mango

Ubisoft’s Your Shape For Windows Phone Gets A Major Update

January 22, 2012 | By Pradeep

Ubisoft released a companion app for the Kinect game Your Shape: Fitness Evolved long back. The app just got a major update with many new features. The app allows you to keep in touch with the ‘Your Shape Center’ profile, challenge your friends, and keep track of your progression.

Version 1.5:

- Brand new design and accessibility improved.
- Guest mode for players without a Uplay account.
- Live Tile to display your current level and calories burned.
- You will now be able to interact into the application: create, join and abandon current competitions.
- Notification for the news.
- Display of the calories burnt worldwide.
- More than 50 new tips added.
- Optimized for Windows Phone 7.5

You can now download the free app here from the marketplace.

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IMDb Windows Phone App Updated With Live Tile, App Connect And More

January 22, 2012 | By Pradeep

The official IMDb app just got updated to v1.3 with some cool Windows Phone Mango features. The app now supports Live Tile which allows you to pin the app to start screen to get info on movies. At last, the app added the search integration via App Connect feature which may come handy when you are searching related to movies. And the app now features social sharing of movies and people along with many bug fixes which should make the app more awesome.

You can download the app here from the marketplace.

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Prediction: 2012 Will be the Year of Windows Phone

January 18, 2012 | By robtiffany

Windows Phone 7.5 is running fast out of the gate for 2012. The stunning mobile operating system from Microsoft was the talk of CES in Las Vegas this year. The accolades streaming in from the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, reviewers, and tech bloggers are unprecedented.

The Nokia Lumia 900 won the Best of CES award in the Smartphone category and it’s no surprise. Before listing off the impressive specs, just look at this gorgeous piece of hardware. Looks matter…trust me. Windows Phone is already the most elegant mobile operating system. Breathtaking industrial design is the other half of the equation. When paired with iconic hardware, it’s like pairing your favorite Walla Walla Cabernet with your favorite steak.

I can’t count the number of reviews and comments stating that Windows Phone on the Lumia 900 has surpassed the iPhone. If you follow the U.S. wireless market, then you know that things like 4G LTE network speeds, large screens, front-facing cameras, and dual-core processors are the current drivers of smartphone sales. The Lumia 900 addresses three of those drivers with support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, a 4.3-inch AMOLED ClearBlack display, and a front-facing camera for video calls. It’s powered by a single 1.4 GHz processor and if you’ve paid attention to all the reviews in the press, you’ve heard that Windows Phone runs circles around its dual-core competitors. Better software design, better engineering, more efficient algorithms, and optimized coding techniques means you can do more with less. Last but not least, the Lumia 900 comes with an amazing 8MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics.

The HTC Titan II came to the CES party guns-blazing with a monster of a smartphone. It tics all the required boxes needed for sales by delivering a massive 4.7 inch screen, support for AT&T’s 4G LTE network, and a front-facing camera. The 1.5Ghz Snapdragon 2 processor gives this superphone all the horsepower it needs.

Joining the camera arms-race with the Lumia 900, the Titan II comes equipped with a whopping 16 megapixel camera that can capture 720p video. If you’re looking for a giant phone that can go head-to-head with the Galaxy Nexus, this is your device.

2012 is already shaping up to be a great year with compelling hardware matched-up with Windows Phone 7.5, but what else does this platform need to make my prediction come true? Oh yeah, apps. Do you remember back in the 80′s when DOS-based PCs from IBM and Compaq gave Apple IIs and Macs more than they could handle? It might not have been eye-catching, but DOS had more apps that allowed consumers and companies to be successful. In the 90′s, Windows ran away with the computing market with the Mac, Linux, NeXT, and OS/2 unable to compete in the app department. Why do you think this was the case? I know a big reason was because Borland and Microsoft made better and easier-to-use development tools for Windows.

With 50,000+ apps in the Marketplace, Windows Phone is surging forward and now sits in third-place behind the iPhone App Store and the Android Market. Aside from developers betting on the success of a platform, they need development tools, emulators, and programming languages that make it easy for them to be productive. When I look at the velocity at which new apps are being added to the Windows Phone Marketplace, it tells me that Visual Studio is making a big difference.

