Ahmadz Village

Dear students,

Microsoft is offering Windows 7 Professional Edition (x86) and (x64) for MSDNAA members for FREE.

It’s recommended to check Windows 7 System Requirements before downloading:
http://windows.microsoft.com/systemrequirements

If you have an MSDNAA account, you can start downloading directly (Alexandria University Only):

• Windows 7 Professional (x86) - DVD (English)
• Windows 7 Professional (x64) - DVD (English)

Then press ‘Add to Cart’ button, and continue logging in. That’s it.

If you do NOT have an MSDNAA account, get a copy of your academic ID (a recent one) and send it to one of the MSPs (Microsoft Student Partners) in your university. You will get your account very quickly!

To find an MSP in your country/university, press here.

If you are a student in a university in Egypt, please refer to MSP Egypt’s blog.

Thank you.

Ahmad Fathy

The IT industry increasingly requires students to enter companies with real-life, hands-on experience, as well as deep theoretical background.

The S2B program makes that possible through internships with Microsoft in association with  top IT Companies - internships that provide relevant work experience on innovative projects that greatly enhance students’ value in the job market. In collaboration with universities, students will have access to online training, workshops or courses as part of their degree.

As well, students will have access to many Microsoft applications through the MSDN AA Program, in order to provide the tools students need to be immediately productive in a company.

Projects and training will be focused on the most recent and innovative Microsoft products and technologies.

Therefore , I encourage you to all go and register NOW in www.s2bprogram.com/mea

What is the Microsoft® Students Club?

- Microsoft® forms groups of undergraduate students at universities all over the world in entities called the "Students Clubs". A Students Club does a lot of activities managed by the Microsoft® Student Partners at each university. The Student Partners along with the Club both represent Microsoft®.

- The Students Club’s activities include holding and organizing technological events, activities, seminars, student festivals, booths and competitions, as well as promoting the Microsoft® free products and services at university, and hence, providing support and help to all the club members as well as other students.

What is this Students Club like? What will be its main activities?

- The Club will be managed by Microsoft®, through the Microsoft® Student Partners. You first have to become a member, among the large group of students who will benefit from the club. In addition, there are also positions available for the club members who are willing to take part in managing its activities and be part of its organization. These positions will be as follows:

• Coordinators: The main responsibility of the Coordinator is to run and support one of the club processes.
  • Imagine Cup™ Board Coordinator: to update a wall-board or write e-newsletters about the latest Imagine Cup™ news and events.
  • MSDNAA Coordinator: to publicize, in cooperation with the university’s administration, the MSDNAA among students and make sure that everyone gets their free copies of the software they need.
  • Membership Coordinator: to manage the members’ lists and database.
  • Operations Support Coordinator: to keep track of the number of students who take part in any activity, and do some statistics and data collection about the clubs events.
  • Public Relations Coordinator: to help in publicizing the Imagine Cup™, and other club’s events, as well as motivate students to join the club and take part in its activities.
  • Advertisements Coordinator: to design attractive announcements and advertisements, using simple graphics, for the club’s advertisements, handouts and publications.
• Senior Members: A group of members who support the Coordinators.

If I join, what are the benefits?

- You will be part of the universal movement of Microsoft® Students Clubs.

- You will be connected with all the other Microsoft® Students Clubs all over the world.

- You will have a direct connection with Microsoft® Egypt through the Microsoft Student Partners at university.

- You will be part of the organizing team for the Imagine Cup™ competition, which is the world’s premiere, most prestigious and most famous student technology competition worldwide. Imagine Cup™ finals will be held this year in Egypt during July 2009.

www.imaginecup.com

- You will have a guaranteed place to attend any event held by Microsoft® all over Egypt, including a free invitation to the annual Egyptian Developers Conference (EDC).

- You will take part in organizing many of Microsoft® events held at university.

- You will have a chance to have a special tour at the Microsoft® Egypt premises.

- You will receive special promotional materials from Microsoft®: T-shirts, caps, etc.

- You can benefit from Microsoft® discounts over selective services or products.

- Most importantly, you will get to enjoy your time, explore a new community, join in many interesting and amazing activities, whether technological or social.

Who can join?

- If you’re a university student studying engineering or sciences, then you can certainly become a member!

- If you want to become one of the Coordinators or Senior Members, then we will hold a meeting and the available positions will be assigned to those who are willing to show dedication and creativity in what they want to do.

How can I join?

If you would like to join for the academic Year 2008-2009, send us your full name, email, academic year, department and telephone number at alex.club@student-partners.com

Don’t worry it’s totally FREE to join!

