Joyce Huang

[caption id=“attachment_9873” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“The new start screen on Windows Phone 8”][/caption] Windows Phone 8 was announced just a few hours ago by the Windows Phone team in San Francisco. As a consumer, Windows Phone 8 will enable new hardware capabilities and expanded features that deliver a uniquely personal mobile experience. One of the things that’s enabled with the new hardware (such as NFC) is the Windows 8 Wallet. Windows Phone 8’s new digital Wallet feature does two great things. It can keep debit and credit cards, coupons, boarding passes, and other important info right at your fingertips. And when paired with a secure SIM from your carrier, you can also pay for things with a tap of your phone at compatible checkout counters. The start screen will become more customizable to your preferences. As you can see, we’re making Windows Phone 8 even more personal, with a new palette of theme colors and three sizes of Live Tiles, all of which are under your control. We know Live Tiles are one of the things current owners really love about their Windows Phones, and we wanted to make them even more flexible and unique. This short video shows the new Start screen in action. Watch this video to find out more. For Windows Phone 7.5 users, we will rollout a Windows Phone 7.8 update separately that will bring some of Windows Phone 8’s user interface changes to existing devices. For developers, new hardware in Windows Phone 8 will enable a more unified Windows platform, creating more opportunities for developers and the Windows Phone ecosystem. Windows Phone 8 will share the same kernel, file system, media foundation, device drivers, and parts of the security model from Windows 8. The Windows NT architecture enables Windows Phone 8 to support multi-core processors, device encryption, removable storage with microSD cards, and a whole host of improvements for IT pros and businesses. Here are 8 New Features of Windows Phone 8 for Developers: 1. SQLite - embedded database engine SQLite,will be available for phone developers. SQLite has been previously unavailable on Windows Phone (as it’s written in C). Now you can have access to use these libraries. 2. Speech/ VoIP (Talking with apps) API - Windows Phone 8 will include a conversational speech recognition system based on the TellMe technology used in Windows Phone 7. What’s interesting though, is that developers will be able to add new nouns and verbs to TellMe so that users can use the same conversational style to perform specific actions within applications. 3. Gaming Middleware - Middleware partners such as Havok Technology and Autodesk will support Windows Phone 8 and Windows Phone 8 games developed using the Havok Technology Suite, will feature immersive and real 3-D worlds, highly realistic characters and cinematic visuals. 4. Native Code - Native code support: Windows Phone 8 has full C and C++ support, making it easier to write apps for multiple platforms more quickly. 5. Multitasking background location - With the next version of Windows Phone, real background multitasking will be opened up to all devs, thanks to libraries provided directly by Redmond. This means that Windows Phone 8 now allows location-based apps like exercise trackers or navigation aids to run in the background, so they keep working even when you’re doing other things on your phone. 6. HTML5, C# (For Both Win 8 and Phone 8 Devs) and C++ (For Games Dev) - Now developers can write native code, as well as XNA, C#, and HTML5. You can also now use the full Microsoft .NET suite instead of the previous Compact Framework. 7. Enterprise Hub (Custom App for internal information) 8. Enterprise Private App Store - Companies can create their own Windows Phone 8 Hub for custom employee apps and other critical business info. Follow more news about Windows Phone 8 here or check out the Windows Phone team blog to find out more new features!

Dream Build Launch is a campaign for local developers in Singapore working on Windows 8 platform. We hold regular events, competitions, hackathon, workshops, trainings and more for the community. Our very first Dream Build Launch event kicked off last Saturday morning, with 150 enthusiastic developers working together to build a Windows 8 application within 24 hours. The theme this year is I <3 SG. We had 3 talks to lead developers into the development process. First, a Metro design crash course by our Developer Evangelist, Chun Siong, on how to create an appealing looking application for users quickly. The next two talks were hands-on sessions on how to create Windows 8 apps using HTML5/Javascipt and C# and XAML. Here are some highlights from the Hackathon: [caption id=“attachment_9813” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Our very own Terence, talking about the big prizes we are giving out to winners of the hackathon!”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9815” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“WIndows 8 Developers listening intently to the introduction and rules of the hackathon”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9820” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“The HTML5 and Javascript track for WIndows 8 development by our Audience Marketing Manager - Alex”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9812” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Our participants hacking away into the night!”][/caption] We had a special challenge to encourage our hardworking developers who were cracking code throughout the event. If they could get more than 100 points on Fruit Ninja, they would be able to win a free $10 Starbucks card, kindly sponsored by our very own ninja. [caption id=“attachment_9816” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“As a coffee break surprise, we had a special appearance by our very own ninja! Are you better than him at Fruit Ninja?”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9822” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“The ultimate showdown between ninjas begins”][/caption] Night fell.. but we still saw crowds of people staying behind to work on their apps! [caption id=“attachment_9819” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“It’s 3am at night.. and they’ve still got so much energy! Amazing.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9818” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Taking a short nap before going at it again.”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9817” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Deep in team discussions!”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9814” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“One of our friends from Japan, Masa Morishita, sleeps and dreams about Javascript for Windows 8 development!”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9821” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“At the testing station with Windows 8 Tablet devices to test applications before submission”][/caption] 50 new applications in various categories (games / food / travel / quizzes / history) were submitted for this Hackathon and we are psyched to reveal the winners soon! It’s great to see so many of our developers talking to each other and having fun hacking. We hope that you managed to make new friends and had tonnes of fun at the event as well! Remember to join our Windows 8 Singapore Developer community on Facebook and keep yourselves apprised of the latest news here at Spiffy!

