'The Harvest' for Windows 8 is here - App of the Week

App of the week is a weekly showcase of an awesome app developed on Windows 8 or Windows Phone. Got an app you love that you want us to talk about? Leave us a comment and tell us which app and why you love it! Join the Global Defense Force. Restore Earth to its rightful owners. Stop the Harvesters. In a futuristic science fiction themed RPG, The Harvest has a game plot of hostile aliens out to turn Earth’s organic life into cyborgs. These aliens, known as The Harvesters, use humans and animals to create cyborgs. It is thus the player’s job to hinder the progress of The Harvesters. As a member of the Global Defense Force (GDF), you and your fellow freedom fighters have been deployed to various parts of the world to wage a war against The Harvesters in hope of restoring Earth to its rightful owners. ...

iCreate Mobility Challenge 2013

iCreate Mobility Challenge 2013 Come join the iCreate Mobility Challenge and bring your great idea and dreams to life! This year, we challenge you to unleash your skills and creativity to design a totally new cutting edge app experience that can enhance students’ experience at NUS to the next level. Winning entries will receive prominent recognition and great prizes. All participants who submit their apps will receive a certificate of participation and a token of appreciation. Certificates and tokens will be distributed during registration at the Awards Ceremony. The prizes for each of the categories are as follows*: ...

Pixaroll : Get your instagram sized photos printed and delivered to you on Windows Phone

A startup based in Singapore, Pixaroll is announcing that they are bringing photo printing/delivery service to Windows Phone platform! Unlike self-served printing from consumer photo printers, Pixaroll delivers top quality prints with accurate color reproduction by using professional printing machines with papers equivalent to photo labs. Here are some comparison. *Do note that the final prints are matte finish and digitized with a mobile phone, hence the differences in grains, contrast and exposure from their digital copy. They look almost identical to the digital copy in real life, I promise you. Pixaroll is capable of delivery not only 4" x 6", but 4" x 4" borderless prints which fits instagram’s photo form factor. Delivery in Singapore takes around 2 days, and 7 days for countries outside Singapore. The list of countries which Pixaroll currently ships are as follow ...

Channel Newsasia comes to Windows 8 - App of the Week

App of the week is a weekly showcase of an awesome app developed on Windows 8 or Windows Phone. Got an app you love that you want us to talk about? Leave us a comment and tell us which app and why you love it! Channel Newsasia has officially launched their Windows 8 app. To download the app, you can do so from the Windows Store. Some key features of the app include: ...

Office and Security

Here’s the final installment of #officethursday! This week, we will be talking about security in Office. So, wanna secure your documents? These tips are applicable to both Office 2010 and The New Office. Did you know that we often send/receive documents to our customers without ever thinking if the document that contains any personally identifiable information (PII.) This can cause damage to both the sender and receiver of the document. I’m sad to say that these kind of incidents has happened before, as can be seen in these real life examples: link and link How can we avoid this? ...

May 1, 2013 · 2 min ·  admin

Maintaining the Peak of Productivity

Office Thursday this week shares on tips on how you can Organize your e-mails.I will be sharing about 3 Things**: Categories, Searching Effectively, Mail to Task** CATEGORIES Why do it? Sort out e-mails that needs your immediate actions based on their categories. With Categories, I am able to sort out important e-mails that needs my immediate attention and I can easily filter out e-mails that I can read at a later time. Example: ...

April 25, 2013 · 3 min ·  admin

Windows 8 Design Handbook by Ratio

Ratio Interactive has published a new Windows 8 Design Handbook, a handy reference to those trying to design and style their app to match the design guidelines for Windows 8. The guide covers the following:- Understanding Live Tiles Choosing a Live Tile Designing a Splash Page Designing a Hub Page Key Windows 8 Terminologies Utilizing Semantic Zoom Mastering the App Bar Designing the Detail Page Interpreting the Design Language [vimeo width=“610” height=“345”]http://vimeo.com/52177075[/vimeo] Ratio Interactive goes in-depth in describing all the small details that make up the User Interface on Windows 8, from what Font to use to how to make your app engage your audience. They also have an “Inspiration Gallery” of well-designed apps that you can take a gander at and some pretty darn good Photoshop and Fireworks templates you can download to help with wireframing. It’s worth having as a bookmark and something to refer to when designing or updating your next Windows 8 app. Check it out here at the aptly named windows8designhandbook.com.

