windows phone 7

Visual Studio 11 Express For Windows Phone Coming Along With WP8 Launch

May 22, 2012 | By Pradeep

Microsoft’s Visual Studio team yesterday announced the product lineup for their upcoming major release Visual Studio 11. Visual Studio 11 Beta is already available for download, but Windows Phone developers were waiting for Windows Phone tool support in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Now Microsoft has announced that to make sure customers have the latest tools with the latest platform offering they’ll be releasing Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone with the next release of Windows Phone.

So, developers will be able to download Visual Studio 11 Express for Windows Phone along with Windows Phone 8 platform release. We guess that will happen next month during Windows Phone developer event organized by Microsoft. For now, developers should be able to free download the Visual Studi0 2010 Express and the Windows Phone 7.5 developer tools for Windows Phone development.

Source: Microsoft

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Developer demoes real-time Windows Phone 7 vs Windows 8 game play

May 13, 2012 | By Surur

The developer of Air Soccer Fever, one of the first Windows Phone 7 games which offer real time wireless game play between two opponents, have now also ported their game to Windows 8 tablets, and have preserved the device to device game play.

In the demo video above we have a Windows Phone 7 handset playing against a Windows 8 tablet.

With many Windows Phone 7 developers likely to port their apps to Windows 8, it is likely we will see an increasing number of applications offer similar cross-platform functionality.

Via 1800pocketpc.com

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Audible for Windows Phone landing April 23rd?

April 16, 2012 | By Surur

Paul Thurrott have tweeted that Audible for Windows Phone 7 is coming to Marketplace soon, on the 23rd April.

The headline app, which has been long awaited, has gone into private beta some weeks ago, and according to Paul is currently, even in beta, very good.

The full feature set has not been revealed yet, but will likely resemble the Android version, which allows full access to your library via streaming, rather than the iPhone version, where is is natively supported.

With close to 100,000 apps in Marketplace, Windows Phone is steadily gathering the key apps which should soon make the actual number of apps irrelevant.

Via MobilityDigest.com

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A look at Microsoft’s Project Detroit Mustang (video)

April 3, 2012 | By Surur

We have written about Microsoft’s Project Detroit, their customized Ford Mustang before, and today we have some video of the car in action.

The 1967 Mustang is decked in neon lights, is fully web connected and sports Windows 8 tablets and Windows Phone 7 connectivity and control. It of course comes with full Kinect and Xbox 360 integration, playable on the pop-up projection screen.

The car features a custom Windows Phone application which can change the accent lighting and the horn sound “ringtone”, activating the “projector screen” or send a message to the rear windshield. It also has Viper SmartStart technology , so it can be remotely located, unlocked and started all from a Windows Phone.

The car also allows one to stream video from the Kinects included in the dashboard to your Windows Phone, and, from the same application, use your Windows Phone as a microphone for the car’s external audio PA system.

More detail can be found on this MSDN page here.

Via techie-buzz.com

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Windows Phone once again rivals iPhone in PCMag’s Reader Survey

March 28, 2012 | By Surur

PCMag has posted the results of their annual Readers Survey, and unlike most surveys this one is from readers chosen at random who actually own the handsets and administered by an accredited polling company.

Last year Windows Phone did very well, scoring 8.1/10 in customer satisfaction, vs 8.4 for the iPhone.

This year Windows Phone did even better, matching the iPhone overall at a customer satisfaction score of 8.7 for both handsets. Android remained 7.9 and did not improve at all from last year.

In fact the handset with most satisfied users on AT&T is not the iPhone, but a Samsung Windows Phone 7 handset.

On Verizon the venerable HTC Trophy is as appreciated as the iPhone 4 and 4S, making it the little handset that could.

Windows Phone scored better than the iPhone in several key areas, including reliability, text messaging, Web browsing, and gaming. Apple’s iOS, however, rates substantially better than Windows Phone for satisfaction with the quality and availability of apps and its music player.

Windows Phone 7 users are also least likely to need technical support (20%) vs 25% for iOS and 32% for Android.

With the iPhone, Windows Phone 7 received a PCMagazine Editor Choice award for “providing a winning experience.”

The survey makes for fascinating reading, with more available here.

Via TNW.com

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Bill Reminder Updated with Windows Live SkyDrive Back Up and Restore

March 22, 2012 | By Kevin Schaefer

Bill Reminder

**Now with Windows Live SkyDrive back up and restore, a double-sided Live Tile, 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.

Bill Reminder QRCode 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.

Thank you to WMPowerUser’s own andrewbares for his excellent SkyDrive back up sample.

For more screenshots and links to download the paid or free, ad-supported version, please click here or scan the QRCode.

