The Spiffy team is proud to partner Founder Institute to offer 3 scholarships to Windows Developers in their upcoming April Semester 2013! Developers can earn yourself a scholarship through BizSpark Launch Academy. BizSpark Launch Academy is a competition for startups and individual developers based in Singapore who are building applications for the Windows Store, Windows Phone 8 or on Windows Azure. You will stand the chance to receive expert training and feedback to launch startup companies with Founder Institute beginning in April 2013. And… that’s not all! You can also participate in Windows Startup Challenge with the app ideas that you pitch through BizSpark Launch Academy. This could lead you to launch your Windows Store app at DEMO Mobile, a global launchpad for the most innovative mobile startups held in April 2013 in San Francisco, California. So, if you have the ability to prototype a Windows Store app, quickly iterate to design, and bring your app to life, send in an image of the prototype to win8sg@microsoft.com with a quick overview of the app and personal particulars by 8th Feb 2013. More details of how to enter can be found at http://academy.weshipcode.com. You can also tweet about your app building process or prototypes with #app4theWIN. About Founder Institute The Founder Institute is an early-stage startup accelerator and global launch network that helps entrepreneurs create meaningful and enduring technology companies. Through a part-time four month program, existing and prospective founders can launch their dream company with expert training, feedback, and support from experienced startup CEOs - while not being required to quit their day job. Our unique Graduate Liquidity Pool also enables graduates and mentors to share in the equity upside of each class, creating local, teamwork-based ecosystems where great new businesses can flourish. In just over three years of operation, the Founder Institute has helped launch over 650 companies across 37 cities and five continents - making us the world’s largest startup accelerator. Our goal is to “Globalize Silicon Valley” by launching 1,000 meaningful and enduring technology companies per year in over 50 cities worldwide. The Founder Institute was founded in 2009 by serial entrepreneur Adeo Ressi, and is operated out of a small office in the heart of Silicon Valley.

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! HWM is one of Singapore’s most loved technology magazines. We’re really thrilled that it’s on the Windows Store! Here’s what it looks like : HWM adopted a sleek design for it’s Windows Store application. It automatically loads the most updated issue of the magazine and you can opt to purchase it. By scrolling right, you can see the rest of the issues of HWM! There’s never been a better time to save some trees. Once you select the magazine, the pages automagically load. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy all the gadget eye candy that’s going around. Great content presented by one of the leading technology magazines in Singapore. Try it out today and let us know what you think!

The wait is over! System Center 2012 SP1 is now available for download here. System Center 2012 uniquely delivers unified infrastructure, application and cloud management capabilities in a single product offering. Below blog post from the Microsoft Server and Cloud Blog highlights new cloud and datacenter capabilities introduced in SP1. http://blogs.technet.com/b/server-cloud/archive/2013/01/15/transform-your-datacenter-with-system-center-2012-sp1.aspx If you are interested to learn more about the new capabilities, we have just the event for you. You can now join a full technical session delivered by Microsoft System Center MVPs and industry experts. It is happening in Singapore on 31st January. There is no marketing fluff! Go to below link and register now! http://www.systemcenteruniverse.asia/index.html Learn more about System Center 2012 SP1 and start your evaluation.

I talked about the Server Posterpedia Apps for Windows 8 previously. It is a great app for IT Pros. Recently I notice more and more Windows 8 Apps are in the store for IT Pros. Most these apps allow you to perform certain IT Pro administration tasks right from your Windows 8 Apps. The best part is all of them can run in the snap view. You can keep an eye on thing while you working on your desktop. Sandy Berkouwer posted a blog called “Embracing the new Windows 8 Interface with these Three Free IT Pro Apps”, she highlighted three of her favorite FREE Windows 8 Apps for IT Pro. The Remote Desktop app The desktop RDP is still in Windows 8. The good thing about this app is you get to enjoy the entire screen for RDP. You can easily switch between Desktop and RDP session. Don’t have to worry about resolution and display settings etc. Another thing I like is the preview feature. You get to see the preview screen of recent RDP connections. The Hyper-V Manager App This app is like your small dashboard for Hyper-v Hosts and VMs. You can perform the following functions: ...