[caption id=“attachment_9745” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Tim Berners Lee, is a computer scientist who invented the worldwide web. With Robert Cailliau, he sent the first HTTP communication between client and server. He has a first class degree in Physics and is a MIT professor. Credits: Wikipedia”][/caption] Bill Gates and Steve Jobs might have made it fashionable to be in the technology business and inspired a new generation of tech entrepreneurs, but Computer Science was not regarded as discipline that required a specific school to teach until recently. Back in the 70s, you wouldn’t say that “I have a degree in Computer Science.” A much closer reality would be “l took courses that were compsci-related in the math, engineering, physics departments.” On most university campuses, CS grew out of mathematics or engineering departments. Now that a few of our dear interns at Microsoft are about to embark on their university life come August, I start to wonder, when was the first Computer Science degree first introduced in Singapore and how has it evolved? Here’s a slice of history from Singapore: [caption id=“attachment_9741” align=“alignnone” width=“600” caption=“The old block of NUS’ School of Computing before it moved to the new building in 2008.”][/caption] The first university to introduce a computer science related degree is the National University of Singapore. The School of Computing originated from the time before Singapore University and Nanyang University merged to form NUS. Back then it was known as the Department of Computer Science. After the merger in 1980, The department became the Department of Information Systems and Computer Science (DISCS) within the National University of Singapore. It became a fully fledged faculty—the School of Computing—on 1 July 1998, comprising the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Information Systems. [caption id=“attachment_9755” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“NUS School of Computing now occupies a swanky new building, smack in the middle of Arts and Business, where there are more females around. Photo Credit: Wikipedia”][/caption] The School has about 2,000 students and it’s comp sci department offers 4 degree programs and interesting research programs such as the Turing Program (named after Alan M. Turing who provided the first model of algorithm and computation - the Universal Turing Machine-that allowed us to analyse what a computer can and cannot do) and the von Neumann program (named after John von Neumann who created the von Neumann architecture -that became the standard of computer architecture) ! The rise of tech entrepreneurship and growth of “hacker culture” is also very prominent amongst NUS SoC students. NUS Hackers has been organising many talks and weekly meetings called Friday “Hacks” that include one or two technical talks, followed by a hacking session. [caption id=“attachment_9754” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“NTU’s School of Computer Engineering, Photo Credit to, Li Xiaowei.”][/caption] ...

[caption id=“attachment_9707” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Darth Vader and Storm Trooper playing out Dance Central 2, Kinect had a hard time detecting his costume”][/caption] Microsoft Singapore was part of Echelon 2012 to promote our upcoming Windows 8 developer program Dream Build Launch. We had a great time showing audiences the brand new version of Windows 8 [Release Preview]. Word of our booth spread far beyond Earth and we were soon visited by Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers who were curious of the new Metro interface Here are some more images of their visit: [caption id=“attachment_9716” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Darth Vader and Storm troopers figuring out Windows 8”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9718” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Fruit Ninja Vader - unfortunately being ruthless henchman of Emperor Palpatine doesn’t help you with a high score”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9708” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Darth Vader and his team with Windows 8 and the DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team!”][/caption] [caption id=“attachment_9722” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“Final Pose with Windows 8”][/caption] Thank you for liking our page and keeping in touch with us! We hope to see you around and remember to check out our Windows 8 developer program Dream Build Launch. See ya!

