Finally, support for multiple calendars on Google Sync is now available on Windows Phone too! For those who have been using Google Calendar with multiple calendars, not having support for multiple calendars have been a huge disadvantage for me to adopt the Windows Phone 7 device as my primary device, but not anymore!

How to set up:

1. Simply go to m.google.com/sync on your Windows Phone device.
2. Select your device.
3. Select the calendars to be synced (up to 25).
4. Tap save.
5. Note that your new calendars won’t show up until your phone’s next sync with Google’s servers-every 30 minutes by default.

To manually sync your calendars without waiting, follow the instructions here - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2430181.

Futhermore, Windows Phone users can now search Gmail messages that have not been downloaded onto Windows Phone device! A long awaited feature finally here!

More reasons to get a Windows Phone device, maybe a Nokia Lumia 900 might interest you.

• Wireless synchronization with Microsoft Exchange Online email, calendar and organizer data from a BlackBerry smartphone
• BlackBerry Balance technology, which presents a unified view of work and personal content on a BlackBerry smartphone while keeping the content separate and secure
• An intuitive web-based console for IT administrators to provision, manage and secure BlackBerry smartphones from anywhere
• Online access to employee self-service smartphone security functions, allowing users to easily reset a device password or remotely lock or wipe a device in the event of loss or theft

Managed service providers, systems integrators, carriers, resellers and other partners can also use the cloud service to manage BlackBerry deployments on behalf of their customers.

The service is available today in over 50 countries including Singapore. Customers can go to www.blackberry.com/cloudservices to get started.

Microsoft Explorer Touch Mouse

Microsoft Touch Mouse

Microsoft is announcing its first-ever mouse trade-in program in Singapore. Customers can bring their old computer mouse (any condition or brand) to participating retailers island-wide, and drop them in specially designed recycling boxes to receive a special discount off the Microsoft Explorer Touch Mouse and Microsoft Touch Mouse.

With each trade-in, customers can either receive S$10 off the Microsoft Explorer Touch Mouse (suggested retail price S$59.00 before trade-in) or S$20 off the Microsoft Touch Mouse (suggested retail price S$99 before trade-in).

Details are as follows:

• Customers can purchase any color or edition of the two eligible Microsoft mice with this promotion;
• There are also no limits to the number of trade-ins per customer;
• This promotion is available from 18th January till 31st March 2012 or while stocks last.

Available at selected malls at these locations:

• Sim Lim Square
• Funan Digital mall
• NEX Mall
• 313@Somerset
• Suntec City (E-Life)
• IMM

Here’s the recap of the Microsoft keynote at CES 2012.

Metro UI

• This year’s keynote visuals were based on Microsoft’s Metro UI, which us now being used on Windows Phone and Xbox, and will soon be seen on Windows 8 PCs and tablets

“Windows 7 today, Windows 8 tomorrow”

• Windows 7 remains the fastest selling OS in history, with “7 new copies sold every second”
• There was a demonstration of Windows 8 OS and apps. The next announcement for Windows 8 will be in February, and all Windows 7 PC will be able to support Windows 8.
• Windows Store will open globally in end February
• New ultrabooks from Samsung and HP were also showcased at the keynote

Windows Phone

• Windows Phone has more than 50,000 published apps and games today in the Marketplace, with an average of 300 more added each day
• Nokia announced the Lumia 900 earlier today in partnership with AT&T
• Other new Windows Phone announced specifically for the US market includes the HTC Titan II

Xbox and KINECT

• Xbox 360 has sold more than 66 million units worldwide, and Xbox LIVE is the biggest social entertainment network in the living room with more than 40 million members globally
• In 2011, Kinect has sold more than 18 million units worldwide
• Kinect for Windows was also announced, but it will retail first in 12 countries from 1 February (United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom)

Others

• Cut The Rope for Windows 8 was demoed. The game was built entirely in HTML5 and has been customised for IE9 and you can access it here: http://www.cuttherope.ie/
• Partnerships with US content providers including Fox Broadcasting, IGN Entertainment and WSJ were announced (US only)

The HTML5 version of the popular Cut the Rope game is now available online for free. With the power of HTML5, IE9 and Windows, experiences that were once limited to applications are now coming to life across the web.  You can play Cut the Rope at www.cuttherope.ie.

