marketplace

Social Mints Now Available In Windows Phone Marketplace

February 9, 2012 | By Pradeep

Winners of the Fast Track to the Mobile App Design Challenge organized by Core77 was announced back in December. Social Mints was one of the winners in that competition. The app is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Social Mints is a FREE powerful app that allows you to easily monitor the Web and Social Media for interesting and trending content in real-time. You can track & measure what people are saying about a topic that interests you, get the latest on a celebrity or event and keep tabs on your favorite sports teams.
- Monitor a developing news story
- See Twitter trends and sentiments
- keeping current on a competitor or industry
- know what people are saying about your company

The app also features,

- Simple and intuitive metro design
- Save or Pin a Mint to quickly access later
- Share quickly on facebook and twitter
- Live Tile and Fast App Switching enabled

You can download the app here from the marketplace.

via: mobilitydigest

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Ported Windows Phone 7 to Windows 8 game demoed

February 8, 2012 | By Surur

Rick Walrond, the creator of Alphadrops, a popular word game on Windows Phone 7, has demoed a ported version of his Windows Phone 7 game on a Windows 8 tablet.

At the moment we do not know if Windows Phone 7 apps will be able to run without modification on Windows 8 tablets, but Rick demonstrates in the video above that it will not take too much effort to port Windows Phone 7 games to the new Marketplace, and with potentially a much larger market I am sure most WP7 Marketplace developers will be looking to do the same if it makes sense.

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PREVIEW: “Deveci Games” announces LAST COMMANDO to be released this week.

February 8, 2012 | By valequenta

Deveci Games twitted today, announcing their new top down shooter game named “LAST COMMANDO” to be released this week.

Below are some of the features of the game:

18 different weapons including AK-47, M4A1, Desert Eagle, SV98.
10 different stages total of 50 levels: Mansion, Hospital, Backyard, ….
High quality textures, impressive sound effects.
Achievements: More than 100 achievements to complete. Achievements helps unlocking weapons.
3 game play difficulties
Engaging gameplay with two virtual thumbsticks

Watch marketplace for LAST COMMANDO to be released this week.

You can check gameplay and footage videos below.
Continue reading →

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Developers: How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace?

February 7, 2012 | By Pradeep

How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace? I know many Windows Phone developers ask the same question again and again. Before answering the above, what will happen when you get featured on Windows Phone Marketplace.

Panorama Placement: Panorama placement is the premiere placement for promotion on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The value of this placement is immense as we have seen a 2000% increase in downloads for an app (on average) that is featured in panorma mode.

Featured Icon Placement: Being promoted as a featured icon is the second best way to be featured on the Marketplace. Apps that get Featured Icon Placement on average see an 800% increase in app/game downloads during their time being featured.

Featured List: The third mode of getting featured in the Marketplace is the Featured List. It does return an average of a 150% increase in app/game downloads.

The answer to the question of “How To Get Your App Featured In Windows Phone Marketplace?” depends on whether your app has all the three important attributes listed below,

Delight
Utility
Functionality

You can read each of them in detail through this blog post from MSDN.

This post was the fifth and final post in a series of five posts on strategies for being successful on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The first post (publishing in the right geographies) is here. The second post (trial mode and the art of the upsell) is here. The third post (finding the pricing sweet spot) is here. The fourth post (the differentiation game) is here.

Great job by Paul Laberge.

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Windows Phone 7 Marketplace opens in 5 new countries

February 3, 2012 | By Surur

Microsoft has announced on the Windows Team blog that Marketplace is opening up for purchases in 5 new countries in South America and Asia.

Windows Phone 7.5 users can now purchase apps in Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru and the Philippines. Users who have not upgraded to Mango yet (why not?!) will need to apply the software patch first.

Marketplace recently opened for app submissions in the same countries, but the list also included China, where Marketplace has not opened for consumers yet.

Read more at the Windows Team Blog here.

