The annual MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) was held few days ago, honoring the creative art depicted in the music videos of today. The MTV VMA draw millions of youth from teens to 20-somethings each year. This time, MTV Asia had invited some bloggers and media over to their MTV hub in Singapore on Monday to catch the live broadcast of the MTV Video Music Awards 2011 (VMA 2011); along with VJ Utt & VJ Holly, the live viewing party pretty much gathered the entertainment freaks and enthusiastic writers/bloggers around the region. It was great that MTV decided to flew us to Singapore and take care of our expenses

First time having to step foot into the MTV Asia office, was greeted with a MTV Video Music Awards sign…

Many had arrived earlier as some of them were pretty stoked at catching the live show. Breakfast was also provided for us as the live screening started early in the morning.

MTV VJ Utt & VJ Holly ‘hosted’ that small-scale viewing party, but it was all good as everyone was hyped up with the screening.

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If you haven’t seen the MTV VMA 2011, here are the highlights of the event:

1. The ladies pretty much dominated the MTV Video Music Awards 2011; with Katy Perry, Lady Gaga & Adele being the big winners of the night.

2. Lady Gaga dressed up as a male alter-ego (Joe Calderone),

3. … while Nicki Minaj dressed up as ‘Lady Gaga wannabe’

4. Beyonce shows off her belly onstage announcing her pregnancy after a superb hands-down performance

5. Adele received a standing ovation from all for her hauntingly beautiful performance with only a piano and a glow of a single spotlight on her

6. Lady Gaga tried to kiss Britney Spears onstage when presenting the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award to Britney

7. A tribute to the late Amy Winehouse, by Russell Brand & Tony Bennett and it finishes off with a triumphant performance by Bruno Mars singing Amy Winehouse‘s hit “Valerie“

8. Jessie J commanded the MTV VMA House Artist stage (also known as “intermission singer” haha), keeping the crowd moving after every performance and award being handed out

9. Katy Perry ‘jokingly’ mocked Kanye West onstage regarding the Taylor Swift incident during VMA 2009, while receiving the Best Collaboration Award together for the song E.T.

Here’s the winners’ list for the MTV Video Music Awards 2011:

Video of The Year
Katy Perry – Fireworks

Best New Artiste
Tyler, The Creator – Yonkers

Best Male Video
Justin Bieber – U Smile

Best Female Video
Lady Gaga – Born This Way

Best Hip Hop Video
Nicki Minaj – Super Bass

Best Pop Video
Britney Spears – Till The World Ends

Best Rock Video
Foo Fighters – Walk

Best Collaboration
Katy Perry ft. Kanye West – E.T.

Best Video with a Message
Lady Gaga – Born This Way

Best Choreography
Beyonce – Run The World (Girls)

Best Editing
Adele – Rolling in the Deep

Best Special Effects
Katy Perry  ft. Kanye West - E.T.

Best Cinematography
Adele – Rolling in the Deep

Best Art Direction
Adele – Rolling in the Deep

Best Direction
Beastie Boys – Make Some Noise

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So, what do you think of the winners list? Do you think the winners deserved the awards? Anyone you think that doesn’t deserve any of the categories awarded?

If you’ve recently heard about the HP retreat from hardware, then you’ll have already seen the discounts. However, if you haven’t, allow me to fill you in. HP have decided that, rather than continuing to work on their Palm Pre handsets and the TouchPad tablet computer, they’re going to focus on software instead for the foreseeable future.

If you’ve just bought a Palm Pre or a TouchPad, this is absolutely terrible news and I feel for you, I really do. But if you haven’t done so then you might be in for a far cheaper way to swankily check out http://ru.partypoker.com/, play games or write emails without having to open your laptop and boot the thing up.

Currently, they’re going for less than a hundred dollars, and the Palm Pre is going for less. This is an absolute steal, and if they can get Android onto the machines it’ll be even more impressive. People are working hard on cataloguing uses for the WebOS-operated tablet, and of course the phone isn’t going to do badly either.