In my job, I have to work with the development tools for all the major smartphone platforms and I can tell you without drinking any Kool-Aid that the competition isn’t even close. Most iPhone developers I know find that learning Objective-C from the NeXT operating system to be a daunting task compared to modern, high-level languages like C# and VB. While the world is full of Java developers, the complexity of cobbling the necessary tools together needed to build for Android apps is a real productivity killer. Just running Eclipse on JDK 1.6 sucks the life and performance out of my fast Windows 7 laptop. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone is free and the emulator + SDKs all download and install together making the whole process fast and simple. Apps get access to all phone sensors, a local database (SQL Server Compact), and Metro design.

Better productivity means faster time-to-market which means more apps for Windows Phone.

If you’re a web designer/developer, Internet Explorer 9 is alive and well on Windows Phone 7.5. This means you’re no longer held hostage to the highly-fragmented WebKit mobile browser platform. You get a hardware-accelerated, amazingly fast browser with support for more “fully-baked” HTML5 standards like Web Storage, Geolocation, Canvas, Audio and Video.

The lightning fast-Chakra JavaScript engine supports ECMAScript 5 which means your DOM interactions and Ajax web service calls will blur the lines with native apps. When you retrieve data from the cloud or your on-premise servers via Ajax, you’ll now be able to persist it offline in Web Storage. Support for CSS3 means things will be beautiful, 2D transforms will occur, and media queries will give you responsive design.

So here we stand with the best smartphone operating system, best hardware, best development tools and the best mobile web browser. I’m certain that Windows Phone with its army of app developers, OEMs and Mobile Operator partners will be marching to victory this year.

Be fearless,

Rob

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Sneak Peek of Free SMS India v 3.0

January 17, 2012 | By Kunal Verma

Indian WP7 Marketplace scene is rapidly getting better and better.

A lot of new apps have been released over the last few weeks, most of which were featured here.

Now Free SMS India, the popular free sms service provider app is getting bumped to v 3.0.

And a slew of features are coming to the new version.

Some of those are -

Completely new revamped UI (more metro!)
No Web Interface now
Live Tiles
Instant SMS Delivery
No Ads in SMS
You can send upto 440 chars in SMS
Send SMS to DND numbers

The services in the new versions are -

Way2SMS
Site2SMS
FullOnSMS
SMS440

Above are some screenshots from the upcoming version. The Updated version will be in the marketplace within 10 days.

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Windows Phone Mango Commercial Release 2 is not Tango 1

January 11, 2012 | By Surur

Mango Commercial Release 2 is not Tango

Mary Jo Foley answered a question which has been turning over in my mind these last few days.

There has long been a rumour that there would be two Tango updates for Windows Phone, Tango 1 and Tango 2.

At the time we wrote:

Tango 1 to broaden the markets addressed by Windows Phone 7 by adding additional language support and so forth, much like Mango did, but to even more countries. Apparently Nokia is heavily involved in this, as these markets are their bread and butter.

Tango 2 will be targeted at low-cost devices and include fixes and new features, as well as services and language support for markets that still won’t have been addressed after the Tango1 release.

The Nokia Lumia 900 was announced as running Windows Phone Mango Commercial Release 2, and I am sure some, like myself, suspected this was Tango 1.

Now Mary Jo Foley has been able to confirm with Microsoft that Mango Commercial Release 2 is just Mango plus the 8107 “keyboard fix” service release.

Paul Thurrott has been spearheading a rumour that Tango will not be coming to all handsets, and given the brief above it may not bring much that we will miss in any case.

Urban Dictionary 7 ver2.1 – Urban Zen + Definition-on-live tile

January 10, 2012 | By socialebola

Version 2.1 of Urban Dictionary 7 is out. The app now fully supports Mango (with more Mango features to come). There are two great features that have been added:

“Urban Zen” – a hypnotic-like slide show of random terms taken from Urban Dictionary superimposed on images gotten from the internet. It’s one third funny, one third WTF and one third creepy – who could ask for more in a slideshow?

