Mingfei Yan

The #WhereIsMyLumia campaign proposal period is now over. Thank you for your tremendous support! Yes, we are giving away Nokia Lumia 800 to our developers and here is how: Follow us on Spiffy and Join us at Facebook page Spiffy to receive information on this program. Submit your three app ideas* to whereismylumia@hotmail.com with subject “#WhereIsMyLumia”. Include the name and description of your app. The applications need to be implemented using PhoneGap HTML5 mobile framework. If your app is approved, you will be informed through email, along with instructions to pick up your loaner device** in our Microsoft Singapore office. You are required to submit one approved application to Marketplace every month, for 3 months - to keep the device. Until then, it’s a loaner device. If you fail to propose/send in an approved app and submit to Marketplace on the agreed month, you will have to return the device to Microsoft Singapore. *You are encouraged to utilize native phone functions (camera, geolocation and etc). Refer to PhoneGap’s Supported Feature page. Your proposals will have higher chance if you are porting over an existing HTML5 from iOS or Android. **First come first serve due to devices availability. For developers in Singapore only. ...

Recently I have received some demand of building HTML5 mobile app on Windows Phone Mango. Hence, I think it is a good chance to introduce PhoneGap this HTML5 mobile framework, which has full suports for Windows Phone Mango. If you are using PhoneGap this kind of framework, you are building a hybrid application. What is a hybrid application? It is an application that runs with browser components, but could be able to utilize the phone functionality (such as camera, geolocation, notification and etc). Hybrid application is downloadable through marketplace as well. To the end user, there is no difference from hybrid and native application. But for our developers, it is a huge different. If developer wants to build native application for all different platform, he needs to use C# for Windows Phone, Objective-C for iPhone and Java for Android. However, if developer building hybrid application, he only needs to take care of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Question: Why should we consider HTML5 mobile? If you are a developer targeting on multiple platform (Wp7, iOS, Android), using standard technology (HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript) is a very cost-effective choice for you. Question: How does this compare to native application? Hybrid application utilized the power of browser rendering engine. However, native application will be able to utilize the graphic APIs of the operating system. Hence, hybrid application couldn’t achieve game-quality graphics. Moreover, take windows phone platform as a sample. Application Bar is a very useful control developer usually uses for layering their applications. For hybrid application, since its just HTMl and CSS, you need to figure out the layout yourself by coding. Even there will be templates in the future, it is just mimicking the control and it won’t be as convenient as using native SDK. Please check PhoneGap on Windows Phone Tips series (5 Tips in the end of this article) for mimicking native control, such as Live tiles, Deep linking, handling orientation. Here is all the references: PhoneGap Get Start Guide for WP:Start Guide | GetStart video 1 | GetStart video2 PhoneGap API Reference: Reference PhoneGap official Wiki: Wiki Useful tutorials: ...

This is Microsoft’s last keynote for Consumer Electronics show(CES). And keynote started with a Microsoft history video at CES. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdIfSDwfTqA[/youtube] If you missed the keynote, you still could watch it here. Here are some of the recaps for today’s CES Keynote. 1. Windows Phone with cooler devices Nokia announces its biggest yet thinnest Windows Phone to date with the Nokia Lumia 900, its first phone to support high-speed LTE data transfers. The Nokia Lumia 900 allows data downloads up to 50Mbps on AT&T’s 4G LTE network. Here is the video for more detail. During the Keynote, Steve also demonstrated HTC Titan II. The HTC Titan II is basically an HTC Titan with LTE for AT&T and a 16 megapixel camera with backside illuminated sensor, f/2.6 AF lens and dual LED flash. You can see more details via Engadget as well. 2. Better PC runs Windows A video was played with various PC laptop updates. - SONY VAIO Z with Jaw Dropping Picture at 1080p, 15 hours of fun with attachable sheet battery - Asus Zenbook UX21 - Acer Aspire S3 with 1/2" inch thin (Acer announced new Aspire S5 - the thinnest laptop in the world) - Toshiba Portege Z830 - World Thinnest 13" Laptop - DELL XPS 14Z - LENOVO IDEAPAD U300S - SAMSUNG Series 9 - HP Envy Spectre - Cool Ultrabook with a Gorilla Glass Cover - More 3. Windows 8, Windows Store and Cut the rope Moreover, Windows 8 beta is coming end of Feb, according to Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft. Meanwhile, Windows Store will be available to 231 markets worldwide. Windows Store was showed and we see how Cut the Rope this game in HTML5 and run well on Windows 8. Meanwhile, we’re excited to announce a new experience on the web – a HTML5 version of the popular Cut the Rope game is now available online for free! And Visit www.cuttherope.ie to play with it! 4. Kinect and Two way interactive TV. More, Kinect with PC! Microsoft demonstrated how Kids could experience Sesame Street – going from watching the show to jumping into Elmo’s world with Kinect-enabled two-way TV. Also Microsoft announced a new partnership with NewsCorp to bring new apps for Xbox LIVE that will feature content from their leading broadcast, news and Web properties, including Fox Broadcasting, Fox News Channel, IGN Entertainment and The Wall Street Journal. Even better, starting February 1, 2012: you could use the Power of Kinect for Windows to Change the World. Here is the official announcement from Kinect team. Again, if you missed the show, you could watch it here. Enjoy CES!

