
Are you a student in the US? Get a free Windows Phone - DenDen
http://dennisdel.com/blog/are-you-a-student-in-the-us-get-a-free-windows-phone#.T4D19l1CJo0.hackernews
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jrockway
All you have to do is write two Windows Phone apps in the next month! You can
test them on real hardware _after_ you release!

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rsanchez1
You can write free versions of paid apps and release the paid version after
you have hardware, or just release apps that would've been free anyway.

I think it's a good deal and I'll be taking advantage.

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dhbanes
What part of the deal is good for you, the developer?

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chc
Uh, the part where you get a free $600 phone? I thought that was pretty
explicit from the headline.

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CaveTech
Assuming your time is free though...

How many hours will it take you to write "two high quality applications"? I'm
guessing more than a couple hours depending on the strictness of the term.

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chc
If you're a student, "your time is (close to) free" is not an entirely
unwarranted assumption. In fact, most students are _paying people huge sums of
money_ to take up their time, so one could even argue that their time has
negative value. Anyway, let's assume you are rather unambitious and go with an
app that takes, oh, 24 hours to write. You would only have made $240 before
tax in your job at Starbucks, so the contest is a win on a monetary level. And
that's not even counting the fact that it gives you some rather marketable
experience (which, again, is something students normally pay for).

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CaveTech
Not sure who pays for someone "to take up their time", usually its an exchange
of time for skills, or time for experience. Also, assuming students can only
achieve unskilled minimum wage jobs is kind of silly. It's not _that_ hard to
get a paid internship at $30+ an hour.

Not saying it's a terrible deal either, just saying that it's not a "you're
missing out terribly if you don't do it" opportunity.

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rbanffy
Seriously?

    
    
      Basic Info
    
        Location: BTMLayout Bangalore, India 560076
    
      Contact Info
    
        Phone: 0000000000
    

Shouldn't this be at least a little Redmond-related?

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balakk
There's a similar contest in India.

<http://www.microsoft.com/india/iunlockjoy/>

Perhaps it's being managed from India.

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sliverstorm
There are a number of possibilities. It could be a promotion that is
outsourced to an Indian company. Microsoft could be hoping to hook developers
in India.

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Achshar
Well now I hate US only stuff even more. No this is not a trolling. I really
am sick of the schemes that are limited to certain demographic. I understand
there must be some reason behind this, some good reason mind you. But heck, it
is not a pleasant experience seeing all this from out side.

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DenDen
OP here. Just to clarify - the contest is ran by the Microsoft student
division. Yes, I am aware that it is Facebook only and there is no webpage. I
have no control over that, so again - cannot do anything about it. The PDF
rules are linked from the same Facebook promotion page, by the way, so if
there is any suspicion about that - feel free to read them from the FB page
instead of the post.

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mdaniel
That blog has some of the weirdest spam comments I think I've ever seen. I can
understand posting links to "lowest cost shoes" or whatever the current spam
fad is, but I can't recall ever seeing _that much_ lorem ipsum. I didn't
check, so maybe there is a hyperlink hiding in the text somewhere.

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robert_nsu
(Personally) I don't consider troll comment to be a spam comment, but it's
annoying all the same.

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jf
If you're in the Silicon Valley, the Hacker Dojo has Windows Phone hardware
you can do testing on.

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Gigablah
There was a similar promotion in Singapore, although it was open to everyone
who submitted 3 app ideas. Those who got accepted could pick up a Lumia 800,
and if they finished and released the apps within 3 months, they got to keep
the phone.

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necenzurat
Joy, but i'm not from US