The other feature (only available in the paid version) is the ability to see the definition of the word-of-the-day on the back of the live tile.

northpolephotoboothqr More features

See “term of the day” on your live tile
Search for terms (and images) in Urban Dictionary in a friendly, metro UI.
Share terms with your friends via SMS, Email or Facebook
Save terms in your favorites
Free version available

Download it now (or download the paid, ad-free version).

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Apps still don’t use Mango multitasking… what gives?

January 3, 2012 | By andrewbares

Fast Application Switching, otherwise referred to as multitasking, was a new feature added in Mango. Three months later, and you still can’t use this feature most of the time!

The sad truth is that only 30% of the top 20 apps in the Marketplace support multitasking. To make things worse, 19 of those 20 games are endorsed by Microsoft themselves. The top 20 free apps are quite better, but still not acceptable, with 20% not supporting Mango.

With so few games supporting Mango, responding to text messages is always a pain. The entire Windows Phone experienced is ruined for me when I have to sit there for 10 seconds waiting for a game to resume. For those who think: “10 seconds, quit whining”, consider that many people will respond to a text, go back to their game, play for maybe 60 seconds, respond to the reply, play again, respond…. those 10 seconds add up quickly.

Microsoft needs to get their act together and start forcing Xbox Live titles to support Mango.

The best solution (in my opinion) would be to simply require that all future apps and updates be Mango enabled. Mango has been out for a solid 3 months, and the dev kit has been out even longer! Developers have no more excuses. Share your thoughts below in the comments.

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Leaked Windows Phone Roadmap gives us a peek into the future

December 27, 2011 | By Surur

WindowsPhoneRoadmap

For those who wonder what Microsoft’s game plan with Windows Phone is, this leaked roadmap should at least provide some pointers, up to date as of October 2011.

It lays the foundation with the release of Windows Phone 7 as a high end, differentiated product. Mango followed in Q4 2011 with new features, languages and countries.

Tango, possibly to the disappointment of some, will concentrate on enabling Windows Phone 7 on low-end handsets for the “best prices” and will come in Q2 2012.

Things will get real with Apollo however, in Q4 2012, when Microsoft finally expects volume to increase (at least an indication of their expectations for Windows Phone sales for most of 2012), enable the release of high-end super phones (presumably with dual core and HD screens), and finally address the needs of business.

Does this roadmap satisfy our readers and finally provide a solution for slow Windows Phone sales? Let us know below.

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Bokach Software Debuts "Submarine Patrol. Battles of Falklands" App for Windows Phone 7

December 14, 2011 | By rkorolenko

Bokach Software today announces "Submarine Patrol. Battles of Falklands" is available on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The new arcade game plunges players into an amazing submarine war experience, coming to life right on their Windows Phone 7 handhelds.

"Submarine Patrol. Battles of Falklands" has a legend and is based on real events that took place in the waters of Falklands 20 years ago. Player will relive this era as a leader of a submarine that patrols the islands and destroys enemy battleships. The game is easy to play and hard to win.

The game lets you shoot at various types of enemy ships, ranging from aircraft carriers to cruisers and boats. They are different in size, power, and how fast they move. To succeed in the game, players need to target well before they shoot because ammo is limited. Besides, players cannot immediately fire one torpedo after another as it takes 2-3 seconds to prepare the next torpedo. The submarine will shake and buzz once the rocket is fired to simulate real submarine behaviour. Injured ships, depending on the amount of damage, may reduce their speed and move slower, so you’ll need to hit them 2 to 4 times before they are completely destroyed. submarineqr

"Submarine Patrol. Battles of Falklands" is free to try for the first level, or users may purchase the complete game with 10 levels for $1.99 through the Windows Phone Marketplace here.

For more information, visit the official game blog at submarinepatrol.blogspot.com

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Windows Phone; waiting for a hero

December 13, 2011 | By rush24

The Windows phone has been out for over a year now and yet month after month, the sales numbers indicate the platform not gaining positive traction with consumers in terms of market share. With the release of the Mango update, stories are now pouring in of tech bloggers and Microsoft critics praising the OS with the latest being Robert X Cringely.

Month after month we wonder, what will it take for the average consumer to give the OS a chance? Will it be new phones with LTE or dual core processors? Will it be the return of Nokia to the US? Microsoft has a huge perception bias against them as this ZDNet article perfectly illustrates with Bing (but can applied to most its other products as well) Who or what will be the hero that will come down and lead Windows phone to victory?

