Sun Events at NCSU

Sun Microsystems with ACM/AITP present the Sun Spot!

Alex Ronke and I (Anita Sivakumar) joined up with the local ACM/AITP chapter here at our University. ACM is the Association of Computing Machinery and it is run by students in order to bring together people who are pursuing paths that involve computers. At their latest meeting, they allowed us to showcase the Sun Spot. Our sales representative, Skip Vail, had organized a donation of Spots from Sun to Dr. Fornaro's class. These students then turned around and used these sun spots for a variety of different things they had been working on this past school year. They showed off their projects at this event.


One view of the audience

The meeting began with the president of the ACM chapter addressing what would be happening during the meeting and introducing Alex and I. We intorduced who we are and what we did. We gave our basic overview of what we wanted to share at the meeting today as well and then the real fun began!

First, David Simmons, one of the creators behind Sun Spots began by talking about the work done in Sun Labs. He also introduced sun spots to the audience and talked about how they were created.

Dr. Fornaro then introduced what the students were doing in their class this semester. He explained that there were individual student researchers as well as two main groups: a hardware group and a software group. He also told the audience about how he found out about sun spots. The students then took the lead and began with their presentations.


Dr. Fornaro addresses the audience

The first student used sun spots to look at how many data packets were lost while they were sending information to one another, based on proximity and interference. He lined up 6 sun spots and sent data back and forth between them. His program then showed us how many packets were lost.

Cameron and Chris were next. They were part of the ECE team which came from a hardware point of view. They looked at spots by attaching a gps sensor to the spots and tracking them on a map. They then created a gui that has tabs for each spot and also said they were going to look into trying to calculate the number of hops between different areas.

Lastly, Zach presented the software group's project. This team looked into a geocasting protocol, with packets addressed by geographic region rather than a port number or MAC address.


Zach talks about his group's project

We then retired to go eat pizza and rejoined up to do prizes. We gave out water-bottles, shirts, and some copies of Solaris 10 Enterprise edition. Lastly, we also gave away a $100 Best Buy gift card!


Another view of the audience

Our next event will be an event a Solaris installation fest and presentation. Look for details coming up soon!

Posted at 03:15PM Apr 10, 2007 by anita0ncsu in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun Spots at State!!

NCSU Students, ACM/AITP, and Sun Microsystems present...

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Sun Spots at State:
Experimental Technology from Sun Labs
Research from NC State Students
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Where:
North Carolina State University
Centennial Campus
Engineering Building 2 (EB2)
Room 1025

When:
Tuesday, April 3rd
Begins 600 pm (with Pizza served after!)

Just like earlier Sun events this year, there will be drawings for free t-shirts, free software, and many other giveaways, including a

$100 BEST BUY GIFTCARD !!

So what is a Sun Spot?

The Sun Spot website: (http://www.sunspotworld.com)

Sun Spots (Small Programmable Object Technology) are small computers, each about the size of a card deck. They are a new, embedded Java platform for software developers interested in wireless networking, portable computing, and many other areas of research. Each Spot comes equipped with:

• 180MHz ARM9 processor
  
• USB support
  
• CLDC compliant bare-metal JavaME VM
  
• 3-axis accelerometer
  
• 8 tri-color LEDs
  
• Light sensor
  
• Temperature sensor
  
• Ports for connecting many other functions, including GPS
  
• And more...
  

This year, Sun Microsystems donated several Sun Spots to the NC State University, and many students have been working with them through the semester. Come to ACM Tuesday night, and you will see a preview of their research, as well as a discussion of Java ME and the Sun Spots themselves.

Map of Centennial Campus

Email your Sun Campus Ambassador at waronke@ncsu.edu if you have any questions about the event.

Posted at 02:36PM Mar 29, 2007 by sunncsu in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Java Double Feature Complete

The Java Double Feature, which occurred March 15th and 22nd, was a reasonable success. Anita Sivakumar and Alex Ronke split up the responsibility for two Java-related presentations in a row.

On March 15th, Alex Ronke presented on NetBeans and BlueJ. Incorporated with slide-presentations were practical demonstrations of the NetBeans Matisse GUI designer & collaborative development, and the BlueJ Workbench. About 12-14 students showed. Every student left with some Sun merchandise, whether it was a copy of StarOffice 8, a Sun shirt, or a voucher for a Sun certification exam.

Anita presented on the 22nd on Java Studio Creator and Project Darkstar. 16 students showed. Again, everybody left with Sun stuff.

At both events, TEK Systems, a local IT recruiting firm, provided dinner for the students and spoke about their company and the IT industry in general. They were enthusiastic about working with Sun and our student events.

Posted at 12:28PM Mar 28, 2007 by sunncsu in Sun  |  Comments[1]

University World Tour is a Success!

On February 7th, Alex began setup for an event that was bigger than either he or I could imagine. We had anticipated around 80 or so people to show up for the event. Instead, we had a turnout of over 150 people! Everything from the speakers to the pizza and drinks ran smoothly luckily for us.

The evening started with people sauntering up towards our little check in table. Those small numbers grew and grew.


Jeff Bates and Anita Sivakumar looking to help people check into the event at the start of the University World Tour.

Jeff Bates, a regional Sun employee in our area, was also on hand to help us out. We were handing out flyers and information faster than we could put the packets together. It was throughly amazing.

We had a huge classroom that we chose to hold our event in. As you can see from these pictures, it got filled up and it filled up fast!



LOTS OF PEOPLE!!!!!

Our event started off with Rima Patel talking about two different topics. She began with the Information age: the Next 10 years and then went on to the Bleeding Edge Demo. Many students and teachers were very attentive and interested with what she had to say.

