Winning is easy – simply log-in and answer the question at the bottom of this post. Check out the feature Size Is Everything on TimesLIVE if you need help with the answer.

You may have trouble believing this, but in the US, there is actually a Quidditch league, played by college students from all over the country. The “Quidditch for Muggles” league was started in 2005 by a group of Harry Potter nuts from Middlebury College. In 2008, they held the first Quidditch World Cup, with 12 colleges from the US and Canada competing for top honours.

The Muggles league is a far cry from the magical aerobatics of Harry and co; the sport is more like a chaotic and somewhat comical mash-up of dodge-ball, rugby, basketball and a schoolyard game of tag — all played with a broomstick lodged firmly between the legs.

These students have taken great pains to replicate the wizards’ game in a magic-free environment, but are obviously constrained by the laws of gravity and other annoying aspects of real-world physics. So the question is: how can technology assist in getting a more magical Potter-esque version of Quidditch off the ground?

Possibilities

In Harry Potter, the young wizards defy gravity with the use of magical broomsticks, not a technology that is widely available currently. I managed to find one man from Colorado, Dave Casler, who claims to have created The Great American Flying Broomstick, but with scientific explanations and video evidence not forthcoming, his claims will be relegated to the realm of self-delusion.

So, how to defy gravity in the real world?

Jet packs and personal flight machines

Personal flight projects have existed since the early ’50s, with the US military developing a number of hovering platforms and propulsion systems for use by infantry.

The most famous of these devices was the one used by James Bond in the 1965 film, Thunderball. This jet pack was, in fact, based on a working prototype known as the Bell Aerospace Rocket Belt, which used hydrogen peroxide to produce high-pressure steam capable of launching a man vertically off the ground.

Today, we have the SoloTrek, a joint development between Millennium Jet Inc, Nasa, the United States Army and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency. The SoloTrek is a modified version of a classic jet pack design that uses fuel-efficient combustion engines to turn twin rotary blades, creating enough downwards thrust to lift a man off the ground. Well, in theory, anyway; none of these flying machines have been tested yet.

The problem for Quidditch players is that, although these jet pack devices will get them off the ground, they are not sufficiently agile to stand up to the acrobatic rigours of a Quidditch match, and only allow for very short flights as they cannot carry large amounts of fuel. With Quidditch games lasting about 70 minutes, this technology falls short.

Magnetic Levitation

Combustion engines and jet propulsion are so last century, though; many engineers believe the key to personal flight lies with magnetic levitation technologies.

Magnetic levitation — or Maglev — is already in use in ultra-fast rail systems, such as the one in Shanghai, and with a few modifications, could plausibly be applied to levitating — and propelling — Quidditch players.

Diamagnetic Repulsion has already been used to levitate small animals and materials commonly thought to be non-magnetic, such as wood. The process uses a powerful magnetic field to apply an equal force to every cell of your body, and by extension, to objects close to the body, such as a broomstick.

There is also Sonic Levitation, where ultrasonic waves have been used to raise small objects off the ground, and Electrodynamic Propulsion, by which objects are lifted on an ion cloud and moved by electrostatic attraction — but it is unlikely these technologies could be scaled up to levitate two teams of Quidditch players.

The realm of magic

There are other, more esoteric options such as using focused chi to levitate, a la David Blaine, or connecting with the consciousness of an object — such as a broom — to make it fly of its own accord. But these outcomes are reserved, surely, for only the most dedicated of Quidditch players.

Using advanced know-how to play the game may still be a long way off in the future, but as one Potter fan reminded us: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” (Arthur C. Clarke)

So one day, wizards of a sort may actually compete in reasonable facsimilie of Rowling’s magical sport.

One thing that JK Rowling did when she created the Harry Potter series was almost a magic trick all on its own: she got kids to read. Naturally, though, the popularity of her books spawned a series of movies (which have yet to be completed, and hopefully before the actors are all using walkers) which defeated that just a little, but success is success. And, as with most successful things, there are many spin-offs, add-ons and all manner of other things.

One of the properties surrounding Rowling’s creation is a collection of video games from Electronic Arts. Actually, they follow the vision of the films more, but they’re still associated. Every Harry Potter film has seen a corresponding game release, and The Half-Blood Prince is no different. What is different, though, is the approach that has been taken with the game. It’s not that the others were bad, this one is just better .

The Wii way

The real gem of the collection (because the game is, predictably, available on every kind of console there is) is the version made for the Nintendo Wii. Not only can it be played on the world’s most popular console, but it makes a great go of involving the player, thanks to good use of the control system.

