The Imagine Cup is a worldwide, tiered competition that Microsoft hosts for the academic community. Over the course of the nine month competition, teams compete regionally, then by country and then the winners for each country go the the worldwide Finals. There are a number of categories. We were very excited that this year's winning team in the U.S. had a TabletPC Application!
The finals are still going on in Yokohoma Japan. Gerardo Dada, from Microsoft U.S. is there and has been blogging a lot about how the contest works and how the teams are doing. This is awesome stuff. He also has links to various items about the teams; for example an article about Bill Gates in Thailand where he meets the Thai Imagine Cup finalists. So cruise around Gerardo's blog for more.
During the finals week, teams get presented with challenges that push their apps (and their patience) to the limits. For example, the web development teams has been challenged with things like blackouts. The Visual Gaming teams have some virus to deal with - not a normal computer virus, but one that affects the game characters, too! I actually don't totally understand how this is all working but am getting curiouser and curiouser.
The Imagine Cup has been going on for a number of years now and generates a lot of excitement in the academic community as it really gives the students (from high school to graduate school) an excuse to push their explorations to the limits.