Microsoft Student Partners
Ahmad Fathy - ahmad.fathy@student-partners.com
Evronia Azer - evronia@student-partners.com

Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt.
Computer and Systems Engineering Department

http://www.student-partners.com

 
(Click on the photo for original size view)

Helloz,

Today ..
I woke up late ..
drove slowly (tortoise speed) to the college ..
walked to my classroom sleepily ..

but, I can’t believe my eyes ..
A search engine in human clothes in my class…
No No It’s a human wearing a search engine :P

Nope nope he is my favorite googler TA. Mohamed Amir.
It was really amazing !! I was in "Microsoft Student Partners" labeled T-Shirt and Amir in a "Google" one.

Amir is the Digital Systems course TA this semester. He is fan of Google, he got internship in Google a year ago (not sure of the date). Check out Amir’s website

Amir joined Imagine Cup this year (2008) as a mentor for AleCrocs team which has already passed Round (1) in Embedded Development competition and marked as "Advanced".

I think, we both have many common points, the most important one of them is trying to make a good & valuable thing for our college.

Have a nice day ..

Hello,

Egyptian students are invited for the first time to attend the new event Microsoft Student Festival. You should be 2nd, 3rd or 4th year CE/CS/EE student to attend.

Hany Helal, the Egyptian Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Ali Faramawy,Microsoft vice-president, will attend

It will be on March 1st at the Smart Village, Egypt.
Meet you there

(Click on the invitation for original size)

More information:
visit now!
Agenda
Microsoft Student Festival event on Facebook

[Student Talk! series]
Summery on: Linux desktop distributions are headed in the wrong direction
By: Marawan Osman, student at Computer and Systems Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria Uni. Egypt
The main article found on: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/261/1/  

    Programmers’ idea of desktop computing is mostly warped .They are focusing on adding more features and graphical extras just for competing with other desktop environments of other companies.

  The high graphical interfaces , like Aero Glass in Vista ,XGL/Compiz and the candy-like bouncy/trouncy OS X , these interfaces do not contribute in more productivity or making games more fun.
We should think of our real usage of computers. Unfortunately, these interfaces cause distraction to users. Also they are a heavy load on the system.
Graphical effects are sort of show off .They are not a real measure of the system’s capabilities.   

The desktop GNU\Linux will be more useful by the specialized programs that make the operating environment an essential tool. Linux has now great software programs and it’s the first choice for being a server OS. Linux is not indispensable .Many other alternative systems exist and they provide the same capabilities as Linux, without much effort in modifying your scripts to fit them. Other systems can still provide the same security and portability as Linux does.

The first few generations of Apple Macintosh computers were originally designed as desktop publishing machines. 
Now, Macintosh has lost its focus, its Computers became fancy PCs. (Although Apple Hardware and software is preferred by many audio and video recording engineers and artists). 

GNU\Linux can be an indispensable platform for many categories of users like software developers, professional writers and graphic designers.

The free software movement made GNU\Linux a strong choice for software developers.
However, Linux can be stronger if there is a desktop environment (or an entire desktop distribution) specialized for software development.
Currently you have to customize Linux to fit your needs and access your tools easily. Fortunately, there are many excellent IDEs for many programming languages. For example, Sun Microsystems’ Java Desktop System is in its way to become the ideal software development platform. 

There aren’t any really good programs or specialized environments for writers. Writers suffer in changing their work habits just to fit the limits of these programs. Writers need a suite for drafting, outlining and publishing. Screen writers should have specific tools for them too.
GNU\Linux do not have yet any powerful English drafting and editing tools.

  Graphics designers say that GIMP (The GNU Image Manipulation Program, it is a raster graphics editor used to process digital graphics and photographs) is good for computer graphics but substandard for printing graphics. It’s easier to use tools that are more specific in these tasks than a general purpose graphic design program. 

What professional writers and graphic designers need is a suite or collection of programs that perform a small set of focused tasks. Like with programmers, a specific desktop environment or distribution would also help.

Anyone can customize his GNU\Linux distribution to fit his needs, but that needs a person who is not tech-ignorant.

  Companies could design hardware compatible with a specialized GNU\Linux distribution. The majority of computer users need something easy to use and less-time to maintain. 

The future of GNU\Linux desktop computing is not in making graphics more entertaining. The future is in reaching a high level of usefulness to computer users.

Software developers have become shortsighted and disturbed by "feature envy" after Windows Vista was released.

[Student Talk! series]
Summery on: Microsoft and Google Vie for Virtual World Domination
By: Mohamed Samir, student at Computer and Systems Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria Uni. Egypt
The main article found on: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6/34647/01652999.pdf

      There is a big competition between the two big companies Microsoft and the great search engine Google. These two companies which spend a lot of money to reach what they aim for; have made a big step in the way of the use of the imaginary in the internet which means using the high quality images taken from space and satellites to make clear virtual representation for any spot of the whole earth for example "Google Earth" which belongs to Google.

The two companies know well that this market which called "local search" market generates a lot of money as it generated more than $3 billion last year and the observers say that by 2010 this market can generate more than $13 billion so it worth searching in it.

