Apps

Power Planner – The Ultimate Homework Planner

May 23, 2012 | By andrewbares

Power Planner was just updated, adding new features like two-week support, multiple live tiles, and more! Plus, I reduced the price from $1.99 to $0.99!

I’m a student at the University of Arizona, and I realized there weren’t any quality homework planners for WP7. Therefore, I set out to develop the best homework app possible. Over time, Power Planner’s features have expanded and now include:

Take a pic for a homework assignment
Multiple live tiles for each class (paid)
A schedule tile displays your upcoming class and room number
Calculate your grade and average GPA (paid)
Hyperlink detection in details text (supports phone numbers, URL’s, etc)
Two-week schedule support
Fastest homework entry system on WP7.
Automatic reminders for every homework assignment
And so much more!

Instead of the slow default date selector, I created a custom calendar date selector that dramatically reduces the time it takes to pick your due date. Plus, unlike all the other apps, Power Planner remembers your previous due date and selected class, so you can quickly add multiple items to a class faster than any other app.

Power Planner also intelligently creates reminders based off your class schedule. At the end of your day, Power Planner tells you what’s due for tomorrow. And if you didn’t complete an assignment, Power Planner reminds you an hour before the class starts. Also, the live tiles display your actual homework items so you don’t even need to open the app to see what you have due next!

There is simply no better homework app for students. Trust me, I’ve tried them all. If there was a good app, I would have never built Power Planner!

Download Power Planner for FREE or $0.99.

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The Official Wall Street Journal Live App Now In Windows Phone Marketplace

May 23, 2012 | By Pradeep

The Official Wall Street Journal App is now live in Windows Phone Marketplace. The app gives you access to live news from thousands of reporters across the world from WSJ network.

App Description:

WSJ Live: Original Programming, Live and On Demand from The Wall Street Journal. WSJ Live brings you live news and on-demand video directly from 2,000 reporters across the globe. With over 4.5 hours of live programming a day, you can stay on top of the latest in news, elections, markets, tech, opinion, lifestyle. You can also access the entire video archive of The Wall Street Journal.

Tune in for Daily Scheduled Programming:
News Hub: Breaking Economics News
Markets Hub: Complete Markets Coverage
Campaign Journal: Live Election Coverage
Lunch Break: Today’s Headlines plus the ‘Business of Life’
Digits: Breaking Tech News
Mean Street: Breaking Business News
Opinion Journal: Political Commentary
Off Duty: The Latest in Lifestyle

Download it here from the marketplace.

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TalkBox For Windows Phone Now Live In Marketplace

May 23, 2012 | By Pradeep

Last month we reported about TalkBox, a cross platform voice messaging service coming to Windows Phone. Its now available from Marketplace and allows you to send messages with your voice and text input.

App Features:

? Push-to-talk (PTT) INSTANT Walkie Talkie, voice messaging, text messaging, photo sharing and location sharing with your friends
? Cross-Platform Messenger
? FREE and works over WIFI, 3G and any other data network
? GROUP CHATS
? Mark your message as favorite
? Post voice to Facebook, Twitter and make broadcast to all your friends
? Address Book and Facebook contacts Integration
? 12 theme color
? Conversation History

Download it here from the marketplace.

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FREE powerful stopwatch : StopwatchXB One Year Birthday

May 23, 2012 | By XingBull

StopWatchXB team is happy to announce you one year of existence for StopwatchXB.

During this year more than 1500 users tried it and adopted it.

In order to Celebrate this event, StopWatchXB will be free for few days.

StopwatchXB is highly rated more than 4/5 stars : "Fantastic!", "Excellent, very comprehensive and easy to use", "This is a very useful stopwatch app."

Just try it and adopt it !

If you like it please feel free to add comments, note app on the market, and share it. It’s the best way to thanks developer for time they past, and costs you few time.

In order to know your preference for visual style, a poll is organised please go visit it, and add comments.