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Vimeo For Windows Phone Now Available From Marketplace

February 1, 2012 | By Pradeep

Vimeo has released its official app for Windows Phone today. Using the app you can now manage, upload and watch videos using Vimeo service.

The app features the following,

• Watch and manage all your existing Vimeo videos

• Watch videos from your Vimeo inbox, Watch Later queue, or videos you have liked

• Easily like, comment on, and add videos to your Watch Later queue

• Discover new and fascinating featured videos

• Quickly search for videos on Vimeo

• Easily upload your footage in HD

• Pause and resume uploads

• Replace existing videos

• Edit titles, descriptions, tags, privacy settings, and credits

• Share via Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS

• Add videos to your Groups, Channels, and Albums.

• Get stats on plays, likes, and comments(Requires Windows Phone version 7.5 Mango+)

Download the app here from the marketplace.

Thanks to Santosh for the heads up.

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How are Marketplace search results sorted?

January 25, 2012 | By andrewbares

Power Planner displayed third despite higher popularity rankings and higher review scores

I recently noticed that when searching for apps in the Marketplace, less popular apps will frequently show up before popular ones.

For example, try searching for “blackjack”. The first result is Blackjack Classic, and then Blackjack Metro, Blackjack 21, and finally Play! Blackjack. The apps rankings respectively are 549, 1133, 1311, and 76 (Category rankings from WP7AppList)

The first three are all in order, but then Play! Blackjack is randomly placed at fourth in the search results when it is insanely higher ranked!

Another example is my app, Power Planner. It’s a homework planner app with the keywords “homework”, “planner”, “student”, “school”, etc… Its ranking is 198 (category rankings from WP7AppList), and has a solid 5 star rating from 44 reviews in the US.

When I search for “homework” in the Marketplace, the first two results are Homework Planner and MySchool. Their rankings are 436 and 744 respectively, and they both only have a 4 star rating, with only 8 and 23 reviews respectively.

It is clear that Marketplace search results are not organized by their rankings in the app store. That means a popular app like Yelp could randomly show up below some non-popular random app with the keyword “yelp”!

What are search results sorted by?

From my research into this issue, I can tell you this:

They are NOT sorted by rankings (app’s popularity).
They are NOT sorted by ratings (from user reviews).
They are NOT sorted by the amount of reviews.
They are NOT sorted via title (search for “Stop Music” and Stop the Music! comes up two results before Stop Music)

What does that leave? Total downloads over all time. If I’m missing something, tell me in the comments!

However, it seems like this is how Microsoft sorts their search results. The three apps before Play! Blackjack were all released about a year ago. Play! Blackjack was released about a month and a half ago, not giving it as much time to climb in total downloads despite its extremely high popularity ranking. The same is true about Power Planner, which was released about a month and a half ago and is far newer (and far more popular) than the other two homework apps.

Do you think this is a good system, or should Microsoft use instantaneous downloads (a.k.a. the app’s rankings)? Tell us in the comments below!

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Fake Chrome browser scamming users in Marketplace

January 23, 2012 | By Surur

fakechrome While the Marketplace certifiers may be good at keeping out malware (and we don’t really know this for sure either) they are certainly not good at keeping out crapware.

The latest is a fake Google Chrome browser, which the description boldly claims:

Keep Chrome Browser handy on your device, especially for those unavoidable times you are on a slow crowded network, away from Wi-Fi. This app is same as a google chrome web browser. It has most stylish search button. Facebook, Google, Yahoo! -with Chrome Browser, all your favorite sites work great on your windows phone.

The app is in fact simply an IE Shell and will work no better or worse than the built-in browser.

For that privilege it will charge (scam) buyers out of $1.99 without the chance of free trial.

The reviews are filled with one stars, and it is a pity that it takes blogs rather than a proper screening system to alert Microsoft to act on these scams.

Via WPCentral.com

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Now 60,000 apps in Marketplace

January 22, 2012 | By Surur

wp-mp-janb-11

25 days after hitting 50,000 apps, the Windows Phone Marketplace has crossed the 60,000 line.