The first meet up for Singapore Geek Girls is held in Jan 7th, 2012 at Group Therapy Coffee, with more than 35 geek girls showed up. As one of them, I am very happy to see I am no longer the minority in a techinical meet up. So what’s geek girls about? As said, girls are unique and definitely the minority in Technology world. They look at techonology from a different angle compared to guys. By having this new network, we are hoping girls could get more connected and share more information. Or even better, we could go to techinical conference or workshop together. ...

The following Singapore companies have already “go Public” onto the cloud with Windows Azure! Click on their company logo to check them out or click on the “Feature Me” button to get yourself added to the list! [flgallery id=2/] We understand that the first step is often the hardest and most confusing. Questions like “how do I start?”, “where can I get help”, “who is already using it” are some of the burning questions that every beginner have. This is why we put together a couple of resources to help you get started on your journey to the cloud. Hope you will find this page useful, do check back often as we will be actively updating this page moving forward! [SlideDeck id=‘5513’ width=‘660px’ height=‘500px’] ...

[SlideDeck id=‘5935’ width=‘660px’ height=‘840px’] IT Camps Slide Decks IT Camps - Datacenter Virtualization IT Camps - Private Cloud Online Resources Access FREE online training and understand more about Microsoft Cloud technologies at http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com Download and try out various System Center 2012 products for private cloud through one Single download today!

Recently I presented Kinect programming in Geekcamp Singapore 2011. Here is some of the resources related to my Kinect talk. Firstly, I talked about Augmented Reality. It is about putting a virtual layer on top of physical world. Therefore, after computer gets to know about our physical world through all types of sensors, such as camera, GPS, compass, audio, it will be able to provide a virtual information layer on top of the real world. One example could be BMW Z4 campaign. By using a paper logo, you could see 3D Z4 car appear on screen and you can drive around the car using keyboard control. You can check out video below and download this cool toy here. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTUJKvXIkSU[/youtube] And here is another interesting campaign down by Lego that you could view 3D toy model by using a paper logo as well. Download demo: http://atlantis.lego.com/en-us/augmented/default.aspx Here is how Kinect works as a much more complicated sensor to help computers understand the real world. Kinect captures image stream, depth stream, audio stream to NUI library, which application could interact with. Here is a simple application I did by using Kinect SDK which you could download here. I used one of the samples presented in Kinect SDK quick starts here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/KinectSDKQuickstarts. I think this series of videos really cover all the fundamentals you should know for starting Kinect development. Lastly, I presented two Kinect hacks: - Transform into Ultraman yourself: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-ultra/ [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUG-Uvq-J-w[/youtube] - Kinect with Dragon Ball: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-kamehameha/ [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lajP7HO7ZyE[/youtube] I spent quite long time to configure this. Kinect hack is using open source driver so it will have conflicts with offical Kinect driver. And these comments are very useful for setting up: http://code.google.com/p/kinect-kamehameha/wiki/Comments. Enjoy your Kinect!

Sept 28th 2011, Windows Phone 7.5 officially launch in Singapore, with more than 500 new features and enhancements. And I just received update notification on my HTC windows Phone and finished codename MANGO update. The upgraded features are list below: - Social Network Integration - Facebook, Windows Live, Twitter, LinkedIn - Groups: you could group your closest friends, family, teammates, ping at start screen and starting to received live updates - Chatting: integrated Facebook Chat, MSN Chat. Connecting with your online friends. - IE9!!! - You could scan barcode(only US user), QR code, MS Tags in search to get information. - Amazing windows Live skydrive! Auto-sync for all my documents and back up into the cloud! - Whats my favourite feature? Maybe a girly answer for you: There is a white Windows Phone 7! Lastly for Singapore, HTC Radar and Samsung OMNIA W will be availble soon in store. Samsung OMNIA W will be priced below $498. It has been a year since the first time I got my Windows phone. And great progress!

I attended Microsoft Conference MIX11 last week. MIX is a Microsoft hosted conference that talking about the Next Web with developers and designers in the community. Major announcement of MIX11 was around IE9’s native support to HTML5 and Windows Phone 7 Mango Update. It was a super fun conference for geeks! There were a few very interesting websites using HTML5 could be browsed by IE9 natively. What do we mean by “Native Experience” here? You no longer need to install plugins to make it work, rather the website handles it for you. Now, consumers have all kind of devices in hand. Without a standard, developers have to code applications against different device which will cost a lot of time. And that’s why we have HTML5 this next web standard,which deliver superior performance through Web-connected devices, play an increasingly important role. I will put up some samples site below and you may want to try it out with IE9. ...

I just downloaded 4th & Mayor this new Windows Phone 7 application. As a fan of Foursquare, I am very happy to see this great application. It supports the following features: Check-in to places Comment on check-ins Supports new “explore” features Create and view photos at places Create and view photos within tips New, fun leaderboard experiences Fun, fast, responsive