Why use it ? you can…

follow your performances easily with graphic chart embedded
send data by mail to your friends
analyse data at home
StopWatchXB includes a sound alert to prevent you on scheduled time for each lap or total time : don’t be afraid to miss the person/car you wait on each lap.
calculate your average speed on each lap
save unlimited laps
use it as a quick and easy stopwach always in your pocket
keep data same after interruption of the app, StopWatchXB works like running in background
automatic lockscreen disabled

Where to use it ?

Running, Athletics
Cars racing, Motorbikes
Cooking
Everywhere else you need a stopwatch

For more information and try the new version, you can download StopWatchXB on the following QRCode:

Get it now for FREE.

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Lightning Task Manager for Windows Phone 7

May 23, 2012 | By CaveKnight

Lightning Task logo Lightning Task is a highly featured task manager/to-do list with a strong emphasis on speed and efficiency. Its user interface is intuitively designed to minimize the amount of tapping and finger work needed to get the job done.

Features include:

Fast multi-view layout that can sort tasks based on category, due date, priority
Search function that helps find specific active or previously completed tasks
Smart view headers which tell how many tasks remain that fit a certain sorting criteria
Smart view headers can also feature a “+” button which can automatically set a new task to fit the respective sorting criteria
Live tile which indicates how many incomplete tasks remain and the Lightning Apps mascot “Esc” featuring different facial expressions based on the number of incomplete tasks remaining
Customizable categories
Automatic alarm reminders
Macro-selection commands that can apply changes to multiple tasks at once
Many quick due buttons such as “3 hours from now” or “+1 day” which can set the due date/time to very specific parameters automatically
Task can have an optional specified location, which can be viewed on a map
Task can have optional “notes” field
Option to set how long to keep old completed tasks
Customizable default due time

QR code

Price is $0.99 USD, and includes a 7-day free trial.

Visit CaveKnight website for more info.

Click here to download

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Runkeeper calls its quits on Windows Phone, not worth their time

May 22, 2012 | By Surur

Runkeeper has announced on their blog that they will no longer be supporting Windows Phone and Symbian, and will be removing their app from Marketplace.

Saying they have spread themselves too thin and that the two platforms combined only made up a very small percentage of their users, they said they could no longer justify “ giving our Windows and Symbian apps the support they need to be up to our quality standards, and if they can’t be up to our quality standards, they shouldn’t be at all.”

While this is pretty understandable, the company made one telling statement which suggests they are rather out of touch: “Combined, they make up less than 1.5% of our total userbase. We don’t see this changing any time soon, these platforms simply haven’t kept up with Android and iPhone, and we only see this gap increasing over time.”

Clearly the company has no real understanding of market share numbers. Hopefully by the time Windows Phone takes significant market share everyone on Windows Phone would be using a number of excellent alternatives available, such as Runtastic or Endomondo Sports Tracker.

See their blog post here.

Thanks Arbel for the tip.

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Nokia Pulls Skype For Windows Phone App From Lumia 610 Device

May 22, 2012 | By Pradeep

This is a really bad news for Nokia Lumia 610 device owners. After Skype announced that it won’t support Skype for Windows Phone on devices with 256MB RAM, Nokia came to rescue the users and announced that Skype for Windows Phone will work on Lumia 610. But now, Nokia has felt the same way Skype did and has decided to pull the Skype app from the marketplace.

Below is the translated statement from Nokia China,

“Nokia values the user experience provided by its products and services. Therefore, although the Skype Windows Phone version is workable on Nokia Lumia 610, after in-depth testing, we found that the user experience is not up to par with Nokia and Skype’s expectation and decided not recommending users using Skype on Nokia Lumia 610. In the future, users of Nokia Lumia 610 would no longer be able to download Skype Windows Phone version from Window Phone Marketplace. However, Skype Windows Phone version would still be available for other users.”

What do you think of this decision from Nokia ?

Source: welovewp.hk

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Nokia Releases Transport 2.0 App For Lumia Windows Phone Devices

May 22, 2012 | By Pradeep

Nokia today released the second version of its exclusive app Transport for Lumia Windows Phone devices. The new version features improved search, performance, etc,.

Change log:

Find nearby stations, departure times and even types of transit lines available around your location.
Improved search:
- Remember your last search query
- Change your search without leaving the journey view
Improved performance
- Faster display of upcoming journeys
- Faster journey request

This app works differently according to the region. It provides us route based on timetable and estimation.

