Just a few hours ago, the finalists of the Imagine Cup 2004 were announced in Sao Paolo, Brazil. The two Belgian teams were both still in the last final round. In the "Software Design Invitational" the Belgian "New World" team ended on the 5th place and in the "Rendering Invitational" the Belgian "Nautilus" team ended on the 3rd place. Congratulations to all finalists for their accomplishment and a special shout out to 2 the Belgian teams.

Links:
H2Ocean project by the Nautilus team (Charles-Frederik Hollemeersch, Elisabeth Hollemeersch, Wesley De Neve)
New World project (Steve Lanuit, Laurent Mazzapicchi, Pierre Ioannatos)
Belgian Imagine Cup website

Update: Howard Lo has some more results...

Update 2: Microsoft's official press release

Update 3: Channel9 interviewed Microsoft's Imagine Cup team.

Gunther Beersaerts, the famous .NET speaker in Belgium and Luxembourg and Microsoft employee, started a blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/guntherb/.

BrainBench, an online testing website, offers its exams for free till July 14th. Personally I would give more credit to the Microsoft certification, since these are taken in an exam center. But if you want to get some free BrainBench exam certifications, now might be the time to give it at try. They do have some tests about the .NET Framework...

PS. Currently I don't see anything about this on their homepage, but on this page you can see the following statement: "July 1 - July 14 we are opening up the Brainbench library in celebration of our 5 millionth member. All tests will be FREE.".

Strangely enough, no Belgian bloggers (that I am aware of) blogged about some of the announcements at TechEd in Amsterdam yet. They probably had better things to do, like attending sessions, etc. :)

Update: Jelle was the first Belgian to link to these products. Others have just mentioned it. And some Belgian bloggers just aren't in Amsterdam. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that first paragraph... :( That said, here are the links once again:

Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1
Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 will be available on MSDN Subscriber Downloads soon. People without an MSDN Subscription will be able to order the beta for a nominal (small) fee.

MSDN Product Feedback Center
Microsoft's public online bug and suggestion database.

Visual Studio 2005 Express Beta
"The Express products, expanding the Visual Studio product line to include lightweight, easy-to-use, easy-to-learn tools for hobbyists, enthusiasts, and novices who want to build dynamic Windows applications and Web sites."

• Visual Basic 2005 Express
• Visual C# 2005 Express
• Visual C++ 2005 Express
• Visual J# 2005 Express
• Visual Web Dev 2005 Express

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition - Technical Preview
"SQL Server Express is a version of SQL Server 2005 designed for building simple, dynamic applications. SQL Server Express helps developers build robust and reliable applications by providing a powerful database that is also free and easy to use."

Summer Of Express - Worldwide Contest
And if you're interested, you could join the "Summer Of Express" contest at Channel9:
"The Summer of Express contest is a worldwide skill contest where developers are challenged to create “non-business” applications using the newly announced Express products."

A good place to stay up-to-date about TechEd is of course techedbloggers.net, an aggregated feed for the most interesting TechEd posts...

Approximatly one year and a half ago, there were about 3 Belgian .NET bloggers that I knew of. During this period, the list grew up to 21 Belgians and 1 Luxemburger. Not all of them are already listed on the MSDN Belux Bloggers page. If you are a .NET blogger from Belgium or Luxembourg, feel free to drop feedback (see the link at the bottom of the MSDN Belux website) with the URL of your blog and a short description and we will add your blog on that page. Meanwhile, everyone can find the updated Belgian bloggers list on my blog (the web interface).

Imagine Cup is an international contest for students, sponsored by Microsoft. This year there are four invitationals for the contest: software design, rendering, algorithms and short films.

I had the honor to be part of the jury that selected the entry in the "software design" invitational that would go to the worldwide finals in Sao Paolo, Brazil for Belgium. To be honest, we had a difficult task choosing between all the entries. Yes, we were pretty amazed by the quality of the entries of the 3 teams that participated in the Belgian finals for this invitational. The winning team is "New World" of the Haute Ecole Rennequin Sualem. They created a solution to help the treatment of young schizophrenia patients. For this, they collaborated with a psychiatric hospital. You can read a very short statement on their website. Hopefully they'll have a full website up and running soon.

But there is also another Belgian team participating in the worldwide Imagine Cup 2004 finals in Brazil. The Nautilus team will participate in the Rendering invitational. If I'm not mistaking, this team of Ghent University was selected by an online voting. For their entry, the students got their inspiration from the sea (and what is below). You can find their project with some really nice movies on the H2Ocean website.

Please join me in congratulating both teams and wishing them the best for the Imagine Cup 2004 Worldwide Finals on July 4th through 6th.

For the interested ones, a full list of official Press Releases is available at the Imagine Cup website.

Update: The white papers of both projects are available at the official Belgian Imagine Cup website at http://www.microsoft.be/imaginecup.

There's another amazing sample application online at MSDN: FotoVision.

The FotoVision sample allows you to easily share photos on the web and demonstrates a variety of .NET technologies including Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Web services, and the .NET Compact Framework. It consists of a desktop, web, and Pocket PC sample applications. This paper provides information so you can get the most from the FotoVision desktop application.

Many people have already asked me on several Microsoft Belgium events what the .mspx extention on the MSDN Belux and TechNet Belux (and other Microsoft.com)websites exactly are and how they work. Michele Leroux Bustamante, one of the US Regional Directors, answers this question.

From Paul Vick's blog: Visual Basic Power Pack released! 7 cool custom UI controls, written in Visual Basic .NET 2003 and delivered with full source. Sweet...

Microsoft has just published new security bulletins for June 2004, containing 2 moderate threats (DirectPlay and Crystal Reports Web Viewer). Did you know that you can subscribe to the security bulletin RSS feed at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/secrss.aspx?