For the students who are currently looking to develop applications for Windows Phone, Microsoft kicked off the Idea Week - an event that lets any student over 18 years old to be able to win a $50 gift card by simply submitting their application ideas to Twitter.

The rules are as simple as this:

1. Sign up for DreamSpark. Make sure you do it ahead of time because you will have to go through a (short) verification process.

2. Download Expression Studio (either a trial or the one from DreamSpark) and use SketchFlow to create a mashup of a Windows Phone application.

HINT: Try coming up with something original and out-of-the box, instead of applications similar to those that are already in the Marketplace.

3. Publish the mashup online and tweet a link to it. Something along the lines of "Here is an app for #wpappitup http://yoursuperawesomeapplication.net"

December 25th is the day when this event is over, so plan ahead and start working on your prototypes!

Look for details and rules here.

Here are some of the ideas you might want to consider:

• Social hub applications
• Applications that integrate with the media hub
• Applications that take advantage of the integrated camera capture capabilities
• Applications that rely mostly on live tiles rather than the user UI
• Media editors
• Cloud-based application - create content once and access it everywhere

You can check this list for some really basic starting points for new app ideas.

You can download the Windows Phone SDK here. Make sure you also follow the Windows Phone 7 Microzone here at DZone for the latest Windows Phone - related events and how-to articles.