For those who just want to play around on the web without paying a ridiculous price for an iPad, this is perfect, and people need to start jumping in feet-first when there’s a fire-sale – if you don’t, others will, and then you’ll be left wishing you’d picked it up for a price that low.

HP have also just announced that they’re discontinuing the TouchPad entirely, which means that for those who bought it new seven weeks ago, it’s going to be a week full of cursing and wondering how HP could not only abandon it, but sell it at an estimated $200 loss per tablet, given that the tablet costs around $300 to make, or so it’s been claimed. At this point it seems like HP are just cutting their losses, if anything.

If you want one for cheap, you may have trouble finding one, but you’ll be happy when you do. For those who bought it on launch day, my commiserations. Now quick! Go get your vulture costumes!

I was halfway shopping in Mid Valley during one of the weekends, heard this loud buzz and announcements as I passed by the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre… Then I realized ‘oh, it’s the Lelong.my E-Commerce Fair!’ and so I went inside to have a look.

So, I went on to register myself at their booth which offers quite a lot of great stuff including promotions and various happenings. Since I missed the opening ceremony earlier on that day, the booths there were pretty much complete, up and running. Many great deals were found at the hall and met a few familiar faces there too.

The first thing that attracted me was the loud announcement of the bidding prices; yup they were having Lelong SuperBid Live! There were loads of items up for bidding from as low as RM1.00 only! People managed to grab gadgets and gizmos at a knocked-down price and I’d say they were simply a bargain. Too bad I didn’t have enough money to bid on that day.

Just to give a brief insight on what is Lelong all about; it is a platform for online entrepreneurs to promote their products online. With over 2000 online stores and half a million items listed on Lelong.my, estimately about RM120-150 million was traded through Lelong.my platform each year. Besides that, one of the attracting feature on Lelong.my is that they have this session called SuperBid every Wednesday; users are able to bid online on various items featured on that week and it starts as low as RM1.00 as well. Quite a bargain I’d say!

Check out Lelong.my if you’ve not heard of them. I believe they’re doing pretty well since they could even organize a large scale exhibition fair like this, kudos!

Nokia Malaysia held a special preview session for Nokia bloggers last week @ Marmalade, Bangsar Village II; We had the chance to be one of the first in the world to preview the upcoming Nokia N9 devices.

Long awaited, the expectations were set pretty high for this device – MeeGo was supposedly tipped as the ‘savior’ of Nokia devices to replace the aging Symbian OS. However, Nokia had announced months ago that they are going to move onto Windows Phone 7 as their primary platform instead. From then on, many of us thought there won’t be much (or maybe nil) room for the allocation of MeeGo on Nokia devices; until… the birth of Nokia N9!

Nokia N9 is a stunning device – sleek, minimal, with curved glass front and no visible buttons. It operates as awesome as it looks! The software – MeeGo ‘Harmattan’ itself empowers the Nokia N9 even further because it is as great as the hardware. Some may perceive this phone as the iPhone-killer / or rather Nokia’s iPhone; the design ethos is really befitting a modern smartphone platform. The MeeGo OS feels so smooth and alive, the design language and iconography is a breath of fresh air, screaming device performance, etc. (you must try the device to be able to get what i mean!)

Nokia N9 holds three key principles:

“Bold, all screen design” – “The simplicity of a swipe” – “One home. Three simple views.“

And they really mean it. As you can see the phone consists of mainly just the screen without any main buttons. All you need to do is just swipe, swipe and swipe. And there’s no complication of many pages opened because at the end of the day you’ll only be swiping left – centre – right (three views only), trust me i’ve tried it and it’s possible!

Very (very, very) promising device by Nokia; hopefully they’ll consider revoking their decision of making Nokia N9 the one and only MeeGo device from Nokia because I could see lots of potential out of it and could possibly be one of the most competitive OS alongside Apple iOS & Android.

The Nokia N9 will be meeting the Malaysian consumers within these few weeks. However, they were still tight-lipped about the actual release date and the pricing details for the device. So, keep a look out for it! If and only if I have a chance to get hold of this device myself, all of you are welcomed to find me; I’ll be sure to make you feel the same way as I do (bored of the iPhone, wanting to try something new, etc)