tip

Problem watching YouTube videos on your phone? Here’s a simple work-around

January 25, 2012 | By Surur

Sometimes YouTube videos will not play on Windows Phones, even in HTML5 versions. This tends to be when revenue sharing is implemented, and the video wants to show you an ad.

Pocketnow has a handy tip for getting around this obstacle, which might be helpful to our many readers complaining about this issue.

Via Pocketnow.com

4

Handy Windows Phone Messaging tip

December 19, 2011 | By Surur

MobilityDigest has mentioned a neat tip for group messaging on Windows Phone Mango which others may find helpful. When making a group, e.g. for collective Facebook updates or messaging, one does not actually have to go to the group Live Tile to share info. The group can be accessed directly from the address bar in the messaging client simply by typing in the name e.g Family.

That means sharing a webpage to a group of friends would be as easy as going to the sharing menu item in IE, choosing Messaging and typing in Friends.

Thanks MobilityDigest for the tip.

2

Tip for Developers: easily increase your allowed number of unlocked devices

October 25, 2011 | By Surur

apphub

For registered Marketplace developers, here is a handy tip via Nanapho.jp.

An App Hub account usually only allows developers to developer unlock up to 3 devices. However a simple request using the App Hub support form can increase this to seemingly arbitrary numbers.

In fact in an enterprise setting it has been possible to request up to 100 devices to be unlocked so far, which for a small company would allow vertical applications to be distributed as a trial quite easily.

Tip: Another way to upload videos to YouTube

October 16, 2011 | By Surur

Uploading videos to YouTube has always been a challenge on Windows Phone 7, and while we wait for apps like SocialCam and EasyTube to get their act together, here is a simple method that will work on any handset.

The trick, by Budniu on XDA-Developers, works as follows:

Login on our YouTube account by PC and click in the right corner "Upload" (on the screen is red number 1).
Now we see page the same as screen and on the right site we see "YouTube direct mobile uploads" – click "Setup" (on the screen is red number 2).
Now we see text similar to that: xxxxxxxxx@m.youtube.com and below it tip: "(Tip: Enter this address into your phone book as a contact.)" – add that link to our contacts list.
Now, when we want upload movie from WP7 device, have to open that file from Pictures app, tap "sharing" and send by email to our new contact. When all file is sent, we get return message about success.
Enjoy.

I have tested it out and it works pretty well, allowing full HD uploads for example. I do suggest using a throw-away email account like Gmail to send your videos; any other account may get cluttered with uploaded video.

Via WPSauce.com

3

Tutorial on creating free ringtones for your Windows Phone

September 28, 2011 | By Surur

Andy Topley have published this short tutorial on how to make ringtones from your own music using the free audio app Audacity.

The process is rather simple – load the music in audacity, cut the 39 second part you want, paste that into another instance of audacity and render that to mp3. Lastly pop into your ringtone folder and it should show up in your phone, ready to be assigned to your debt collector or latest squeeze

For more detail read Andy’s site here.

17

Simple trick to force the Mango update

September 27, 2011 | By Surur

With the Windows Phone 7.5 update only being rolled out to 10% of users initially the impatient many many want an early piece of the action.

It seems the old “disconnect the internet“ trick from the NoDo days also works for forcing Zune to deliver the Mango update to your phone.

The step by step instructions are:

Connect your Windows Phone to a PC and launch the Zune software
Click on Settings/Update. Allow the software to tell you whether an update is available. If so, skip this guide. If not continue to the next step.
Click the check for update button again, and this time immediately disconnect your computer from the internet. Do this by pulling the Ethernet cable, disabling Wi-Fi, etc.
Wait 30 seconds or so and you should receive a notification that an update is available.
Now reconnect to the internet and continue with the update process through the Zune software.

Seems simple enough. Let us know if it works for you.

Via WPCentral.com

301

Tip: How to quickly dismiss the volume control in Mango

August 25, 2011 | By Surur

T from the 500features YouTube channel has posted this handy tip for quickly dismissing the larger volume control in Mango.

No special technique is in fact involved, simply the use of the back button, but as we have seen with Molly Wood sometimes obvious things need explaining.

Keep an eye on the 500features YouTube channel here.

11

Map your SkyDrive folder as a desktop network drive

August 15, 2011 | By Surur

Redmondpie (via Pocketnow) has published a nice and easy tutorial for mapping your SkyDrive folder as a network drive on your Windows 7 desktop.

You need Windows Live Essentials installed and SkyDrive Simple Viewer for WebDav (download it from here).

From there on it is pretty simple. Download and run Skydrive Simple Viewer, sign in and copy the URL for the folder you wish to map.

Next, simply map the drive to your desktop by right clicking on “Computer” in the start menu, chose “Map a network drive” and paste the URL just copied.

That’s all and bobs your uncle. Files can be opened directly from the folder and it appears to be fast enough to steam music.

Read the tutorial in more detail at Redmondpie here.

15

WP7.5 Group Messaging may cost you a pretty penny

August 13, 2011 | By Surur

WeLoveWP has raised a warning about Group Messaging in Windows Phone 7.5 Mango which may save our readers some pennies.

It appears group text messages are sent via MMS by default, which tends to cost a lot more and have much lower free allowances.

Disabling Group Text in settings will still allow group messaging to work, but via SMS messages.

Thanks Simon for the tip.

13

Windows Phone Mango now support talking caller id

August 9, 2011 | By Vinodh Kumar

One of the cool feature that I always liked in my Nokia phones but I missed in my iPhone and WP7 is Talking Caller ID. Thankfully this feature is now built in to Windows Phone Mango but hidden somewhere for us to enable it.

Check the demo video to see how to enable this feature.

32

Tip for Mango users: Enable HTML5 playback in YouTube

July 5, 2011 | By Surur

It has so far been difficult to find a good reason to have an HTML5-compliant browser until I attempted to search the desktop YouTube and ran into the dreaded “You must upgrade your Adobe Flash” message. It was then that I recalled that YouTube does in fact have HTML5 streaming trial, accessible via a special page here.

To enable HTML5 playback, simply sign in in your Gmail account, select to take part in the trial, and visit the desktop YouTube as you would normally. In my tests fo far every video has worked well, even over 3G.

Have our readers come accross any other HTML5-enabled websites which are particularly useful? Let us know in the comments below.

16

Tip: Easily see your app purchase history

June 27, 2011 | By Surur

zune_app_history

The Zune web marketplace will finally allow us to see a list of the apps we purchased, but even now there is a way I suspect most of us did not know about.

1800PocketPC.com have just posted this tip: to easily see a list of your downloaded apps, using the Zune desktop software, go to Settings > Account > Purchase History > Apps.

There I discovered in the 6 months of owning my HTC 7 Trophy I have installed 121 applications, or about 20 per month. Unfortunately the list does not tell you which ones are freeware or paid software, so I could not say how much I spent on all the apps.

How many apps have your readers installed over the last few months? Let us know below.

Via 1800Pocketpc.com

20

WP7: Be careful when downloading over unreliable WIFI connections if you have a limited data plan

March 28, 2011 | By Surur

Duncan writes to warn us of a Windows Phone 7 feature which may turn out to be a bug for users with limited data plans, such as AT&T’s 200 MB cap.

Windows Phone 7 protects users with limited plans by only allowing downloads of more than 20 MB from Marketplace over WIFI. It turns out however that if this WIFI connection is dropped the OS will happily switch over to 3G to complete the download, which is somewhat of a feature really, but of course can easily suck down a significant proportion of your data allowance.

The lesson is therefore to make sure you have stable connection when downloading when out and about if you have a small cap.

Thanks Duncan for the tip.

13