Going through the motions

There have been many, many Wii games released, but a large percentage of them have just not felt right . Good ideas have been wrecked through the poor implementation of controls, allowing the very few that do things right to truly shine. And this new title joins those lofty few, with a control scheme that is intuitive and sensible.

Mixing potions, for example, will have the player mimicking pouring and fanning flames, while casting spells will require a number of different motions to get the desired effects. Steering the broomstick while flying requires pointing at the desired location on the screen, as would be expected. It feels properly “wizardy”, and the movements make sense.

Unfortunately, moving Harry himself isn’t the greatest experience. It’s simple enough to do (it involves manipulating the analog stick on the controller’s nunchuk), but the implementation of the movement control is just a little off — it’s too sensitive, meaning that Harry will careen around and run into walls a lot, until you get used to the control.

The eye of the beholder

Another little victory for this game is its presentation. The Wii is not graphically as capable as the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 — everyone knows that — and yet EA Games have managed to squeeze as much juice as they could out of the Nintendo unit for this title. It looks good. The characters are instantly recognisable and the environment has been painstakingly recreated to look just like the settings in the films. The special effects are pretty, too, with bright flashes and lots of sparkly bits adding magic to the title.

As far as the Harry Potter series goes, this game is certainly the best one yet. As far as Wii games are concerned, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince takes up position in the top rungs of the console’s games, providing a sensible and enjoyable experience overall. Fans will most certainly love it, and it offers a great experience for the whole family.

By all accounts, Palm’s new Pre smart phone is elegant and powerful. On sale for just a few weeks, it has a crisp touch screen, a pull-out keyboard aimed at e-mail devotees and a new operating system that can manage multiple applications at the same time.

But in a world crowded with iPhones, BlackBerrys and others , success for the Pre — and possibly the survival of Palm itself — is going to take a lot more than a well designed device.

These days, it is all about the apps.

Industry experts and programmers say that the company needs to cultivate a system of developers eager to write and publish small, useful programs, or applications, for the Pre and its core software, WebOS. Palm also needs to provide an easy way for Pre users to download, pay for and install those apps, similar to Apple’s App Store.

So far, Palm is off to a slow start. Palm’s App Catalog has just a few dozen apps, even as Apple boasts that iPhone users can download 50000 that do everything from receiving baseball videocasts to unlocking a rental car.

The payment system for the Palm app store — important if the company wants to charge for certain programs — is still under construction. And most crucially, Palm has yet to open its software development kit, the main set of tools needed to write apps, to most of the thousands of developers who have expressed an interest in creating products for the Pre.

As a result, some developers are wary of the new platform, said Ben Gottlieb, the president of Stand Alone, which has been creating fitness, game and calendar applications for Palm devices since 1995, but is focusing its new development efforts on the iPhone.

“The WebOS looks like a great comeback, but there’s a little bit of trepidation there,” Gottlieb said. “Most Palm OS developers I know have moved over to the iPhone. A lot of us feel abandoned as the platform was neglected for so many years.”

The competition is not standing still. Apple recently upgraded the iPhone’s software and began selling a new, faster model. Research in Motion is supposed to unveil several new BlackBerrys this year, including an update to Storm, its touch-screen device.

HTC and Motorola are also expected to introduce phones that use Google’s Android operating system.

The stakes are high for Palm, which once dominated the market with its now-ageing Treo handsets and even had a vast constellation of developers who wrote apps for the Treo’s Palm OS operating system. Since 2007, the company has been steadily losing in the US to Apple, RIM and HTC, according to data from Nielsen Mobile, a research firm that tracks the wireless industry.

If consumers become enchanted with the Pre, Palm could regain a significant share of the smart phone market, said Paul Coster, an analyst with JPMorgan who follows the company.

On the flip side, “if the Pre and WebOS fail, then the company is in trouble,” said Jonathan Goldberg, from Deutsche Bank.

Coster estimates that Palm has shipped close to 180000 devices in the two weeks since the product first went on sale and could reach as many as 2.5 million in the fiscal year ending in May 2010. But that would not be enough to make the company profitable, he said.

Palm is urging customers and developers to be patient.

“We’ve never really said that we’re in a race with Apple,” said Derick Mains, a spokesperson for the company. Rather than compete with Apple on the volume of applications, “we’re building a catalogue of quality apps in the store,” Mains said.

It is not unusual for software programs to lag behind the release of a new piece of hardware. Apple, for example, did not have an app store or allow third-party developers to write for its platform until nearly a year after the original iPhone went on sale in June 2007.

The concern for Palm is that competition for developers’ attention is much more intense now.

