My review has been put up in the Sun’s Students View and Reviews blog. One can see the post here. Actually as soon as i came to know about the contest through my friend,I downloaded NetBeans 6.1 , as i had been using Eclipse 3.3 for all my Java related work, and installed NetBeans for Java SE. I had decided to write a detailed review after using it for some 20 days or so. But then, the day i installed it, i just wrote a introductory review, which could also serve as a post for my blog and also give me some posts on NetBeans. The days went by, there were no signs of me writing a detailed review. I then thought of submitting my introductory post on NetBeans for the contest. I could have written a far more better review than the one i submitted and the prize for the best review in each category is $250 and there are four $100 prizes.
There were some 78 odd entries with 40 reivews on Open Solaris and 38 reviews on NetBeans 6.1. There were total of 48 participants from all over the world. So one can see there’s not much of competition. And most of the participants were no regular bloggers. Either they had just started a new blog for the contest!!! or some had blogs but with some 2 or 3 posts put up during the Medival Period 🙁 50% of the participants were Indians, good to see that Indians taking intiatives everywhere 🙂 For Indians $250 or $100 is something huge. Actually many of the Students are either not familiar with Java or NetBeans or Open Solaris, and this has resulted in not many submiting their review. Students have to be introduced to these technologies at the college level by thier teachers or they have to take intiative in learning them. The contest was not that difficult, there was nothing to think about, Just use it, expereince it and write about it. Its so simple and every other student could have participated in it. Hope there are many more such events in the future so that i can participate properly, not like the one i did this time 🙂