From Nokia,

This app supports timetable-based information in certain cities & regions and estimated routing in others.

Estimated routing uses the map data to calculate a heuristic route, based on the likely frequency of lines. That means we have no exact departure and arrival times, but only know how long a journey using certain lines might take.

Download the app here from the betalabs site.

via: Nokia Beta labs

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Skulls of the Shogun – Developer Interview

May 22, 2012 | By Matthew

Windows Phone hasn’t had a lot of exclusive games, so when I saw that Skulls of the Shogun, a turn based strategy game, was coming out exclusively to windows phone I was very excited. I was able to chat with two of the devs behind one of the biggest smart phone games of the upcoming Fall which is also Microsoft platform exclusive to boot. Hope you enjoy.

I just wanted you to introduce to yourselves to start off.

Borut – I’m Borut Pfeifer and I’m the engineer, designer in the game.

Ben – He’s actually the lead programmer *laughs* I [Ben Vance] also do programming, designing and writing as well.

Since this is a phone site, what do you guys use for your daily phones?

Borut- I have a Windows Phone; an HD 7;

Ben – And I recently switched from an old iPhone to an Android Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I was actually eyeing the new Nokia’s…ahh..that just came out, but I had to get…had to get a phone before they came out, what was that late March? I couldn’t wait.

Borut: I am thinking about upgrading to one of those now too. Pretty good.

Yeah you have a first generation one.

Borut: Yeah

Wanted to ask you about the development of your game. I know that a lot of our readers are developers and would be interested. I know that this game has been in gestation for a while…I remember reading previews almost two years ago. How did the development of the game change over time? Was it always an Xbox Live Arcade game?

Continue reading →

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TheTrainline.com gets an official Windows Phone app

May 22, 2012 | By Surur

Here’s one for UK readers. thetrainline.com is the UK’s leading independent train ticket retailer. They have just released a mobile app that helps you check train times (updated throughout the day) and ticket prices as well as buy train tickets for all train companies to all national rail destinations. You can buy train tickets up to 10 minutes before you travel – and collect from over 1000 stations.

The app features:

Access train times information from the official national rail timetable (updated throughout the day).
See recent and save favourite journeys making it easy to re-use common journeys and stations.
See nearby stations in a list or on a map using your phone’s location services.
View station information including ticket collection kiosk locations.
View your ‘next train home’. The app finds the nearest station to your current location and lists departure times of the next trains to your home station.
Buy right up until 10 minutes before boarding the train and collect from over 1000 stations.
Create an account and book the same range of train tickets as on thetrainline.com website.
Save your preferred payment card making it simple to buy train tickets without having to hunt out your card details.
View ticket collection reference for tickets you’ve bought – regardless of whether you have a signal.

If you want to jump the interminable queue and buy your tickets straight from your phone download the free app from Marketplace here.

Via AAWP

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IslamicHub – a free Information Hub for Muslims and those interested in Islam

May 22, 2012 | By kardasch

IslamicHub

IslamicHub is a free (ad based) App, that wants to become a central Hub for gaining knowledge, for Muslims and those who are interested in Islam.
At the moment it contains:

Daily Hadith (Sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, updated daily)
Daily Quran (Verses of the Quran on a daily basis, updated daily)
“Do you know?” section, which contains general information, that is updated on a regular basis.

qrcode

In the current version 3.0 the complete Quran and a Hadith Database has been added. The Application is in English, German and Arabic language, with transliteration and audio of the Quran and the Sayings. The App has a live tile that shows when new content is available and a notification option to remind you of checking out the new content.

Most new features are implemented on the base of the customer feedback. Please give it a try, download it here for free.

There is also an ad-free version (IslamicHub+) for 0.99$ that you can download here.

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Our Brisbane for Windows Phone

May 22, 2012 | By kenga

The idea behind the app is to provide the user a sense of Brisbane around them and to give them guided access to places of interest. Using the Windows Phones 7 GPS all data sets are presented to the user presorted based on the distance of the user to the place of interest. Each data set that contains location information provides a small map that shows their location and the place of interest with the added ability of the user to seek “turn by turn” navigation option at the tap of a button. The directions can be optimized for driving or walking. Most data sets allow the user to save Favorites and quickly navigate to them from wherever they are.