For Palm to thrive, the company will have to convince developers that writing WebOS applications will be lucrative, said Ken Dulaney, a mobile industry number cruncher with the research firm, Gartner.

Palm is still working on the Pre’s software development kit, which is used to build applications. The company said the tools would not be widely available until the end of the (US) summer. While they have granted hundreds of developers access to an early version of the kit, there are thousands of other eager programmers who cannot even begin writing products for Pre.

Some developers who were granted early access to Palm’s new operating system said it was worth the wait. “We find it’s the easiest one to develop for,” said Christian Sepulveda of Pivotal Labs. “It allows for a richer experience, like having a pop-up menu and background processing, which is helpful.”

Sepulveda’s company developed four of the first programs available for download through Palm’s app store, including an item for Twitter called Tweed.

Greg Stevenson, a long-term Treo user who plans to write programs on WebOS, sees the nascent platform as an advantage. “I’d rather be a big fish in a smaller pond than one app in a catalog of 50000,” said Stevenson, who is helping organise a gathering of Pre enthusiasts called PreDevCamp in August.

Palm said building the app store and writing the developer tools is a huge undertaking, and the company would rather do things right than too quickly.

“We’re busy working on scaling the infrastructure. As we have the capacity to ramp up access, that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Pam Deziel, vice president for developer relations at Palm. “The focus for us is putting our heads down and delivering.” — © 2009 The New York Times News Service

But pay attention – this is where things get tricky…

The Curve competition is open for SMS entries ONLY – simply send the name of one local celebrity who has contributed to BlackBerry’s Urban Tour Guides to 41823. Click here for the answer. This competition closes on 22 July, so be quick.

To win the Busby leather travel wallet, simply fill in the form below. This competition will be open until 3 August.

Good luck!

Are you celebrity obsessed? Well, if you can find your way around a BlackBerry, and can drag yourself away from E! Entertainment TV for long enough, you can now take your stalking to a whole other level with Urban Tour Guides for BlackBerry.

» Win a BlackBerry Curve 8310 plus leather travel wallet!

It’s a mobile application that maps celebrity-endorsed places of interest, so you can find out where Kerry McGregor gets her hair done or where some of our leading athletes go to blow off steam.

To download it to your BlackBerry, go to www.urban-tours.com in your browser. The page has instructions in Spanish for some reason, but have no fear — download it.

The file is about 360KB, so with 3G coverage the file should get sucked down without hassle. When you first load Urban Tour Guides, it will request some additional changes to the application permissions — default settings should suffice, but you may ask it to prompt you before accessing the Internet, for example. Your BlackBerry will need to be rebooted once this process is complete.

The first time you start using the program, it will update the data — this will download all the places of interest and populate the lists. The update takes some time, with close to a thousand locations across the globe.

While the interface is a little scruffy, the information is quite fun. You can search either via the Celebrity list, or by City. Once you’ve found something you want to know more about, you can add it to your personal route and get GPS navigation there through BlackBerry Maps.

No updates to Urban Tours are done in real time, so don’t expect to see Kerry McGregor lounging in FTV when you locate her there. Unfortunately, with the celebrity angle, the recommendations fall mainly into the “well-known, well-heeled” category as glamour venues like FTV Lounge and Latinova predominate with the glitterati set.

Joburg and Cape Town have amongst the most venues out of all the cities listed, which includes major international destinations such as Amsterdam, Hong Kong, London and Milan.

While locals will probably know many of the places in their neighbourhood, there are some lesser-known locales to be discovered.

But for true celebrity whores, it could be fun finding out where international high flyers eat and party.

BlackBerry ambassador Kerry McGregor with sister Tracey at Beluga for the Cape Town launch of the ‘Urban Tour Guides’ for BlackBerry smartphones – this new application reveals the hang outs of celebrities and VIPs in cities around the world.

South African Celebrities

# Liezel van der Westhuizen, model

To do: Virgin Active in Centurion

To eat: Villa Bianca in Isando

To have fun: Vacca Matta in Fourways

# Kurt Darren, musician

To do: FTV Lounge, Michelangelo Towers

To eat: Springbokbar, Pretoria

To have fun: Mangwanani Bashewa spa, Pretoria

# Neil McKenzie, cricketer

To do: Tokyo Sky, Fourways

To eat: Founders Grill, Cresta

To have fun: Q.Ba Café, Johannesburg

International Celebrities

# Vladimir Klitschko, heavyweight boxer

To buy: Galeria Kaufhof, Hamburg

To eat: Trattoria da Enzo, Hamburg

To have fun: Fåhrdamm Cliff, Hamburg

# Karl Lagerfeld, fashion designer

To buy: 7L book store, Paris

To eat: La Esquina, New York

To sleep: Mercer Hotel, New York

# Lou Doillon, French model and actress

To buy: Lilli Bulle children’s store, Paris

To eat: La Perousse, Paris

To do: Bottle Shop, Paris

This title based on the blockbuster movie may mildly satisfy the not-so-serious, but will leave true gamers wanting more