To get a sense for how the developers at Pixel Lab and ZeptoLab teamed up to turn one of the world’s most popular applications into a web experience, check out the behind the scene technical tear-down in the game  http://www.cuttherope.ie/dev/.

Here are some of the topics (I’ll be speaking on HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers):

• New Active Directory functionality in Windows Server 8
• Windows 8 to go and other Windows 8 new features
• Building blocks of Private Cloud (Product from both Microsoft and other vendor will be covered)
• Build and Deploy Lightswitch Application on Windows Azure
• HTML5 for ASP.NET Developers
• How Office 365 help SME
• Migration of exchange on-premises to Office 365
• Microsoft Lync 2010: Technology over and extensibility of Lync
• Maximizing SharePoint 2010 with Office 2010

For more abstract about this topic, click here.
For registration instructions, click here.Early Bird registration will end on 4th Jan 2012, so get your registration in TODAY!!!

Why you should attend this event:

• To learn about the new generation “8” product.
  (Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 will be covered)
• To learn about Windows 8 and Dev12 devolvement
• A great chance to network around with IT Pros and Dev in Singapore

Who should attend this event:

• IT Professionals
• Developers
• Database Administrators
• Essentially you, as you’re one of the user group members!

For instruction to register to this event, go to http://www.sgdotnet.org/events/CTU2012/Pages/Registration.aspx

To find out more about the event, go to http://www.sgdotnet.org/events/CTU2012/Pages/default.aspx
To find out how to get to the venue, go to http://www.sgdotnet.org/events/CTU2012/Pages/Venue.aspx
To find out why you need to pay for the event and other questions, go to http://www.sgdotnet.org/events/CTU2012/Pages/FAQ.aspx

xinMSN’s Hallyu Channel gives users all-round access to the latest from their favourite Korea stars - from in-depth features, backstage photo galleries and even videos of top events in the world of Hallyu.

To commemorate this launch, fans can participate in The Search for the Golden K-Pop Fan contest. Lucky winners could walk away with an all expenses trip for 2 to the Golden Disk Awards 2012.  There are three ways to participate in the contest, choose from any of the following:

• Photo competition – The K-Fanatic: Take a photo of your K-Pop memorabilia collection and show us what it takes to be a true fan!
• Photo/Video contest – Star Style: Which K-Pop star inspires your fashion sense the most? Emulate the look and score some brownie points with your signature dance move.
• Video contest – Charming Crooner: Let us hear your desire to join the stars by singing a tune or two by your favourite band. Keep things short and sweet by sending a video that’s below one minute long.

To enter the MSN Golden Disk Awards competition, fans can visit the following links in their local countries to begin voting immediately.  All prize winners will be notified by email, and the results of the Contest will be published on the Contest Site on 2nd Jan 2012.

Korea: http://isplus.live.joinsmsn.com/award/26goldendisk/kr/
Singapore: http://entertainment.xin.msn.com/en/hallyu/golden-disk-awards
Malaysia: http://entertainment.malaysia.msn.com/golden-disk-awards
Indonesia: http://hiburan.plasa.msn.com/golden-disk-awards/
Thailand: http://entertainment.th.msn.com/golden-disk-awards
The Philippines: http://news.ph.msn.com/entertainment/golden-disk-awards

Entries close on 29^th December 2011. The competition is open to participants above 18 years of age residing in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, and Korea.

On the third day of Christmas, I’ve got a Microsoft Express Mouse to give away. Just comment on this blog post, tell me you want it, and I’ll randomly choose 1 person to give it away to.

Terms and Conditions:

• You have to be residing in Singapore.
• This give away ends on 12th December 2011 2359 SGT.
• The winner will be contacted through email.

There are 3 steps to doing this:

1. Getting the search data using the Twitter API
2. Using that as a data source in Excel or Google Spreadsheet
3. Populating and saving the data

1. Getting the search data using the Twitter API

For those not so computer savvy, this just means that you’re identifying where the data is for Excel or Google Spreadsheet to suck in the data from. It’s better if you use Google Chrome for this, because Internet Explorer will try to automatically download some of these files instead of displaying them.

