Whether you're building Facebook apps, Meebo apps, iPhone web apps,
mashups, widgets, data services, web APIs or are new to zembly, we want
to hear from you. Simply tell us about your experience with zembly and
you could win a $200 gift certificate!

First Prize: $200 - The top 5 winners will receive a $200 American Express Gift Certificate.

Second Prize T-Shirt - The next top 100 blog entries will receive a zembly t-shirt.

Deadline for submission is May 16.

Details at http://zembly.com/ui/competition/blog-contest?intcmp=2736

Linux Journal has announced that OpenOffice.org has won their 2009
Readers' Choice Award for "Favorite Office Program."
Over 6000 readers voted in this year's competition and openoffice won its category by more than a landside. The Editors  noted, " Open Office .org, bolstered no doubt by its recent 3.0 release , retains its crown as your favorite office program with the same share of your vote as last year, 85% . Congratulations OpenOffice.Org, Well deserved.

The Eye and dental camp was organised by Nightingales Medical Trust for
senior citizens at SeetaKempanahalli village, about 25 kms from
Bangalore. Organising eye camp in rural areas usually involves inherent
setbacks around logistics. But not for volunteers from Sun - where
there is a will, there definitely is a way. The trust did an excellent
ground work for the camp. They publicised the camp in 12 villages  with
Public address system, Pamphlets/ handbills and posters. The trust also
had arranged for vans to pick up elders from different villages to the
camp. More than 200 senior citizens benefitted from the camp and about
25 of them have been scheduled to undergo a cataract operation. There
was also a dental checkup to detect the presence of oral cancer. After
screening, the doctors educated them on the ill effects of tobacco.
Employees also served them good food and that completed the camp. Many
of the volunteers expressed that it was not just a 'eye opening'
experience, but also a 'heart opening' experience.

Even though the employees had to get time out of their busy schedules,
had to travel a long way to get to some of these locations and had to
endure the hot summer sun, they realised that their hardships paled
into insignificance in front of what these underprivileged faced on a
daily basis.

I was very happy to be one of the core volunteer for this event. It was wonderful event

Netbeans 6.7 Beta is now Available

http://www.netbeans.org/community/releases/67/

Check out the Home Page, the Release Notes or go and just Download it!

Sun just launched the OpenSolaris Apps of Steel Challenge. This is a
great opportunity to learn about developing and porting packages. Then
use your talents and participate for a chance to win a Toshiba
OpenSolaris laptop! The winning packages will also be showcased at the
OpenSolaris Install Lounge at CommunityOne West, in San Francisco on
June 1-3rd, 2009. part from the prizes and recognition, contributing OpenSolaris
packages benefits the entire OpenSolaris community by building out the
package eco-system.   Need help getting started? Check the OpenSolaris
Software Porter's Community.Packages must be submitted by 12:00 pm midnight PDT on May 8, 2009. Packages will be judged on the following criteria:

Complexity of the Port, * Use of unique OpenSolaris features, such as ZFS, DTrace, SMF, and FMA, * Number of dependent packages ported , *Usefulness to the end user

For all the details, please see the Official OpenSolaris Apps of Steel Challenge Rules and Restrictions

As part of world wide volunteer week, We had organised an event at
Shishu Mandir ( http://www.Shishumandir.com ) on 19th April .
Indeed 19th April 2009 was a super Sunday!!! Day was filled with loads
of fun,emotion and happiness.

All the sun volunteers assembled at Shishu Mandir,Bangalore at 9:00 Am.
To start up with , We interacted with director of Shishu Mandir.
There were around 80 + students (which includes orphans and
underprivileged students) attended our event.

We carried tonnes of gifts, prizes, chocolates, biscuits for kids. We
conducted 3 competitions for kids.

a. Musical chair Competition.
b. Painting Competition.
c. Singing Competition.

All the kids were really happy and participated in all the competitions. We had arranged lunch for all the  kids and for the volunteer.  We had
desserts( Ice cream and Fruit)  as well.

We donated 1200 Rupees for medicines and donated 4000 rupees of text
books to shishu mandir.

Please have a sneak peek at the pics :: 
http://picasaweb.google.com/Shishumandir1/Touploadshishu#

Special thanks to Ganesh hiregoudar, Vidya Sakar, Radhakrishna,
Tirthankar, vijaya,shamantaka,Rashmi, Vittal, Nischal,Dhanraj for their
help and to make this event very successful.