As always, a game based on a movie property causes mild pangs of dread when it arrives. While the idea of game developers not delivering the goods is slowly becoming a thing of the past, there are still occasions when the game seems to take a back seat to the guaranteed sales that big-screen hysteria brings about. This, to a degree, is one of those times.

Like the movies, this is the second outing for the Transformers on console. It’s a bit better than the first and is quite enjoyable for the undemanding player. However, the developers made a few strange decisions when putting it together, resulting in some aspects of the game that leave you wanting.

No brakes

The biggest problem comes in the form of a control scheme that simply wasn’t thought through properly. The arrangement of the controls makes little sense at times, particularly when you decide to transform into whatever vehicle your chosen space-robot turns into.

Transforming is achieved by holding down the right trigger on the controller — the same one used for acceleration. You can slow down a little by easing up on the trigger (a highly sensitive control), but in essence, you will always be accelerating.

That’s not a bad thing if the play area is open and clear, but driving effectively around a cramped city is a bit of a bust. Weapons are fired using one of the face buttons, which is unconventional these days.

The next biggest issue that the game brings to the table is the lack of intelligence that the enemy AI characters display. They never act out of self-preservation, allowing you to get in a few cheap shots every now and then.

They will try to get a better position more often than not, and will always try and put distance between themselves and your transformer. This means lots of vehicle work for you (should you want to get up close for melee attacks) or long-range fighting.

That’s all fine and well, but the vehicle mode is annoying, as stated before, and long-range attacks are not particularly challenging because that lack of self-preservation makes the bad guys stand more or less rooted to the spot while you shoot at them.

Human interaction

It’s not all bad, though. The graphics are quite good, despite the lack of decent cut scenes, and the action is generally high. Multiple enemy missions can be quite challenging, and blowing huge robots to bits while trashing numerous environmental elements is always appealing.

But the game’s biggest plus lies in the rather good multiplayer component that it presents. There are numerous modes that range from traditional to quite original, including one where teams of players need to work together to destroy the opposing team’s leader. It’s a nice idea, and replacing the AI with actual human opponents makes the game that much more enjoyable.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is not a terrible game, but with a few bugs, a nasty control scheme and an AI that just isn’t smart enough, it is not top notch either. It shows us that the move towards better quality movie games needs to gain momentum.

These kinds of games are not taken seriously by anyone with more than a passing interest in video gaming, and with good reason. They are seen as cash-ins on existing, big name properties, and until developers prove that idea wrong (and in a big way, seeing as the idea has been around for many years now), the entire idea of supporting a movie release with a video game will be frowned upon by more avid gamers.

Trailer

The opening ceremony of the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2009 at the Citadel in Cairo, Egypt

Make a list in your mind of the biggest technology brands today. In your top 10 there will, no doubt, be organisations like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter, all massively successful companies that have had a defining impact on the technology landscape.

All these companies started with little more than an idea and a dream to make it succeed. But what you may not know is that all these companies were founded by students.

This is the inspiration behind the Microsoft Imagine Cup, an international student technology competition, now in its seventh year, which aims to identify and reward those operating at the forefront of technological innovation, namely students. As Joe Wilson, the senior director of academic initiatives at Microsoft and the Imagine Cup’s chief evangelist, argues: “The leaders of tomorrow’s most innovative companies won’t be found in boardrooms, they will be discovered in dorm rooms.”

This year’s finals were held in Cairo in Egypt and drew more than 300000 entrants from more than 120 countries, with the top 444 students descending on the city to compete in the final round from July 3.

But the Imagine Cup is not a technology competition concerned with science-fair fantasy. All participants are required to present solutions that address the range of United Nations millennium goals for development under the theme: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today”. Successful solutions need to combine technical proficiency with ideas that make an impact, but also need to be practical, with scope to be implemented in real-world situations.

Aligning the Imagine Cup with developmental goals is what truly kicked the competition into overdrive and participation has grown exponentially in the past three years. The reason for the massive uptake in interest in the Cup, as Ray Ozzie, the chief technology architect for Microsoft explains, is that the current generation of students have a deep and passionate desire to affect social change. “[Students] look at the world in an idealistic way. They are untainted by the knowledge of what can’t be done.”