Firstly, type the following in your browser:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=<YOUR SEARCH>

where <YOUR SEARCH> is what you want to search for (can include spaces too), without the angle brackets “<” and “>”. This should give you 15 results back. If you want more results, you can add the following in your browser:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=<YOUR SEARCH>&rpp=100

where  rpp means the number of results you want to get back. The maximum is 100 per search only. So what happens if you want more than 100? Then you do the following:

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=<YOUR SEARCH>&rpp=100&page=2

where page is the page number. So page=2 will return the next 101 to 200, page=3 will return the next 201 to 300, and so on.

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=justinlee&rpp=100

http://search.twitter.com/search.rss?q=justinlee&rpp=100&page=2

Save all these links, as above, somewhere once you’ve verified all the data you want to get back. We’re going to use these links so that Excel or Google Spreadsheet can suck up this data.

For more complex searches, check out Twitter Search API.

2. Using that as a data source in Excel or Google Spreadsheet

So now you’ve determined where these data are located (based on the links you’ve just saved), now we can use Excel or Google Spreadsheet to grab these data.

First, let’s take a look at using Excel 2010. Note that Excel 2011 for Mac is unable to do this, so you’ll have to fall back to Google Spreadsheet.

Go to the “Data” tab and select “From Web”. Now paste the FIRST link you’ve created just now and “Import Data”. You’ll get to choose which cell you want the data to be imported to, and done. You’ll see all your twitter data populated into your Excel sheet. Now proceed to the next step.

For Google Spreadsheet, the caveat is you can only import 20 rows at a time, so remember to set your “rpp=20″.

Select the cell you want to start populating your data in, and type the following in the cell:

=ImportFeed("")

Now proceed to the next step.

3. Populating and saving the data

Now that you’ve populated the 1st page, it’s time to put in all your data.

For BOTH Excel and Google Spreadsheet, you should copy and paste the data to another sheet before repeating step 2. After you’ve duplicated the data to another sheet, then REPEAT STEP 2 with the next link you have.

After you’re done importing all the data, you can start analyzing your Twitter data with your Excel/Spreadsheet magic. Have fun!

Now here are my initial thoughts about the Nokia Lumia 800:

• It’s exactly the same as the Nokia N9, except it has a slightly smaller screen (3.7″), no NFC, no front-facing camera. It is using micro-sim similar with the Nokia N9, just something to note about.
• I love touching/swiping the Nokia N9 screen, and although touching/swiping the Nokia Lumia 800 screen isn’t as good, but it’s better than any other touch screen phone I’ve used. With that said, I’m not talking about the software, but the curved screen itself.
• The Nokia ClearBlack display is AMAZING. You can see the difference in the vibrancy of the color and the blacks.
• There aren’t a lot of customizations on the Windows Phone 7.5, so if you’re familiar with WP7.5, it’s all there.
• Services differentiate Nokia Wp7.5 phones over the rest – Nokia Maps and Drive, Nokia Music, Transfer Contacts, App Highlights.
• If anything, Nokia Music has the largest collection of music (English, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc) in this part of the world for purchase.
• Nokia Maps and Drive isn’t as good as I expect it to be. Nokia Drive with free downloadable maps (up to 95 countries) still requires internet connection to do any routing. Still doesn’t help when I’m overseas with no data.
• Transfer Contacts allows you to transfer your contacts from practically any phone (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian) into your Nokia Lumia phones through bluetooth. Extremely useful for a lot of people.
• I’m not too impressed with App Highlights, which is just another app discovery application that’s controlled by Nokia.

The Nokia Lumia 710 is second of the two Windows Phone 7.5 devices from Nokia. It will be available in Singapore *estimated* around December 10th 2011, at an *estimated* price of SGD$499. Do note these are estimated time and pricing, and are not official.Now here are my initial thoughts about the Nokia Lumia 710:

• Not as good as the Nokia Lumia 800 in terms of hardware, but it’s an affordable WP7.5 phone with all the software services provided by Nokia like the Nokia Maps and Drive, Nokia Music, Transfer Contacts, App Highlights.
• 5 different colors for the back covers – white, black, cyan, fuchsia and yellow so customize the look and feel. 2 colors for the front – black or white.
• Otherwise, there’s nothing much that stands out.

And those are my thoughts on the 2 new Nokia Lumia 800 and 710. What do you think about the two new phones?