To reach this kind of service Google and Microsoft acquire two big companies in the field of getting high quality photos from satellites, these companies are Vexcel acquired by Microsoft and @last acquired by Google, this big co-operations have
reached a very good level in delivering a high quality of space taken photos the level in which you can see your home from those photos.

William B. Gail , the vice president of mapping and photogram-metric solutions at Vexcel acquired by Microsoft company describe the next two years aims of his company by telling us an example that if you decided to go shopping and there is a big list of stores in your mind using the service which will be available you can use the internet to walk and see through those stores and decide which one you will go ,or
another example if you want to make a restaurant reservation you can see virtually which table you want to sit in and reserve it online.

The two companies want to make a high detailed high quality virtual world which every computer application can access it to bring information, for example of this applications the car navigation system like the GPRS navigation system but in high detailed view, in the last few years this kind of photos taken from satellites were used only in forecasting or land surveying and military applications.

The acquiring of Vexcel and @last companies helped both Microsoft and Google companies to get precise measurements of the distance between landmarks in the 2Dimages and to store a lot of information about the data of these photos which enable them to make a very rich database and then the modeling of these land marks using a software like Sketch-Up in Google make them able to get a very good high detailed virtual model of any landmark in the whole earth.

It is interesting to know that Microsoft decided to make people themselves "the consumers of the services" help it in making the service by encourage them to take photos using any cell phone with camera and then upload this photo to it which will make a very good data base of photos which will help them in making this service.

Now, a lot of companies from a lot of countries see the benefits of this service and seek for it, because of its importance in a lot of application in military or marketing and also in education.

Hello,

I got this abstract from my college website. It tells the story of my academic department [Computers and Systems Engineering - Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Egypt].

It’s pleasure to know that it was the first Computer department in the Middle East.

The Story:

The Department of Computer Science And Automatic Control, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University was opened in the year 1969. At this time, it was considered the 1st of its nature in the Middle East.

The opening of this department was a result of the efforts of Prof. Dr. Naem Abou Taleb and Prof. Dr. Yehia El-Hakeem.

The efforts to introduce this new field began in the beginning of the 60s.

In 1964 an agreement with IBM was arranged to deliver the IBM 1620 Model 1, which costs at that time $99,000 after IBM gave a 66% discount to the University Of Alexandria.

This computer model was considered the 1st of its kind in the Egyptian Universities and was considered the second to enter Egypt.

The first one was owned by the Planning Institute.

The capabilities of this computer was considered sufficient at that time as its memory was 40 KBytes, used the BCD system and punched cards as the input unit. There were no disks or any storage devices attached to this computer.

Purchasing this computer was a great step forward. A lot of people at that time did not consider the importance of this step but the main aim from purchasing this computer was to use it in teaching and commercial applications.

This computer was firstly used in trainning postgraduate students and academic staff.

The year 1965-1966 was the beginning of teaching some courses on the usage of this computer to students of the Electrical Engineering Department.

These courses included the machine language of this computer SPS and a programing language FORTRAN II.

At this time the SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING CENTER was established as a private unit.

The primary purpose of this was to benefit from the capabilities of this computer and to contribute in the maintenance expenses.

The first activity of this center was to give training courses. This activity was the main activity of the center up till now. The activities of this center was enlarged to include consultations to companies and industrial organizations in the computer field, and developing programs for companies and organizations.

Hello ..

On Thrusday 20 November 2007, Microsoft Student Partners Club at Faculty of Engineering - Alexandria University held Imagine Cup 2008 booth for 3 days. It was the first time to make such event. Our goal was to educate students about the 9 competitions and encourage them to join the battle

Visit the photo album: Go here

The first day was so hard; everyone were asking "what is that?" ..

During the three days, I was managing the booth (7 hours a day from 10:00 AM to 05:00 PM), talking to students and answering their questions. I didn’t attend any lecture as well
I made Ad in Arabic to attract students. We got about 5000 visitors and 600 registration requests at the booth.

I worked with 3 teams during the 3 days; I want to thank all my friends who joined the booth team.

Thanks to:

Day-1 team:  Emad Elwany - Samia Mojahed - Pakinam Yosry - Evronia Azer - Yasmine Mohamed - Ragab Abd ElSalam

Day-2 team: Ahmed El Helaly - Waseem Mamdouh - Yasser Sakr - Mahitab Farid

Day-3 team:  Ahmed Saeed - Victor Zakhary - Yasmine Mohamed

External relations: Amr Magdy - Maher - Abd ElRahman Mostafa - Evronia - Samia - Emad Elwany

Thank you my friends. I am so lucky to have friends like you.

It was really successful event … 
15 of my friends, in addition to me, were behind this success

Ahmad

(Click to enlarge: me and Victor)

Today in college we were supposed to implement 7-segment module on FPGA Spartran 3

Here is the amazing result "Abcd" [click on the photo]

We Are The Digital Men 0101000101111101001011100011

"Law 3yz nktblk Basioney w nakhod bonus OK " loooool