This is according to AAWP’s count, who note that the acceleration in growth has continued, with 400 apps per day being approved, up from 265 4 weeks earlier. This implies without any further increase Marketplace will hit the psychologically important 100,000 mark at the end of April 2012. Likely if the rate of increase continues however it will be significantly earlier, possible in the middle of March 2012.

While there have been many complaints about spam, we have also seen some great apps coming to Marketplace, and of course existing apps continue to be refined, so I am pretty happy with the state of Marketplace at the moment.

Some Windows Phone users being hit by c101b001 Marketplace error for nearly a week already

January 21, 2012 | By Surur

Screenshot_htc_titan_error Screenshot_windowsphone_error

It seems Marketplace is steadily gaining a reputation for not being the most stable platform at Microsoft.

Many users are complaining on Microsoft’s Answer site that they are unable to download music and apps from Marketplace, and the first report is from the 13th of January, with users complaining of a c101b001 error.

The issue appears to be affecting multiple geographies and many devices.

There does however appear to be an odd solution – deleting an app and restarting the phone seems to be sorting the issue for some.

Are any of our readers having this issue and does the solution work? Let us know below.

Thanks David for the screen shots and tip.

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Occasional Gamer hits 1 million cumulative downloads

January 20, 2012 | By Surur

hello1million2

Elbert Perez, the Occasional Gamer, has just posted that the cumulative download total for all his games have just hit 1 million games in total.

Elbert has 17 games in marketplace in total, with the best performing being Armored Drive, which hit close to 225,000 downloads, and the worse Quadra Pro, a for pay version of Quadra, which had 100,000 downloads. Quadro Pro only achieved 6 downloads.

Elbert has recently posted about his experience of becoming self-employed, supporting himself only by writing Windows Phone 7 games, and he notes today:

A little more than a year ago I was very unsure how Windows phone would go especially with iPhone and Android had a unshakable grip on the market. I had little idea how much 1 year can do to someone who bets big on a new kid on the block. But looks like my bet is starting to payoff and the odds are getting better everyday.

Congratulations to Elbert, and hopefully many more developers will follow him soon.

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Official Mid-Day Tabloid App Now In Windows Phone Marketplace

January 17, 2012 | By Pradeep

Official Mid-Day (India’s number 1 tabloid) app for Windows Phone just landed in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

App Description:

Mid-Day app for Windows Phone brings news from India’s number 1 tabloid to your finger tips. Catch on spicy bollywood gossip, cricket, soccer news and more on the go.

Features:
1. Uses Instapaper and Smartfile Mobile optimizer to reduce data usage by over 80%
2. News stories categorized under six sections: Headlines, Entertainment, Sports, Photos, News and More
3. Share news stories with friends via text and email.
4. Elegant UX using in-app live tiles
5. Pin individual news feed to start screen

Coming soon:
1. Videos
2. Facebook and Twitter sharing

You can download the app here from the marketplace.

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AppFlow Update Adds International Marketplaces Support

January 13, 2012 | By gergelyorosz

AppFlow – the most pouplar third party WP7 Marketplace browser – has just gotten a great deal better. Until now, all the apps in the lists – e.g. in New & Impressive, Forgotten Legends, Highest Rated – were specific to rankings and popularity in the US Marketplace. The AppFlow team has had lots of feedback from people outside of the US asking for this to be changed – and so they did. The latest update now supports all 36 Marketplacess, meaning you’ll see and be able to discover even more relevant apps – regardless of which Marketplace region you are in.

The update means that almost all lists are different for each Marketplace and show apps relevant and popular in that region. App rating charts and app statistics are also region specific and app descriptions are shown in the selected language if the app supports it. Switching between Marketplace regions can be done within the app so the update makes it pretty easy to discover what’s trending on the different Marketplaces.

You can grab AppFlow from the Marketplace here.

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