It is this sense of raw idealism that powers the Imagine Cup, and scanning the conference foyer teeming with participants from absolutely every walk of life, it’s hard not to get excited by the prospect of all these inspired young minds working together to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

Team Africa

Africa was well represented at the event, with teams from Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Africa competing in the prestigious software development and embedded development challenges.

Team South Africa in front of the iSign booth at the Imagine Cup. From left: James Connan, Mentor (UWC), Nathan Naidoo (iSign, UWC), Mehrdad Ghaziasgar (iSign, UWC) and Nyaladzi Mpofu (Microsoft Academic Development Evangelist, South Africa)

The application works on computers and basic mobile phones, thus allowing deaf South Africans to communicate in spoken language when necessary, as well as allowing them to communicate with one another via mobile phones displaying simple avatars that enact the signs.

Before the contest began, team South Africa was confident of its chances, buoyed by Wilson’s assertion in the opening press conference that the best project he had seen in the previous few years was a similar concept for allowing the deaf to communicate, though one that made use of expensive and clumsy hardware such as a data glove.

Though eliminating the data glove and incorporating an existing technology like the mobile phone presented two major advances in the sign-language translation field, team iSign were sadly scuppered in their presentation by an unresponsive wireless network adapter, snapped while the presentation was hastily moved and reassembled by over-eager competition staff.

During private conversation after the presentation, one of the judges commended team iSign on its excellent technical achievement, but such is the nature of the competition that a failed demo is a death knell.

Entries from the African contingent and the rest of the developing world represented a subtle shift in the competition’s focus.

In previous years, many ideas were based on the goal of an “always connected” world, with Internet access taken as a standard, or at least future outcome. This year, however, more projects focused on a “sometimes connected” world, in which Internet access cannot be taken as standard. For this reason, many of the best solutions made use of simple, pre-existing technologies such as basic cell phones.

Team Nigeria developed an autonomous health system that gives medical advice to pregnant women via SMS request which is interpreted by server-side technologies, either returning advice or alerting medical teams in the area to the problem. Team Uganda devised a two-tiered system for farmers called E-Farmer; the first mobile auction system that allows farmers to trade produce before making a costly and time-consuming trip to the market as well as allowing them to seek advice on weather patterns and other agricultural issues. The second makes use of high-end imaging software to analyse diseased crops and make suggestions as to how best to combat blight, especially for the widely cultivated cassava plant, currently afflicted by disease.

Democracy of ideas

Though access to technology differs vastly across the globe, what is clear from the entrants to the Cup is that ideas are truly democratic. And the Cup provides the opportunity for all students, even those who don’t progress beyond the first round of the finals, to see how their ideas match up against their peers.

What was heartening to see was how passionate the students were about the possibility for technology to alter the way in which people live. That is not to say the obvious — that access to the Internet and associated services improves access to information and therefore quality of life, but so do revolutionary co-operation, information sharing and community level engagement powered by technology.

As Ozzie noted in his opening address at the Citadel that guards over Cairo, we are truly at the dawn of what is possible with technology. Tools and hardware are maturing, access is spreading, and with ideas that focus on bending these tools towards worthy, achievable goals, anything is possible.

Winning solutions from the Imagine Cup 2009

The Microsoft Imagine Cup offers 9 categories for competition; the premier categories are Software Design, Embedded Design and Game Development, with smaller competitions in the categories of IT Challenge, MashUp, Robotics and Algorithm, Short Film, Design and Photography. In total, Microsoft awards over $280,000 in prize money as well the opportunity for students to showcase their skills to leading industry players.

Category: Software Design
The premier competition at the Imagine Cup, students are required to build software solutions from the ground up and present their projects to a panel of industry-leading professionals.

Winner: Team SYTECH, Romania
The UpCity project is a collaborative platform that allows the public and municipal authorities to engage openly in solving community development issues. Beyond providing a platform for debate, UpCity tracks best practice, making it easier to replicate successful solutions, with information plotted geographically on Virtual Earth. The system is be rolled out in the team’s home town of Lasi in collaboration with local authorities.

Category: Embedded Development
This category focuses on the relationship between hardware and software, with contestants making use of an eBox and Microsoft technologies to create smart devices that address the Millennium Goals.