OSUM CLUB Inauguration at BNMIT, Bangalore was held on 30th March. The program was scheduled at 2:30 Pm . BNMIT management had invited Employees from Sun, Microsoft, Vmware for the Advance technological Club inauguration. 

 I went to BNMIT at 2: 00 pm. I received a warm welcome from Computer science HOD. Later I interacted with Rajanna,chairman ,BNMIT, Principal and other departments HOD.

 I gave a talk on Importance of opensource , OSUM and Student Academic initiative. There were  around 200+ students  attended  this event.

There were several Sun technologies that were displayed and taught at Sun Tech Days 2009. New additions to the sun technology arsenal like zembly, JavaFx and Java Tv were Showcased. Also a lot of new improvement on existing technologies like Netbeans , Solaris were projected.

The sun Showcase, The Keynotes by James Gosling and Matt Thompson were
in the main auditorium and attended by several people . After the keynotes each day, the sessions were distributed into tracks like enterprise Computing, Client Technology, Tools and Best Practices,
Hands-on Labs, etc.The first day comprised of 7 tracks with an overall of 36 sessions.The second day comprised of 6 tracks with an overall of 31 sessions.

The tech days mainly showed the latest breath taking technologies of sun like Mysql, Virtualbox , JavaFx, Java TV.

Keynote : James Gosling on the first day, after the showcase we had a keynote by Jamesh Gosling, the father of Java. The Keynote was very exciting as it showed in a lot of new technologies based on Java. It also gave a glimpse of the Various products of sun like Glasssfish and finally ended with a projection of Java in the near future..

We had very successful year of FY08 and look forward to have more success stories in FY09.I would like to thank the support given by IEC engineers, management of IEC and Sun India University core team , with their support we couldn't have done this.Thanks to one and all.Please find the Campusworld Annual newsletter at http://in.sun.com/communities/univ/campusworld.html

Software Freedom week @ BVB Hubli

Emphasis was on making a favorable impact on all the people to whom the
event reached out, rather than just creating FOSS awareness. The events
were designed to sustain the FOSS spirit beyond the week and aid the
people who wish to embrace the open source revolution by providing
support in terms of training/installation & closed to open source
migration assistance. The event was a preface to the Year long
activities carried out by the Open Source Developer’s Community of
BVBCET. It all began with a grand Inaugural on 14th September 2008 in
Biotech seminar hall of B.V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering &
Technology, Hubli, India. I was the guest of honor. The function was
presided by Dr Ashok Shettar - Principal BVBCET, and was graced by Prof
B.L.Desai - Vice Principal, BVBCET, Dr. Satish Annigeri - Dean Academic
Affairs, BVBCET, Dr R.M. Banakar - Branch Counselor IEEE Student
Chapter, Mr. Shankar Setty - Faculty, Info. Sc. & Engg. Dep

We hired 93 Campus Ambassador for FY09 . We did our first induction Program @ MSRamaiah Institute of technologies, Bangalore.
Gary Serda,Global Manager for Sun Campus Ambassador program and  Anil  Valluri India GEM VP  attended the CA Induction program  . We invited 40 sun Campus  Ambassadors from all over the country in July

CA induction program at MSRIT, Bangalore

We conducted our 2nd  Campus Ambassador Induction Program II  @ Amity University, Noida in September

I and Shampavman went for Archarya Institute of technology, Bangalore for the Sun Club Inaugural function on 29th August 2008. I really thank prof. Viswasnath, HOD, MCA department for his enthusiasm and interest in adopting sun technologies in their college.  I and Sham met their principal and had a long discussion about sun activities in their campus and then we headed to MCA block  for the inaugural function.

I was surprised to see massive crowd of 400 students who were participating for this event. Even the director of the AIT gathered for this function.

We started with key note session by Dr.Somanth.

 Presentation on Sun Academic Initative.

I gave a talk on importance of opensource, SAI and Sun technologies. After my presentation , Shampavman , Campus Ambassador from JSSATE , Bangalore gave a talk on opensolaris and Sun SPot. The students response was very good.

Well words fall short to explain about the SUN Techdays.  It was such an amazing experience!!!!!!!
Sun Techday was held at International conventional center , Hyderabad from 27th - 29th.
Sun Techday had loads of technical sessions and stalls for different business units.
We had a University program stall , Where I and Anuradha explained about the SUN INDIA UNIVERSITY PROGRAM to all the participants. Students were really excited about the Sun Campus Ambassador program.
We shared our contact details with all the participants.
After that I attended Matt thomson and Ian murdock technical session. The technical session was incredible.

Me and Angad from JIIT, NOIDA