App of the Week - Fly iChangi

App of the week is a weekly showcase of an awesome app developed on Windows 8 or Windows Phone. Got an app you love that you want us to talk about? Leave us a comment and tell us which app and why you love it! Changi Airport is now Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8! Here’s some of the highlights of the app: Find details of your flight or check the status of your or your friend’s flights! Keep yourself updated with the highlights of Changi Airport to get the best deals! Furthermore, more information on shops, dining, and attractions at Changi Airport are also available! Don’t miss out on the convenience iChangi app brings you! :)

Hidden Gems on Microsoft Word

DID YOU KNOW most people only use less than 20% of all the features in Office?Wonderful world of WORD 2013When was the last time that you use Word? Yesterday, a few minutes ago? then… let me rephrase that question, when was the last time that you use Word to actually create a beautiful and impactful document? Hidden Gem #1: Styles Use Styles to quickly achieve the proper formatting that you want for your message. You can change an entire paragraph from a Header type format to Quote type format in an instant! If the readily available styles are not enough for your need, you can activate the hidden styles by expanding the styles list by clicking on the expand button (marked green) then clicking on the Manage Styles button After activating this button, the Manage Styles option will appear. In this option you can activate the styles that you need Hidden Gem # 2: Drop Caps Drop caps gives you a professional looking document by creating a capitalized letter at the beginning of the document. To use it. Go to Insert > Go to the Text section > Click on Drop Cap Hidden Gem #3: Translator If you are writing a document that will be sent to people overseas, you can use the built-in Translator function in Word to translate your entire document to a different language. Go to the Review > Translate I’ve converted a phrase from English to Chinese (PRC) ??????????????? ? I then converted the same phrase to French and this is what I got: Si vous lisez ceci, en Chine, alors comment allez-vous ! Not only can it translate text for you but if you activate the 3rd feature in the Translate Option (Mini Translator,) you can even have Word 2013 say those words out loud to you. Hidden Gem #4: Protect Document Since Word 2013 can now open PDFs, saving it to a PDF file can no longer be your “go to” solution for protecting documents from being “Pirated.” Use the built-in security within Office, Protect Document. Go to File > Protect Document. The options Encrypt with Password, Restrict Editing & Restrict Access will work for you and your recipient even if they do not have our Rights Management Service (RMS.) This is a quick and easy way to ensure that you documents stay protected from unscrupulous hands. Quick tip: You can also add a Custom watermark in your document before protecting it, to add an additional layer of protection for your work. Hidden Gem #5: Screenshot and Screen Clipping Add screenshot and screen clippings directly to you document without using the Windows Snipping tool or MS Paint. This works on all the Office applications (even Outlook.) Go to Insert > Screenshot. The tool will present to you the open running applications in your screen and then you can paste it to where you want it to go.

April 17, 2013 · 3 min ·  admin

For better online meeting experience with Lync

Spiffy now brings to you weekly posts on Microsoft Office. If you haven’t, it’s time to learn something new about our favorite and most used productivity tool, Microsoft Office! This week’s article will be on how to have better online meeting experience using Lync. A Better Lync conferencing experience.Use Meeting OptionsHow many times have we encountered a meeting where we had to manually turn off an attendees video because it was accidentally triggered or someone clicked on the “take presenter” option and caused utter chaos? **In Lync you can control your meeting experience even before the meeting starts!**I’m pretty sure that everybody knows how to properly create a Lync meeting, If you don’t know how, please refer to my screenshot.Click on Home > New Items > Lync Me****eting In Lync, you have the ability to set the level of experience that you want through the Lync meeting options. Click on the Meeting Tab > Meeting Options This option allows you control permissions in your meeting. This is only applicable If you are hosting the meeting. By clicking on the first option “A new meeting space (I control permission)” you will be able to access the other options. As a best practice, please use these following settings: Important! If you will have a meeting with someone that is outside of your country, change your Phone setting to the locale of your recipient. In this way, they will be presented with the local number available their country that they can dial in the e-mail invitation. ...

April 10, 2013 · 2 min ·  admin