneurship association at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), and was then called KTH Game Awards. Excitera Mobile Awards, a mobile application development competition, was started a year later and is now a part of Swedish Game Awards. The Categories for Swedish Game Awards 2008 have been changed to reflect changes in both technologies and the industry. They have now put the focus on the game, instead of on the platform. When contestants design a game, it doesnt matter what target platform they have intended for it, as long as the prototype runs on either Windows XP, OSX (as a Universal binary) or Linux (latest stable build of Ubuntu). The competition also support emulators and so called “mods”, modifications of existing games, such as Half-Life 2 or Unreal Tournament.

After a very tough final round Robert Larsson, from Chalmers University, won the Java FX and best execution awards by his game Imperii. We would like to congratulate Robert and hope to see more Java FX projects in the market.

KTH Pizza Party

It has been some time since we have had our “Pizza Party” at KTH. Here are some of the pictures from the event and thanks a lot to all of our members who have been there with us!

Sun University RoadTour at KTH

We had a very successful event last Wednesday at KTH. Experienced technology evangelist Roman Strobl came to Stockholm to have a presentation together with Sun campus ambassadors. Students were very enthusiastic and asking lots of question regarding open source, Sun, Oracle :), java, OpenSolaris and other project.

Since some of the students wanted us to post presentation slides and notes, we are sharing our presentation slides with you.

Presentation 1

Presentation 2

We would like to thank all of the participants and hope that you learned lots of new things about Sun, open source and why it is important. For next events, please fallow our blog.

Sun Tech Fest at KTH

Experienced Technology Evangelist Roman Strobl from Sun Microsystems will visit KTH on 28th of April, 5-7 pm at SAL-D in Kista Campus. He will have presentations on the following topics:

– Sun and Open Source : introduction to Sun’s open source stategy, products and roadmaps (30 minutes)

-Introduction to Open Solaris – What is OpenSolaris ? What’s cool about it ? Demos of interesting technologies (60 minutes)

then Campus ambassadors will talk about the “benefits of being a member of the OSUM Club” and “student activities at KTH”.

About the speaker:

Roman Strobl works at Sun Microsystems as a technology evangelist on the OpenSolaris project. He has approximately 10 years of software development experience in Java and various dynamic languages. Before joining Sun Roman worked as a PHP developer and system administrator for a Czech startup company. Roman is a frequent speaker at software conferences including Sun Tech Days, various Java events, and user group meetings. Roman enjoys working with open source communities and his current passion is evangelizing OpenSolaris. He writes frequent posts on the OpenSolaris user-focused blog which can be found at blogs.sun.com/observatory.

Date : 28 April 2009

Location : Kista Campus (Forum Building) SAL-D

Time : 5 -7 pm

Click here to see the Facebook Event

Click here for the map of the Kista Campus

OpenSolaris 2008.11 Mini-Book

The Getting Started with OpenSOlaris 2008.11 mini-books were recently released. They are available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

You might notice that there is a difference between the content of these books. They are composed by three different documents, and only the ones in English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese have them all. All other languages have only one document.

The books have a pretty basic approach, so they are aimed at people who doesn’t have much experience with the OS. This makes them perfect to be indicated during basic courses and presentations.

It seems that the 2008.11 version of these mini-books will be available only in the digital format.

Download:

OpenSOlaris 2008.11 mini-book (English)

If you have any interest in these books in other languages, you can find them at OpenSOlaris 2008.11 mini-book (Other Languages) (covers available too)

Java FX Coding Challenge

Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced the launch of the JavaFX Coding  Challenge http://www.javafx.com/challenge, a coding contest that offers both professional and student developers a unique opportunity to win up to $25,000 USD in cash and have their application featured on the JavaFX.com Web site.

What to do ?

Developers and students are required to create and develop rich internet applications using JavaFX 1.1 and NetBeans 6.5. The call for entries is open to persons of legal age in more than three dozen countries.

What about the prizes?

Sun is offering a number of prizes, with a top award of $25,000 USD in addition to cash prizes of $10,000 USD and $5,000 USD. There is a special category for students at an accredited college or university, with three $1,500 USD cash prizes that will be awarded to the top student applications. Students will not be limited to competing in this category, and are eligible to vie for the larger prizes as well. Additionally, Sun will award up to 100 honorable mentions, which will each earn a $25 Amazon gift certificate.

What is Java FX?

Java FX is a runtime with supporting tools and technologies that enable content authors and developers to create new content that combines the best capabilities of the existing Java platform with new immersive media services, which can be securely accessed from mobile phones, desktop browsers, TV and other consumer devices. The JavaFX platform is unique in that it allows content developers to focus on creativity, and not coding, while enabling them to create expressive content through the use of one platform across multiple media assets. The latest JavaFX Mobile platform was released February 12, 2009.

Important Dates?

The contest runs now through May 29. The entries will be judged by a panel of experts, to include members of the JavaFX engineering and product marketing teams. The winners will be announced during the week of June 29.

The details of the contest can be found at http://www.javafx.com/challenge

Sun European Education & Research Conference – Day 3

The last at the Sun European Education & Research Conference was not as long as the other days. Although it was the last day of the conference, the meeting hall was full and it is not very usual in conferences like this which shows that people were still interested in listening. Kudos to the organizers !

First Speaker : Roger Keyse

Since he is the Manager xVM EMEA Global Practice, Roger told how PC sales are declining and “Desktop as a Service” is increasing. According to Roger, companies must use “virtualization” instead of managing a lot of PCs.

Regarding his strategy, he believes in “starting small and quickly” instead of trying to achieve the big from the start. Virtualization enables delivering the applications to anywhere you are.

Next Speaker: Carsten Thalheimer

Carsten is Solution Architect xVM. He explained Sun’s Desktop Virtualization Roadmap to the audience.

Gary Serda is talking about OSUM

Gary Serda (Marketing Manager, Government, Education, Healthcare, Sun Microsystems) is talking about OSUM and best practices at European education and research conference.

Alper Celik is talking about Open Source Networking Project

Alper Celik is talkin about Open Source Networking Project and how they converted a regular PC into a router at the very first day of European Education and Research Conference. Berlin 2009

Gokhan Dogan is talking about Sun SPOT Project

Gokhan Dogan is talking about their Sun SPOT project at first day of European Education & Research conference.