Konnichiwa! Summer has finally arrived in Japan, and the new season marks an important event in my social calendar: TEDxTokyo 2013. Although I could not obtain tickets for the live event, I was able to attend the live public screening at Shibuya Hikarie 8/COURT. The theme for TEDxTokyo 2013 is ‘1+1=11’ which meant “don’t take things for granted”. The ideas that inspired us the most are usually the ones that challenge our common thinking. This is the spark that TEDxTokyo 2013 aims to inspire in all of us. Once the event venue was opened, everyone quickly found their best seats in the house to enjoy the interesting line-up of over 30 talks for the day. At 9am sharp, the presenter announced the opening of TEDxTokyo 2013, and the event kicked off with a spectacular display of classic Edo magic, known as tezuma, by Kohtaro Fujiyama. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qu8Dla5rASU) As a pleasant surprise, members of the audience were encouraged to take to the stage and share their ideas during brief breaks between talks. One of my favorite talks of the day was by Gunter Pauli on “Catalyst, Innovation Driver and Blue Economist”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKS_nZP8LMM) Gunter Pauli is a renowned serial entrepreneur, author and initiator of The Blue Economy. His notion of a Blue Economy and his radical entrepreneurial ideas embodied the event’s theme of challenging our common thinking. You can check out the following video which explains the concepts of the Blue Economy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1af08PSlaIs I would also recommend everyone to check out the great session by Gaunter Pauli in TEDxTaipei 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWauj7_hyWU I would like to congratulate TEDxTokyo team for organizing a great event. It was truly an inspiring day filled with great ideas and conversations with innovators and change agents. I enjoyed myself at the event and I am looking forward to the next TED event in Tokyo and Singapore. You can enjoy the videos for TEDxTokyo 2013 at their Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsRNoUx8w3rM-qjY05E1LorJK3hf2EEzK What do you think of the TEDxTokyo 2013? Do you have other great events to recommend for us to participate? Do share with us your recommendations in the comments below and we might just do a special report based on your recommendations!

If you don’t already know, WalkaboutSG is happening this coming Friday from 12pm-5pm at the CBD area. We’ll be opening up the Microsoft Innovation Center and Microsoft Technology Center for you to find out more about the work we do together with startups and how we support innovation in the local software economy! We’ve got tonnes of free swag to give away, so if you’re coming by Raffles Place, remember to come to One Marina Boulevard! See you soon, Team Spiffy

We Live to Code has officially come to an end on 5th May, when we received the final app submissions from our participants! Great job to all the participants in this hackathon! So who are the winners of the Samsung Ativ PCs? *drumrolls* 3rd prize goes to StockFolio. StockFolio allows you to monitor the progress of your desire stock exchange market. It could support multiple stock exchange markets and keep their settings neatly separated. Interested to download, visit the Windows Store! ...

Microsoft Cloud Summit 2013 offers breadth and depth of topics that will help your company get the most of your existing software investments. Learn how Microsoft can help you improve productivity and drive down costs, preparing you to better advise business decision makers on future technology investments. Date: 22 May 2013 Time: 9am - 5pm (registration starts from 8.30am) Venue: InterContinental Singapore Bugis Grand Ballrooms, Level 2, 80 Middle Road Singapore 188966 For enquiries, please contact Christine at Tel: 6296 7769 or email her. Why you should attend this event: ...

I talked about few times about using Azure for Websites and Host Services like build Wordpress blog easily with Windows Azure Websites. Recently few people asked me how to create a custom domain name for the Azure Websites or the Services/Apps hosted on Azure. For example, take my blog as an example. When I created the my blog on Azure, it will give me a URL like http://ricqi.azurewebsites.net. It is not too bad, but it is a bit too long for me to promote my blog to everyone i meet. I do have a registered domain name http://ricqi.com. Ideally I would like to use that for my Azure hosted blog. There two detailed documents about this ...

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 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*: ...

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 ...

Recently at the Windows Azure Global Boot Camp, I talked about how to migrate sharepoint from on premise to Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Some of you reached out to me after the session for the scripts, so this article helps you to create that script. Important: Do NOT copy the script blindly. You need to change some variables for you environment. Read through the script and optimize for your own environment. Tweet to me @richardqyc if you have any suggestions to make the script better :) First thing first, download and install the Windows Azure Command Line Tools. After the Command Line Tools installed, prepare to get the Windows Azure subscription file publishing settings. Here is how to do it: ...

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: ...