Imagine Cup

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Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world's toughest challenges. Primarily a software design competition, it enlists teams of four within the high school and collegiate levels to submit software solutions addressing a specifically provided theme. Started in 2002, it has steadily grown in size, where in 2006 65,000 competitors representing over 100 countries competed in the six Imagine Cup invitationals under these categories:

1 History
2 Technology solutions
3 Criticism
4 Sources
5 External links

[edit] History

2003: Barcelona, Spain
2004: São Paulo, Brazil
2005: Yokohama, Japan
2006: Delhi, India
2007: Seoul, Korea

[edit] Technology solutions

Software Design
Embedded Development
Web Development

Skills Challenges

Project Hoshimi Programming Battle
IT
Algorithms

Digital Arts

[edit] Criticism

The Microsoft Corporation has been criticized for including in the competition's legal documents provisions stating that by accepting their prizes, winners agree to allow Microsoft to use concepts, techniques, ideas or solutions from the winning applications "for any purpose." Also, the competition has been criticized for being rather Microsoft-centric, with demands such as "the entry must be designed on .NET Framework 2.0 using Microsoft Visual Studio" or "30% of the scoring in this round will be based on use of showcasing the .NET framework".