Happy New Year everyone! I’m quite sure a lot of you managed to get your hands on the brand new flagship Windows Phones by Nokia and HTC. If you didn’t because they were sold out, don’t worry! More stock will come soon. To kick start your new journey with Windows Phone 8 and perhaps to inspire you to build new ones, here are some of our top picks! Top featured App Make free Skype to Skype video and voice calls as well as send instant messages to friends and family around the world with this preview of Skype for Windows Phone 8. SKYPE for Windows Phone 8 Preview. ...

Microsoft BizSpark is proud to be a sponsor for Lean UX Week. The event will run from January 25 – 27, in our very own Auditorium in Microsoft Singapore! Lean UX Week includes three separate one-day workshops catering to students, leaders, and anyone building a product. That’s three days of intensive work focused on the most important topics: customers, product, metrics, and vision. Here’s what you’ll learn. Lean UX Week is a workshop that helps you to learn how to help your organisation create good habits around documenting assumptions about customers by creating personas, defining the minimum viable product, using a metrics dashboard to measure your product’s success and aligning your team members around a common purpose and set of values. ...

We know how important it is to connect like-minded people with each other, so we’ve created 2 new developer communities. Within these Facebook groups you’ll find the latest news, events, resources and a whole bunch of other cool stuff! It’s a pretty awesome place to meet new people! If this sounds like something you want to be involved in, go ahead and join us! Windows 8 Singapore Developer Community Windows Phone Singapore Developer Community See you on there! P.s. MSDN Singapore ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-sg/aa497440.aspx) is still alive, check it out here if you aren’t already familiar with the awesome resources on there!

So you’ve developed an Android, iOS or Web App and are thinking about porting it over to Windows 8. Perhaps there’s too many resources out there that’s gotten you confused. Well, here’s a good resource list to take a look before you go ahead and plunge into code. [caption id=“attachment_12983” align=“alignnone” width=“610” caption=“The design differences between an iPad app vs a Windows 8 app”][/caption] Porting Android App to Windows Store App http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/10/15/port-android-application-to-windows-store-ui.aspx Porting Apple iOS App to Windows Store App Part 1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/14/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-1-introducing-windows-8-platform-to-ios-app-developers.aspx Part 2: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/16/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-2-user-interface.aspx Part 3: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/20/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-3-developer-and-designer-tools.aspx Part 4: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/20/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-4-application-lifecycle-differences.aspx Part 5: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/11/22/porting-ios-apps-to-windows-8-5-storing-data-and-preferences.aspx Porting Desktop App to Windows Store App http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/20/porting-desktop-apps-to-windows-store-apps.aspx Using HTML5/Javascript in Windows Store apps: Data access and storage mechanism Part 1: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/19/using-html5-javascript-in-windows-store-apps-data-access-and-storage-mechanism-i.aspx Part 2: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/win8devsupport/archive/2012/12/19/using-html5-javascript-in-windows-store-apps-data-access-and-storage-mechanism-ii.aspx Remember, porting an app to a different platform is meaningless if you don’t customize for it! Read our interview with local game studio Tyler Projects to find out how they made their games special to the Windows Store. ...

Hi Everyone, It is almost the end of year 2012. This is the time we look back the whole year, think about what we have accomplished and look forward to the new year. I hope it was a fruitful year for you. Year 2012 is a huge year for Microsoft. Many excitements around our new products and services. Here is a video. Enjoy! Last but not least, I would like to thank you for your time reading our blog here. See you soon in Year 2013. Happy New Year ! [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ismMaczcCzo&feature=player_embedded&ytsession=ZkB_Eb-kHtahwejUH2edpuECwN-zXWbGN3eA7lIFvyMsFzlBcdccXHVAwTgp9NmVmkikFHSZxLjClmQhtePG5OQtTh_JKWkBfxecFKEl9GcLCQjTph87uuE11bqJ7mJ3Cg86ekcnOT7xbX9F2BqXS6dHIY4_V2FPnTNsdytZwSjrDHEZk-dyasoNc43dKX4xoe_wTEWtY3sD82miZVk65v8sSwNbOxhVc86QQDW6qN4[/youtube]

How simple is Windows 8? Here is literally a “small” Demonstration. It is done by Microsoft Portugal, but with English subtitles. Enjoy :) [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ODFvy1mjoY[/youtube]