Winner: Team Wafree, Korea
One of the more outlandish projects on show at the Imagine Cup, Sinsang Yu aims to assist communities afflicted by famine and food shortages by providing a sustainable and renewable protein source in the form of Coleoptera Lucanidae – a large beetle rich in nutrients. The solution – 4 years in the making – provides a closed system for breeding the bugs, with tools that monitor conditions optimal for large scale breeding. While some may squirm at the idea of eating bugs, team member Yoonji Shin reports that nuns in Rwanda have already begun baking protein rich cookies with Lucanidae flesh for the children in their care, and word has it they are a hit.

Category: Game Development
The challenge in this category was to create a game that was both fun to play and had educational outcomes. Games were designed using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0.

Winner: Team LEVV It, Brazil
Choice combines the fun of arcade-style gaming with the decision-making mechanics of strategy games to create a game that emphasizes teamwork in the execution of development goals. Designed for 4 players, Choice demands players work co-operatively to develop areas of the planet – something almost counter-intuitive in the world of gaming.

Click here for the full list of Imagine Cup 2009 winners.

You don’t play games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and The Sims; you obsess over them. You lose sleep over them. You lose friends over them. And The Sims isn’t the unspoken, late night passion of hard-to-spot, chain-smoking nerd clans. It’s above the line. It’s accessible. It’s mainstream. From the Hannah Montana, Harry Potter crowd on up. And despite the recession, when The Sims 3 finally launched in June, it set a new franchise record, selling 1.4 million copies in its first week.

The art of simulation has come a long way since the late ’90s when A, B and C were all you needed to simulate life and schoolteachers everywhere cursed (and banned) the name “Tamagotchi”. Addiction levels, however, are just as high. Two weeks before the big launch, a pirate version hit the Internet. EA have since dismissed the leak as a “buggy pre-final” version missing half the game, but reportedly, that hasn’t stopped it from achieving even higher piracy rates than 2008’s most nabbed game: Spore. No wonder EA are so into information protection.

As you’d expect, The Sims 3 takes the series to all new levels of interactive social simulation, yet at the same time, simplifies a lot of other features in aid of increased user-friendliness and addiction. The biggest and most noticeable change is that there are no load screens between locations and you are now able to explore the map at your leisure. Also, previous down time, where your Sim was either at work or school, now includes options like Slacking Off and Taking it Easy or Putting in Some Overtime and Fishing For That Big Promotion.

Craftily, without an interior view, EA have left most of these scenes to your imagination (I smell an expansion pack, The Sims 3: Sexual Harassment).

As far as increased scale and freedom go, the lack of loading screens takes The Sims from a two-dimensional chain of linked locations to a much more “open world”, a bustling town kind of set-up, where every environment is available for interaction.

Another feature is the revamped Create-a-Sim tool. Now, you can customise everything, from the pattern of your character’s shoes to the shape of his/her nose. If you’ve got the time, the customisation possibilities are endless. You can even modify body shapes from obese to anorexic. And, like The Sims 2, obese Sims can lose weight with exercise and proper eating (and vice versa).

Basically, The Sims 3 is the same game you’ve grown to adore or ignore with more options: an advanced level of social interaction, more customisation, modification and personalisation, more scope, part-time jobs, branched career paths and promotions, and more of an emphasis on personality traits and character building. On the downside, the increased scope and detail comes with more loading time, daunting system requirements and frequent crashes. In the end, I was saving every 10 minutes, fearing a crash (a new update available from EA is supposed to fix the problem).

As you’d expect, EA aren’t exactly blowing their The Sims 3 load in one foul swoop. So, although a lot of The Sims 2 expansion pack features have been included, like brushing your teeth, guitars, cellphones and being able to run stores and to garden, a lot of major add-ons have not been included. In short, expect a sea of expansion packs. On the horizon, an in-game, exclusive content, marketing campaign with Dr Pepper.

It’s a strange concept. Here’s a game that includes paying the bills, washing the dishes, making the bed, brushing your teeth, nagging girlfriends and working overtime, yet it’s a pop cultural phenomenon. So either a lot of people are unhappy with their own lives and simulating their way through a more fun and frivolous virtual world, or playing God is just a helluva lot of fun. In most cases, I think it’s a combination of the two.

Imagine Cup 2009 Winners Team SYTECH from Romania (at left) took first place in the Software Design competition. Coming in second was Vital Lab, from Russia (center), while Virtual Dreams from Brazil (right) earned third. Looking on is S. Somasegar, senior vice president of the Developer Division for Microsoft.

Celebrating first place, Romania’s Team SYTECH won the worldwide Software Design invitational, South Korea’s Team Wafree won the Embedded Development invitational and Brazil’s Team LEVV It won the Game Development challenge. Imagine Cup, the world’s premier student technology competition, empowers students to unlock their creative genius and build solutions that tackle real-world issues facing society today.

