Joyce Huang

HTML 5 is going to be the next big thing. It’s promise for openness and interactivity on both web and mobile is definitely one of the key attractions for developers. Juha from Non-Stop Games shares about his experience building HTML5 games at #MSCampfire. His company built Dollar Isle, which is a web game built on HTML5 - users set out to building an island filled sky scrapers, hotels and casinos that attract visitors around the virtual world. Juha opens by setting the stage with the definition of HTML5 in his case, which is HTML +JavaScript + CSS3. ...

We’ve got tonnes of great prizes waiting for you at #MSCampfire! Inside our UFO catcher are carebears tagged with #MSCampfire tags. Stand to win great prizes such as Lumia phones (sponsored by Nokia), IE T-shirts, Starbucks cards and many others! All you need to do is to scan your RFID Tags at the catchers and start playing! Most Amazing Booth Shot Contest! Strike a pose with our booth babes! The top 3 most-“Liked” photos uploaded by our Nokia booth babes to the Nokia Developers page wins a *white* Nokia Lumia 800, and 2 Nokia Lumia 710’s! * Visit and Like us at http://www.facebook.com/nokiadevs for more details on developer trainings and other developer contests. *The Most Amazing Booth Shot Contest ends 11.59pm 4/14 (Sat). Tag yourself in Facebook or leave namecard by the booth to verify winner. Email chris.ismael@nokia.com if you’re a developer!take a picture with the lovely ladies at the Nokia booth, you stand to win prizes Good luck!

 When Microsoft launched Kinect for Xbox 360 a year and a half ago, our initial focus was controller-free games and entertainment. Once only the stuff of science fiction, Kinect became a phenomenon across the globe. Within the first 60 days, Kinect sold more than 8 million sensors, setting the Guinness Book World Record as the fastest-selling consumer electronics device. It extended the realm of what’s possible for a traditional gaming console and changed the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, bringing new categories of consumers to Xbox 360. What’s more important is the enthusiasm from the community to create exciting and creative applications in the areas of healthcare, rehab, education and so much more with the Kinect other than in the gaming industry. That’s why we’re excited to have Rob Miles talk to us about the Kinect and the inifinite possibilities it brings for us. Rob is a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull in Great Britain where he teaches C# programming, Software Engineering and Embedded Development. He is also a Windows Phone MVP and has presented at many Microsoft conferences including TechED and Mix as well as delivering Windows Phone Jumpstart content to many thousands of budding Windows Phone developers. He is the author of a number of books on XNA game development and a text on the .NET Micro Framework and is just finishing off a book about development using the Kinect sensor. He has been fascinated by computers since the days of punched cards when he wrote his first programs, although nowadays he prefers Visual Studio 2010. He is a keen blogger at www.robmiles.com and can be found on Twitter as RobMiles. See you on Friday everyone! Register HERE.

User Experience Design is quickly becoming an interesting component in the web and mobile space. Whether you’re building an app for your phone or for your website, you need to focus on the user experience to differentiate your product and company. As a developer, it’s crucial to know what to look out for when it comes to designing interactions for your users. We’re glad to have Shane Morris, one of Australia’s most respected user experience professionals join us at Campfire. Shane is currently Director at Automatic Studio. Through consulting, mentoring and training he has helped organisations create compelling digital experiences since 1991. In that time he has worked on desktop applications, internet applications, mobile user interfaces, physical devices and web sites. Shane has taught user experience topics around the world and is a key contributor to “101 Things I Learned in Interaction Design School” at ixd101.com. Hear him speak on day one about Prototyping and the Metro Design Language. Register now at campfire.weshipcode.com !