We have been careful to show “Accessibility” as it relates to all data sets and in addition have dedicated a page that allows a user to look up all know accessibility information and rating for a full range of Brisbane services e.g. Business, Education, Shopping, Community, transportation and much more. We think this will help someone with accessibility needs make informed decisions before accessing Brisbane services or locations etc.

This app is the perfect companion for anyone wanting to explore Brisbane Australia. It uses an extensive Brisbane data set provided data.gov.au.

The app presents data based on your location or from the Brisbane CBD if you don’t allow location. You will find all the lists of data sort by distance from you.

The data set includes

Ferry timetables and bus stop locations
Free Wi-Fi spots

Public Toilets

Sport and recreation
Parks, playgrounds, dog parks
Libraries
Cemeteries – heritage and current
Accessibility Information through most sections
Weather
Parking, no-Parking and Loading Zones
Maps and turn by turn driving and walking instruction
Many set of Live data feeds
Set Favorites
And more…

Truly if you live In Brisbane, plan to visit Brisbane or are just plan curious about Brisbane you need this free app.

“Our Brisbane” is both a wonderful city and a wonderful app.

See some screen shots after the break.

Continue reading →

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The 7 highest rated apps in the Marketplace…

May 21, 2012 | By andrewbares

James Booth from 7tutorials.com recently compiled a list of the top 7 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, based on user ratings (courtesy of AppFlow App Discovery). Here are the top 7!

RapDialer – 4.82 / 1539 ratings

RapDialer is a fast and fluid T9 contact searching/dialing app, meant to replace the default way of searching for contacts via the typical keyboard. James over at 7tutorials.com didn’t seem to think RapDialer is any faster than a traditional keyboard, but thousands of users (myself included) would disagree! Plus, over 1,500 reviews is really impressive!

Baconit – 4.80 / 2640 ratings

Baconit also has a ridiculous amount of reviews, and is also one of the best apps on WP7! If you love Reddit, Baconit is an excellent choice. If you’ve never used Reddit… try it out and visit the windowsphone Subreddit, you may find that it’s an excellent source of news (after WMPoweruser of course). James personally wasn’t impressed with the whole Reddit network, but he also mentioned that he’s not a big fan of social networks in general.

Stop The Music – 4.79 / 273 ratings

This app is great if you’re OCD and need to clean the last playing song from your volume controls. I personally have no use for this app, but those who need this app love it!

Power Planner – 4.79 / 222 ratings

Power Planner is a homework planner app I personally developed, with features like the fastest homework entry system yet, class schedules, grade/GPA calculator, live tiles, picture support, and much more. As James nicely wrote, “users have said it made the difference in their grades. I can easily see how it would be a beneficial tool for any student. Based on the apps covered so far, in terms of real world usefulness, I feel it deserves a higher placement on the list.”

Starbucks Finder – 4.78 / 144 ratings

Starbucks Finder is a simple app that lets you locate the nearest Starbucks and get info about the stores. James points out that this app was actually created by a Windows Phone fan, not Starbucks themselves, which makes their ranking in the top 7 even more impressive! If you’re a Starbucks fan, you’ll probably love this app too.

ZDclock – 4.78 / 422 ratings

ZDclock is meant to be an app that reminds you to do everything… take your pills, wake up in the morning, make a bank payment, etc. James points out that all of these features could already be done with the built in Alarms or Calendar app. While that is true, ZDclock does give a more streamlined interface for creating reminders, and is worth a try.

Relax Melodies – 4.77 / 252 ratings

At the time James wrote his article, Flixster was actually the 7th highest rated app. As of our press time now, Relax Melodies jumped ahead. Relax Melodies allows you to create a custom soothing sound mixture that is meant to help you relax off to sleep. Reviews have been extremely positive, with one reviewer stating that the soothing sounds “make a marvelous ambiance for any situation.”

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