The Windows Team has decided to help celebrate the Windows 8 Release Preview and the Visual Studio 2012 Release Candidate, by releasing a preview edition of Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, by Kraig Brockschmidt. Download a PDF of the ebook here (4.34 MB). Download the ebook’s sample code here (27.5 MB). (We’ll release EPUB and MOBI versions of the final ebook.) This book is about writing Metro style apps for Windows 8 using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. The primary focus will be on applying these web technologies within the Windows 8 platform, where there are unique considerations, and not on exploring the details of those web technologies themselves. For the most part, then, the author assumes that you’re already at least somewhat conversant with these standards. We will cover some of the more salient areas like the CSS grid, which is central to app layout, but otherwise I trust that you’re capable of finding appropriate references for everything else. This version covers the first 4 chapters of the final e-book. Chapter 1 The Life Story of a Metro Style App: Platform Characteristics of Windows 8 Chapter 2 Quickstart Chapter 3 App Anatomy and Page Navigation Chapter 4 Controls, Control Styling, and Basic Data Binding Chapter 5 Collections and Collection Controls Chapter 6 Layout Chapter 7 Metro Style Commanding UI Chapter 8 State, Settings, Files, and Documents Chapter 9 Input and Sensors Chapter 10 Media Chapter 11 Purposeful Animations Chapter 12 Contracts Chapter 13 Tiles, Notifications, the Lock Screen, and Background Tasks Chapter 14 Networking Chapter 15 Devices and Printing Chapter 16 Extensions Chapter 17 Apps for Everyone: Localization, Accessibility, and the Windows Store Chapter 18 Services Have fun!

 Dream Build Launch is Microsoft Singapore’s Windows 8 developer program. Along the way, we will help you with advice on how to develop a Windows 8 application that will be made available to millions of people worldwide on the Windows Store. There’s never been a better time to dream big and develop bigger. Join the Windows 8 Singapore Developer Community : https://www.facebook.com/groups/dreambuildlaunch/. Here are some resources you might need to get started: ...

After giving you the first taste of Windows 8 two months ago, we are back with the Release Preview. The Release Preview is the final test version of Windows 8 before we go ahead with RTM, Release to Manufacturing. Between that time, we will still be making changes to Windows 8, which you can follow at the Windows Team blog. Here are 5 new changes in the Release Preview: · Local Windows Store: Singapore is one of them! Featuring apps like Channel News Asia, Straits TImes, Razor TV and many more new Metro style apps like Wikipedia, other News and Sports apps and Bing Travel · Improvements to the Mail, Photos, and People apps that initially debuted with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview · Improved multi-monitor support · A touch-friendly, secure and power-optimized Adobe Flash Player is now fully integrated into IE10 · First browser to feature Do Not Track “on” by default, giving you more choice and control over their privacy Here’s a quick video that showcases the interface for Windows 8 RP at work and play: The Windows Store now also supports app submission for local markets and Singapore is one of the countries. We’ve gotten great response from developers here who are planning to build Metro style apps and will be holding events such as hackathons, hands-on-labs for you to get started building them! Updates for Developers: Improved Visual Studio templates Another area where we have made a lot of improvements is templates in Visual Studio. We’ve made lots of updates to our templates and even added a new one so that it is easier for you to start a new project and get a great app up and running in no time. ...

We’ve heard a lot of startup ideas from running Microsoft BizSpark and hosting four cycles of Founders’ Institute Singapore. More often than not, founders tend to build their full product, even before testing it out on their audiences, which might not be the wisest thing to do. Here’s a quick and interesting infographic to let you test out your idea quickly before committing all your resources. by annavital. Browse more Technology infographics. My favourite has got to be “Buy a Cool Costume” and pass out your fliers outside a really large tech event. Guess what! There’s one coming really soon by e27 Singapore and we’ll be there! ...

Ever since the Kinect for Windows sensor and SDK has been released, the team has been adding more cool features to the product to enable more creative uses for this sound/motion detection device. With that, we’re very pleased to announce that Version 1.5 of the Kinect for Windows runtime and SDK is finally here! The 1.5 SDK brings a number of exciting, new capabilities. Some highlights include: •Kinect Studio. A new tool which allows developers to record and play back Kinect data, dramatically shortening and simplifying the development lifecycle of a Kinect application. Now a developer writing a Kinect for Windows application can record clips of users in the application’s target environment and then replay those clips at a later time for testing and further development. •Face Tracking SDK. Which provides a real-time 3D mesh of facial features—tracking the head position, location of eyebrows, shape of the mouth, etc. •Seated Skeletal Tracking is now available. •New capabilities to enable avatar animation scenarios. The Kinect Accelerator teams are building with Kinect for Windows, which makes me even more excited to see what the new groups of developers who have access are going to build! Have fun developing on the Kinect!

The advent of touch devices and motion sensing devices such as the Kinect has allowed us to start thinking more about how to design technology that is comes more natural to human interactions. In this interesting video, Steve Clayton talks about the drive at Microsoft to embrace what he calls ’natural user interface’. Clayton, who says his job is to find out what amazing projects the tech firm is working on and share it with the world, takes us through a future-forward vision where gesture, sound and artificial-intuition creates a world that extends the possibilities of our creativity. Enjoy!