A few months ago, I wrote a post on what I thought Microsoft needed to do in order to remain competitive with the then yet unannounced iPhone 4S and Android Ice Cream Sandwich. Five months later. I think the main problems still persist. The carriers (where a majority consumer purchase their phones) are still not pushing the OS or at least presenting it in a favorable light. The advertising is virtually non existent though Nokia seems to be doing a great job in Europe. In the US, I’m quite puzzled by Microsoft spending a bulk of the prime time advertising Windows 7, an OS which already gained traction in the market and sold hundreds of millions of licenses thereby needs no help, while giving a cursory mention to fledgling mobile OS. Yes, there are some ads from the carriers, but you will notice that they are mainly focused on selling the hardware and not the OS.

Where is Microsoft’s sustained “Droid Does” like campaign that vaulted Android into the mainstream? If they only could bring themselves to embark on an product promotion that focuses on the integration found in the people hub with Facebook and twitter, messaging hub with voice and seamless switching between, SMS, Facebook chat and Messenger, Pictures, Calendar and Email with linked inboxes, Bing with Local Scout, Vision and Audio, Xbox live Office and the Zune hub. Just show the ads with a phone and a feature in action. No cheesy gimmicks. Deemphasize apps because the OS’s strength is getting helping the user to accomplish tasks as efficiently as possible without having to think what app they need to use.

What will it take to get Windows Phone over the hump? Six months from now, do you guys think we’ll still be having this discussion on what Microsoft needs to do to gain market share? Are we still going to be waiting for a hero, perhaps Windows Phone 8?

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Amazing Weather Beta

December 12, 2011 | By EIZSOFT

Want to try something neat and one of a kind??
Here’s your chance to be one of the few beta testers for Amazing Weather!

All you have to do is send us an email at [email protected]
with the title [BETA] and include your Windows Phone 7 live ID.

You MUST

Have a Windows Phone7 device!
Have a valid Windows Phone 7 live ID.

Features: -

Full screen animations.
Pinch in to show detailed hourly data.
five day weather forecast.
4 hours updated weather conditions.
Live tiles with updated weather conditions.
Set your choice of 3 cities to be saved as favorites.

V 0.0.1 Beta release

Please note that due to technical difficulties weather conditions are updated every 4 hours.

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Two-tap reminder – quick reminders with as few taps as possible

December 10, 2011 | By socialebola

Do you forget stuff? Do you need some extra help reminding you get the laundry out, make sure the honey roasted chicken does not get dry, give the kid your chainsaw for show-and-tell in the morning? Two-tap reminder comes to fill the void between calendar or to-do lists and forgetfulness. With as little as two taps in the app, you can set a reminder for yourself. Choose what type of reminder you want, how far in the future you want it to fire and that’s it! Once it pops, even if you accidently dismiss it, you can always go into the app and see what you missed. Ad-hoc reminders at their best.

northpolephotoboothqr Features

Set a “quick reminder” for really quick, ad-hoc reminders.
Choose from the quick-buttons if you want to be reminded 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes etc. into the future.
Choose from a list of text options if you want to remember something specific
Record a short message to yourself if you can’t type right now
View your pending and past-due reminders.
Vote on new features you’d want to see in the product.
Free to try

Download it now.

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Bill Reminder Updated for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) including Double-Sided Live Tiles and Pop-Up Reminders

December 10, 2011 | By Kevin Schaefer

WinPhone Info

**Now supports double-sided Live Tiles and pop-up reminders**

If you are like me, you already use a full-featured money management program on your computer, and you don’t want to re-enter all of your financial information into a separate application on your phone or rely on email reminders to know when your bills are due.

Bill Reminder was written with those problems in mind. It gives you convenient, color-coded, reminders to quickly see when your bills are due; red for past due, yellow for due today, and green for not due yet.

No account numbers or amounts are required. Just enter a name, frequency, and next occurrence date, and Bill Reminder color codes and sorts your bills into the correct lists. Mark a bill as paid, and Bill Reminder automatically updates the next occurrence date, color code, and reminder lists.


Free, ad-supported version	Paid, ad-free version

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