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IDC Developer survey show interest in Android is dropping in favour of Windows Phone

March 20, 2012 | By Surur

appcelerator_history_large

IDC and Appcelerator’s regular quarterly survey has for the first time shown a trend of dropping interest in the Android platform, which the analysts blames on fragmentation of the platform.

For 2 quarters in a row now interest has been dropping in developing for Android, with developers very interested dropping to the 78% level at the moment.

"We’ve seen a steady erosion of interest in Android" among developers, Appcelerator’s principal mobile strategist Mike King told The Register.

About a year ago the number of developers who said they were "very interested" in developing for Android for smartphones was just 3 percentage points behind iOS for iPhone and 2 points behind iOS for iPad.

“We believe it’s really because of the fragmentation that Android’s experiencing," King continued, "both at the platform and OS level, but also at the monetization-model level," due to multiple Android app stores.

Windows Phone seemed happy to step into the gap.

"The fact that Windows Phone is increasingly a strong third in interest level, and the fact that we’re getting some compelling Windows Phone devices out there, I think is going to cause some problems for Android over the long term if they don’t do something to curtail that fragmentation."

Over the same two quarter period Android developer interest dropped from the high 80’s to high 70’s, Windows Phone increased in developer interest from 30 to 40%

Windows Phone has increasingly separated itself from other “also ran” mobile operating systems like Blackberry and webOS.

"All the BlackBerry stuff? Just continuing to drop," King said, and the survey showed the number of developers very interested in webOS phones to be at a dismal 7.5 per cent, and webOS tablets, 8.4 per cent.

Vodafone UK thinks Nokia Lumia 710 has Outlook syncing, USB mass storage

March 18, 2012 | By Liwen Guo

Instead of simply confusing the names of Windows Phone and Windows Mobile, Vodafone UK has somehow managed to port some features over. But here’s the catch: Despite what you’d (for better or worse) like it to do, Windows Phone 7 doesn’t actually sync contacts, calendar etc. with Outlook – it supports a variety of cloud-based services instead, among them Microsoft’s own Hotmail and Office 365 – and neither does it function as USB mass storage when connected to a PC – you’ll have to use Zune instead.

Source: Vodafone UK (scroll down), hat tip Cris Rowlands (Twitter)

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wpDicomVault – access your medical images in HealthVault from your Windows Phone

March 7, 2012 | By metaxa5

Wouldn’t it be great if you could retrieve and view yours or your family’s medical images right from your smartphone?

Now you can, using wpDicomVault. wpDicomVault provides mobile access to the medical images in your HealthVault account. It can query, receive and display yours or your family’s medical DICOM images while being at the doctor’s office or anywhere else.

The application is ad-free.
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Video demo of Bluetooth File Transfer Hack on Windows Phone 7

February 24, 2012 | By Surur

WindowsPhoneHacker have uploaded this video demonstrating the DFT hack which allows Bluetooth File Transfer on Fully Unlocked Windows Phones.

As can be seen, while the transfer process seems relatively simple, the file system on Windows Phone seems to be quite messy and never intended to be seen by mere humans, making the whole process seem less than desirable.

In the end this is a problem which Microsoft needs to solve, and one I hope they realize is a very real problem, especially as they plan to advance Tango phones into emerging markets where Bluetooth file transfer is the norm.

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Sleepy Time – Calculate the best time to fall asleep.

February 24, 2012 | By cloetn

Sleepy Timer - Microsoft Tag This is an app for the people out there that want to get the maximum amount of rest in their period of sleep.

Sleepy Time will calculate the best time for you to fall a sleep when you want to wake up at a given time.

It uses sleep cycles of 90 minutes to calculate the best time to wake up. Waking up between these cycles lets you wake up fresh and alert.

This small handy app is completely free !

Find Sleepy Time for free in Marketplace here.

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wpDicom Free – a free DICOM medical image viewer for Windows Phone

February 23, 2012 | By metaxa5

6 of 8 wpDicom free is an easy to use, powerful application that can query, receive, display and process medical DICOM images without the need of any middleware.

wpDicom free is the essential complementary DICOM software, of a modern and up to date radiology laboratory. Even though a modern lab usually has all the appropriate tools to manage medical images from its modalities, physicians can come to a dead end when they need to receive and review images while being on the move.

wpDicom free is essential not only to radiologists but to any specialist that receives patient images from collaborating labs in DICOM format in everyday practice.

wpDicom free features at a glance:

Easy to use DICOM image and header viewer.
Supports DICOM network services (C-FIND SCU, C-GET SCU, C-ECHO SCU) without the need of any other middleware.
Compatible with all modalities (CT, MR, NM, US, XA, MG, CR etc.) and all manufacturers.
Annotation texts that include patient name, examination date and description, image orientation and more.
High quality Interpolated image resizing.
Gesture-driven level-window adjustment.
Distance measurement tool.

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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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