Build for Windows 8 is the first dev camp we are running here in Singapore and we’re really excited to share with you the opportunities that Windows 8 brings to you as a developer! We’re really happy to have around 200 developers join us in this session. If you couldn’t attend today, don’t worry, we’ll be live blogging and sharing with you resources from the dev camp! Slides will also be made available here so remember to check this page out. Tweet us @gospiffy and use the hashtag #BuildforWin8SG 930AM - We started the day with an introduction with Alex introducing the upcoming events for Windows 8, including Campfire. We’re flying in speakers who are experts in HTML 5 and other interesting subjects in the web tech space to talk to you from 13th - 14th April! Register here: campfire.weshipcode.com 945AM - Our awesome director, Ziriad Saibi talking about the opportunity for developers. Windows 7 numbers are at 500M. That’s not even including other Windows powered devices. 10.00AM - Hammad, architect evangelist, talking about the Metro UI and demonstrating the investments that went into Windows 8 to create a beautiful user experience for everyone (yes, even developers). 1030AM - Search is an interesting factor for developers, when a user is searching on Windows and if your app is relevant, it pops up immediately on the results screen without having to go into a browser! 1045AM - Are you a HTML5 / Javascript / .Net/ C++developer? Then you’re already equipped to be a Windows 8 developer. 11.00AM - Short break! Time for some tea. In meantime, meet Kim, our presenter for Metro UI later on! 1115AM - We are demoing a camera capture class. Its really easy to set up! Hammad just made the audience scream ‘Metro’ and we now have videographic evidence of your presence here - uploading to Facebook. (Just Kidding, you guys are great!) 1120AM - Tiles are a great mechanism for drawing users’ attention to your application! Make sure you take some time to customize it. 1130AM - Content before chrome. Interesting research shows that browser users are hardwired into thinking that our browser chromes are the main part of experience and not the content itself. The Metro UI allows content to come first. Immerse your users in the thing s they love instead of wasting space with the chrome. Let layout flow from edge to edge, pan only on a single axis to create a sense of stability. - more on that later during the UX session. 1140AM - Life is made a lot simpler when you use the templates from Visual Studio to create your first Metro style app. 1150AM - Introducing the App Bar: Most apps will have the app bar at the bottom that allow the user use common commands. 1157AM - Try Semantic Zooms to show richer, meta information on your groups. 1203PM - Design for touch first! Most people use the sides to navigate through the apps.. don’t expect them to use too many fingers at once! (Unless you want them to spill their Starbucks coffee all over their tablet.) 1215PM - Lunch! Did you guys enjoy it? 1.20PM - Full and ready to learn more about Windows 8 development! Kim is sharing about resources for developing on the Metro UI. He’s also giving great tips about the commanding surfaces that allows users to have greater interaction with the touch device. R. emember to check out our tutorial about Visual Blend, that will help you prototype UIs quickly. 1.35PM - Need design assests? Download them here. 1.45PM - Remembering to scale your graphics properly is important! Run it on the emulator to try how it looks like. 1.50PM - We love animations that make your app feel more alive. Built in controls are provided for free. You can also look for more in the Windows 8 Animation Library. Very useful. 2.00PM - 5 T-Shirts given to our awesome attendees! Great questions on the APIs, porting of apps. Keep the questions coming in! 2.05PM - Darren Sim, talking about integrating applications with web services. 2.13PM - Again, search is universally accessible and contextual. Darren is demo-ing it right now! 2.40PM - A really funny presentation from Darren who is sharing about how to call certain features using javascript. The tutorial is found on MSDN. 3.00PM - So many questions! And the IE T-shirts seem to be really popular. 3.15PM - Breaktime! We took some videos of the attendees, thanks for the feedback. Great to see Android and iOS developers here as well. Seem like the market share is an interesting factor when it come to deciding which platform to develop for. 3. 30PM - Hammad, our Win 8 champ, is on again. We’re learning about extension methods that bridge the gap between the new Windows Runtime and managed code. When you use Runtime, your apps are going to be super fast. 4.00PM - Ed Quek from Microsoft APAC is sharing about the Windows Store right now. 4.05PM - demoing the Windows Store, did you know that 70% of apps get buried in the app store? Windows is going to help you overcome that! Check out how to sell your apps and the descriptions you’ll need here. 4.30PM - As a developer you get 70% of whatever you sell on the store. If you get over US$25,000 you get 80%! It’s a tiered model. 4.38PM - Trials matter. You get a 70% better chance of converting users into paying ones by offering trials! Keep that in mind when you’re deciding the price and sales model. 4.40PM - Singapore is one of the countries with that will have the Windows Store supported. Go little red dot! 4.45PM - The cost to register for a Windows Store developer account in the United States is 49 USD for an individual and 99 USD for a company. For the price in your local currency, see Developer countries and regions.

Hurray! More integration with Windows 8 powered devices! The Windows Phone team announced on their blog today that the release of the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update is now available for immediate download on the Microsoft Download Center. The two highlights of this update are: Develop apps that work well on the new 256 MB devices Use the WPSDK 7.1 to develop on machines running Windows 8 This update goes a long way to making it easier for folks to build apps that target both Windows Phone and Windows 8; the WPSDK 7.1.1 runs quite well side-by-side with Visual Studio ‘11’. Particularly with the Consumer Preview out, the ability to run the IDEs side-by-side has been a major request from our developer community. For Windows Phone developers, this is a great opportunity to explore the Windows 8 marketplace as another channel for your applications. Find out more about developing on Windows 8 in our ‘Build for Windows 8’ workshop this Friday as well.

Microsoft researchers are one step closer to making the Babel Fish from Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” a reality - minus the fish. The team demonstrated the software, which learns the sound of your voice and uses it to speak in another chosen language. The potential in this is to make language learning software more personal, or to make tools for business or casual travelers. Microsoft research scientist Frank Soong showed off his software, which could immediately read out text in Spanish using the voice of Rick Rashid, Chief Research Officer at Microsoft . In a separate demonstration, Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, was given the ability to speak Mandarin using the same software. Check out the really cool demo that took place in Redmond for Techfest 2012 here. (The demo starts at around the 12th minute) The new software can also be used to help people learn a language by hearing foreign phrases in a their own voice. Frank also demonstrated how the system could allow a synthetic English voice on a navigational phone app read out text written on Chinese road signs as it relayed instructions for a route in Beijing. While it is still in training mode, it’s exciting to imagine how powerful this piece of technology could be when integrated with smartphones. No matter which part of the world you may be, you will potentially never be lost in translation again!

Welcome to developing for Windows 8 Consumer Preview! You’ve witnessed the brand new Windows 8 experience from the Consumer Preview. Why not start developing for it now? This start-up kit will help you create exciting new experiences for Windows users globally. Let’s get started! Step 1. Check for recommended system requirements to ensure optimal development performance. If you’re all revved up to start developing apps for Windows 8, check for the list of recommended system requirements. ...