“The creativity and imagination that students poured into their projects this year was incredible,” said Joe Wilson, senior director of Academic Initiatives, Developer & Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft. “Many of these projects have the potential to have a serious impact on how we address society’s most pressing issues. We hope that all of the students who participated this year will continue their pursuit of creating technology in the service of making the world a better place.”

The software design, embedded development and game development finalist teams created applications, devices and games using Microsoft technology based on this year’s theme: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today.”

A total of 444 students from 149 teams representing 70 countries and regions competed in the Imagine Cup 2009 Worldwide Finals in nine categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Development, IT Challenge, Robotics and Algorithm, MashUp, Photography, Short Film and Design. In addition to the main categories of competition, there are several Achievement Awards this year: the Interoperability Award, Unlimited Potential Design for Development Award, Unlimited Potential MultiPoint Education Award, Accessibility Award, Accessible Design Award, Parallel Computing Award, Tablet Accessibility Award, Live Services Award, Windows Mobile Award, and the H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak Special Award, sponsored by the first lady of Egypt through the Cyber Peace Initiative (CPI).

The winners were announced in a gala awards ceremony this evening at the base of Egypt’s historic pyramids as part of the Imagine Cup World Festival, a celebration drawing Imagine Cup competitors, mentors and other key attendees from around the world. The following are the top three finalists by invitational in finishing order:

Software Design

First Place: Romania — SYTECH
Second Place: Russia — Vital Lab
Third Place: Brazil — Virtual Dreams

Embedded Development

First Place: South Korea — Wafree
Second Place: China — iSee
Third Place: Ukraine — Intellectronics

Game Development

First Place: Brazil — LEVV It
Second Place: United States — Epsylon Games
Third Place: United Kingdom — Sanquine Labs

Robotics and Algorithm

First Place: Czech Republic — Lukáš Perůtka
Second Place: Canada — Byron Knoll
Third Place: China — Lin Fuming

IT Challenge

First Place: Romania — Cosmin Ilie
Second Place: China — Wu Chang
Third Place: Bolivia — Miklos Cari Sivila

MashUp

First Place: United States — CURIOUS
Second Place (tie): Poland – Monastery of Innovations
Second Place (tie): Singapore – PlanetKY

Photography

First Place: Croatia —Voodoo Delirium
Second Place: Singapore — Woolgathering
Third Place: Japan — Terada

Short Film

First Place: United Kingdom — Fulham Four
Second Place: India — ChennaiCoolers
Third Place: Ukraine — Just4Fun

Design

First Place: Brazil — Willburn
Second Place: United States — eXchangeFun
Third Place: France — Paindepices

In addition to the category awards, 10 Achievement Awards were presented.

Interoperability Award.
The Interoperability Award is designed to recognize the software application that best leverages out-of-the-box Microsoft technologies and blends them with other technologies to connect people, data or diverse systems in a new way. This award was won by:

First Place: Brazil — Proativa Team
Second Place: Poland — Fteams
Third Place: Jordan — ECRAM

Unlimited Potential Design for Development Award
This award challenges students to create a software solution that can be accessed from a basic mobile phone and designed to meet the needs of end users who earn less than $8 (U.S.) a day. This award was won by:

First Place: Malaysia — COSMIC
Second Place: China — Unique Studio
Third Place: Malaysia — Capricorn

Unlimited Potential MultiPoint Education Award
This award encourages students to unlock new ways for the PC to help address universal education goals. This award was won by:

First Place: India — Trailblazers

Accessibility Award
Students are challenged to design a technology solution that leverages people’s diverse physical and cognitive abilities. This award was won by:

First Place: Saudi Arabia — ATST
Second Place: Mexico – Ignis Nova

Accessible Design Award
Students who participated in the Design competition were awarded additional recognition for a technology solution that best addressed accessibility needs. This award was won by:

First Place: United States — eXchangeFun

Parallel Computing Award
Parallel applications can open a door to the future, and this award challenges students to use parallel technology to solve the world’s toughest problems. This award was won by:

First Place: India — Biollel

Tablet Accessibility Award
The objective of the Tablet Accessibility Award is to create a new education application that uses Tablet technology while expanding the possibilities for how a user interacts with the computer. This award was won by:

First Place: United States — Auratech
Second Place: Brazil — IC-UNICAMP

Live Services Award
This award challenges students to create a technology solution built on Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform to solve the world’s toughest problems. This award was won by:

First Place: France — Help’Aged
Second Place: Serbia — BrainWave

Windows Mobile Award
This award challenges students to use Windows Mobile technology to solve the world’s toughest problems. This award was won by:

First Place (tie): Croatia – Team Explorer
First Place (tie): Indonesia – Big Bang
First Place (tie): Brazil – Virtual Dreams

H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak Special Award
Sponsored by the first lady of Egypt, this award was given to the project that best intersects the following: the Imagine Cup 2009 theme, “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today”; the Millennium Development Goals; and the objectives of the Suzanne Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement and the Cyber Peace Initiative. This award was won by:

First Place: Poland — kAMUflage
Second Place: Egypt — Big Buddy
Third Place: France — WikiChildProtect

Next year’s Imagine Cup 2010 Worldwide Finals will take place in Poland, a country with a track record of producing highly skilled IT students as well as successful Imagine Cup entrants. Registrations for Imagine Cup 2010 open tomorrow, July 8, 2009. More information about Imagine Cup can be found at http://www.imaginecup.com.

Imagine Cup Sponsors

The Imagine Cup is being supported by a range of partner organizations including Paramount Digital Entertainment, Mesh Services & Live Framework, Microsoft Accessibility Business Unit, Microsoft Education Product Group, Microsoft Interoperability, Microsoft Learning, Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform, Microsoft Research External Research, Microsoft Robotics, Microsoft Unlimited Potential Group, Windows Embedded Business, Windows Mobile and Microsoft XNA Game Platform Group.

At what point does one’s concept of the future become real? With technology advancing aggressively towards some undefined goal, it’s easy to believe that “the future” will forever be unattainable, a constantly shifting signifier.

But for me, it arrived while watching the iRobot Roomba navigate my kitchen floor, sucking up the debris from dinner. Robotic companions are supposed to be the stuff of science-fiction films, a quirky vision of something many of us never thought would arrive.

How it works

iRobot was started in 1990 by a group of visionary Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) roboticists who were determined to make practical robots a reality. Today, they make a number of devices with a range of domestic, commercial and military uses. Their intelligent vacuum cleaner is their first and most successful design, having sold around three million units worldwide.

The Roomba uses a number of infrared sensors to detect objects in the environment. Combined with a few simple algorithms, such as wall following, “random walking” and spiral cleaning, it navigates seemingly at random through a room, passing around obstacles while remembering paths and areas covered.

The device will clean an average living room in about 40 minutes, so the idea is to use it for passive daily cleaning rather than an intensive vacuum. To force the Roomba to focus on a specific area, there are Virtual Walls that prevent it from exiting a room until it has been fully cleaned.

The soft rubber ridge on its leading edge means it will not damage furniture or mark walls, with the sensors slowing the Roomba before it makes contact with an object, or changing direction if it detects an edge such as the top of a stairwell. The compact design means it is perfect for getting under low tables, couches and beds — areas often skipped by even fastidious household cleaners.

The most impressive aspect of the Roomba, though, is its ability to self-charge. When it is nearing the end of its power or has finished cleaning a space, it will locate the infrared beam from the Home Base, dock and begin recharging. If the room was not completely done when the charge ran out, it will resume work automatically, covering the areas it missed.

The Roomba is surprisingly adept at scooping up pet hair, crumbs and dirt, in comparison to conventional home vacuum cleaners, considering its diminutive size. It also features a dirt detector, and will concentrate on a specific spot, spinning in circles until the area is clean.

The main selling point is the ease of use — once the Home Base has been set up, your only real responsibility is to empty the dirt receptacle and remove any hair tangled in the brushes.

Problems

While the Roomba generally does an excellent job of cleaning carpets and hard floors, there are some minor issues to consider. The down-facing sensors that detect edges means the Roomba does not work very well with checkered floors, and the brushes can easily get caught in the tasselled edges of rugs.

The Roomba will also be repelled by the smallest objects, so ensure the floor is cleared of all unnecessary clutter and forgotten socks. If you own pets, the brushes can quickly get clogged, although there are pet-specific models.

Mesmerised

I’m not alone in experiencing a sense of wonderment at the operation of the iRobot; most owners agree that the Roomba is a hypnotic vision of the future, and describe watching it go about its business in a trance-like state, forgetting that the robot is designed to free up our time for other activities.

But not everyone is as thrilled. The job of sucking up little bits of food from the kitchen floor was previously the designation of my other companion, the iDog Dalmation; perhaps that is why he reacts to the Roomba with such grave suspicion. The iDog has also glimpsed the future, and it’s looking a little lean.

iRobot Roomba is currently only available on import. WantItAll.co.za will deliver one to your door for around R3000, depending on the model and exchange rate.

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