Our next speaker talked about the topic of "Unleash the power of Java!". He did a Java demo that illustrated his points well too. He also went on to talk about Netbeans and how it compared to Eclipse. People seemed suprised by how similar the two were and expressed interest in switching. Solaris was the next issue of the evening and grabbed everyone's attention.

We all parted for a half an hour for a quick break for pizza and drinks. Unfortunately, due to so much turn out we ran out of pizza! But, everyone seemed throughly satisfied and ready to hear the last presenter of the evening after devouring their slices of pizza.

Sang Shin ended the evening with Java Puzzles. He put the students and teacher's minds to the test while asking a variety of Java questions. For instance, he put up a small snippet of code and asked what the code would output and why.


Sang Shin working with his laptop to display a slide on to the projector.

One student knew his Java well and answered every question but one!

After this, the last presentation was about the opportunties at Sun a person could find as a student. Many people were really interested about jobs at Sun and how they might better prepare themselves for a task. They asked questions during this segement about what classes or courses to take and in what direction they should go in order to pursue a career at Sun Microsystems.

Through out the evening, we gave away prizes by drawing people's names. Our last and grand prize was a $100 gift card to Best Buy!


The winner of the grand prize!

All in all, the event was a huge success and we hope to have an even bigger turn out next year!

- Anita Sivakumar

Posted at 11:33AM Mar 15, 2007 by anita0ncsu in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Java Double Feature

TEK solutions and Sun Microsystems presents...

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The Java Double Feature:
Two Nights of Java Development Software and IT Recruitment
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Where:
North Carolina State University
Centennial Campus
Engineering Building 2 (EB2)
Room 1231

When (two nights):

BlueJ and NetBeans:
Thursday, March 15

Java Studio Creator and Project Darkstar:
Thursday, March 22

700pm - 830pm

Please feel free to come to either of the presentations, or both!

On both nights, we'll welcome a representative from the TEK Systems IT recruiting firm to come speak about the Java Job Market, as well as local and national career opportunities in the IT industry.

As always, we'll have free giveaways, free software, free food, and discount vouchers for the Java certification exam!

Featured topics:

BLUEJ and NETBEANS
March 15, presented by Alex Ronke

-Are you learning Java? Or maybe you're a Java instructor looking for a tool that will help your students learn to code without giving away too much. Come check out BlueJ, a simple yet powerful Java Development Environment built specifically with Java students in mind.

-Whether you're a newcomer to Java or an experienced programmer, you should come and check out NetBeans. See the Matisse GUI editor in action, as well as the Developer Collaboration demo. Find out the advantages of switching from Eclipse to NetBeans for all your Java development needs.

JAVA STUDIO CREATOR and PROJECT DARKSTAR
March 22, presented by Anita Sivakumar

-Are you interested in Web development? Are you looking for a platform with the ability to make advanced online applications with minimal code? Come check out Sun's user-friendly web development platform, Java Studio Creator. JSC allows you to build complete, professional web apps with an easy point-and-click interface.

-What about games in Java? Or, more specifically, what about online multiplayer games in Java? Find out about Project Darkstar, the Sun Games Server, an API-in-development that will allow anyone to build online multi-user Java applications with minimal networking code.

Feel free to email your Sun Ambassadors at waronke@ncsu.edu or asivaku@ncsu.edu for more details.

Posted at 11:50AM Mar 02, 2007 by sunncsu in Sun  |  Comments[0]

Sun Microsystems University World Tour

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ATTENTION NCSU STUDENTS, FACULTY, & DEVELOPERS:

Come learn what's cool in the latest Java and Solaris technologies from Sun experts at...

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SUN MICROSYSTEMS UNIVERSITY WORLD TOUR
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Where:
North Carolina State University
Centennial Campus
Engineering Building 2 (EB2)
Room 1025

When:
Wednesday, February 7th
Begins 515 pm
Ends 815 pm (with Pizza served after!)
(Please feel free to arrive late or leave early as the need arises)

There will be free t-shirts, free software, and many other giveaways, including a drawing for a

$100 BEST BUY GIFTCARD !!

RSVP today for this FREE event here.

Featured topics:

THE INFORMATION AGE: THE NEXT 10 YEARS

-You might think you've seen all. Sun Microsystems believes you have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Come and listen to what the future of computing will look like.

UNLEASH THE POWER OF JAVA!

-Come see truly remarkable demonstrations of Java in action in ways you'd probably never thought of.
-Check out Play Along Soccer, an interactive Java ME mobile application that enables the user to play along with live soccer events.
-Participate in our interactive Java Puzzles session to learn new code tricks. New and seasoned Java programmers alike will enjoy the experience to help
them make the most of the world's favorite programming language.
-You'll also find out how you can get a discount on the Java Programmer Certification exam, a qualification coveted by a number of companies looking to hire programmers.

NETBEANS: EXPERIENCE THE NEW POSSIBILITIES

-Maybe you call yourself an Eclipse user. Maybe you think there are some things that an IDE just can't do. Let us change your mind with a 10 minute NetBeans demo.

CONNECT EVERYTHING: OPPORTUNITIES AT SUN AND MORE

-Network with peers and Sun experts to learn how new technologies are being used across a range of industries. A session at the end of the day will educate students about employment opportunities at Sun and the IT industry.

Remember to RSVP today for this FREE event here.

Map of Centennial Campus

Email your Sun Campus Ambassador at waronke@ncsu.edu if you have any questions about the event.

Posted at 01:49PM Jan 09, 2007 by sunncsu in Sun  |  Comments[0]