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The BBC has just announced that iPlayer support will finally be coming to Windows Phone 7.X and Windows Phone 8 in the coming weeks. But there’s a catch: this isn’t going to be a full blown app but simply a link/shortcut (similar to the “official” Youtube one) to a modified website compatible with IE9/IE10Mobile. We will be releasing a shortcut to BBC iPlayer in the near future which will be available in the Windows Phone Store, enabling the BBC iPlayer website to work on Windows Phone 7.5 and 8 via a live tile. This shortcut will wrap the BBC iPlayer mobile website together with our media player. Hopefully these and other developments will help to expand our online reach further. Our latest figures show that over 650 different device types can access BBC iPlayer.
Better than nothing I guess….and obviously only applies to UK users. Continue reading BBC iPlayer finally coming to Windows Phone. Sort of… → 
The official Twitter application for Windows Phone 7/8 has finally been updated after nearly a year with a totally new UI and new features that make it worth it. Among the new goodies included are the lock screen support, pinning of any Twitter account to the start screen and most importantly a new beautifully snappy UI. New navigation: Four new tabs – Home, Connect, Discover and Me – bring you closer to the things you care about.
•Home: View Tweets from the accounts you follow; tap a Tweet to expand it and see more content, such as photos, videos and website summaries
•Connect: Keep up with your mentions; see who has followed you or retweeted or favorited one of your Tweets
•Discover: See trends, and find new content on Twitter –– browse categories, find friends on Twitter and see suggestions for accounts to follow
•Me: Read and respond to your direct messages; see your lists, favorites and more; view and update your profile Tweet and search icons: Compose a Tweet or search from anywhere in the app, using the new icon buttons in the Application Bar. Live tiles: Pin Twitter accounts, lists and searches to your start screen, giving you quick access to some of your favorite Twitter content.
Continue reading Official Twitter app for Windows Phone updated: Finally worth it → 
Microsoft has announced that Google has decided to extend its support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) on Windows Phone until July 31 2013. As you already know Google was set to cut EAS support for it’s Gmail, Contacts and Calendar services on January 31st but Microsoft has apparently convinced the Mountain View company to give the Windows Phone developers some more time to add CardDAV and CalDAV support into Windows Phone 8. Windows 8 and Windows RT users using the default mail application will unfortunately still be affected by the January 31st cut unless they have already setup the application to sync with their Gmail account prior to this deadline. The easiest way would be to migrate your Gmail account to Outlook.com if you don’t really use Gmail for anything else other than YouTube. Continue reading Google Exchange ActiveSync support for Windows Phone extended until July 31st → 
Nokia has finally updated the Nokia City Lens for Windows Phone 8 with the SightLine building occlusion feature that was introduced back in December 1st 2012 in the Windows Phone 7 version of the application. Here are the new features introduced in the WP8 version: - See just what’s in front of you. Normally, City Lens shows you all the places nearby—even around the corner or a block away. In crowded areas, that can be a lot to take in. Our new Sightline features lets you switch your view to only what’s in your direct line of sight, making it easier to spot great places that are right in front of you.
- Quick info– Get information while you look. Now you can quickly view a place’s address without leaving your camera view. Just tap to view the information overlaid on your display while you keep scanning. When you’re ready to learn more about the place, another tap pulls up its complete information.
- Pause your view. When scanning your surroundings in camera view, you can now freeze your view and study your options without having to keep your phone pointed at the target.
- Pin categories to start– Your most common searches with a tap. City Lens now lets you pin favorite categories to your home screen. Now wherever you are, you can find something you love nearby with just a tap.
- Create Live Tiles– What you want at a glance. City Lens lets you search for your favorite things whether it’s books or sushi and lets you pin your favorite searches to your home screen.
You can grab it right now from the marketplace.
LG is apparently back in the mix after calling it quits 9 months ago. The Korean manufacturer who finally having some relative success with its latest line of Android Optimus handsets and the Nexus 4 is currently working on several Windows Phone 8 devices according to a senior executive from one of LG’s local partners. As you may recall the LG Fantasy E740 never saw the light of the day as a commercial device and LG essentially stopped to support its Windows Phone 7 handset just a few months after the OS’s launch in 2010 even-though the company was the premier OEM partner for Windows Phone 7 during OS’s development. Having LG back on board can only be seen a a good thing for the platform but won’t fix the may problem which is Microsoft’s current attitude towards its on product. Continue reading LG working on Windows Phone 8 handsets → 
The official Vimeo application has finally updated to fix several major bugs and add new features alongside Windows Phone 8 support. This new iteration of the video streaming service now sports a slightly redesign UI to match the website, NFC sharing functionality for WP8 handsets, HD video support a more: • Watch and manage all your existing Vimeo videos
• Watch videos from your Vimeo inbox, Watch Later queue, or videos you have liked
• Use NFC Tap-to-Share to share Vimeo videos between phones
• Create live tiles from your videos or featured channels
• 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
• Share via Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS
• Add videos to your Groups, Channels, and Albums You can grab it directly from here
Nokia has released the newest Beta version of Nokia City Lens which adds the Sightline building occlusion feature that was announced a few months ago during the Nokia Lumia 920 launch event but had yet to see the light of the day. Surprisingly this newest iteration of the augmented reality browser is only available for Nokia’s Windows Phone 7.5 handsets and doesn’t work on Windows Phone 8 yet (see screenshot below).
 - See just what’s in front of you. Normally, City Lens shows you all the places nearby—even around the corner or a block away. In crowded areas, that can be a lot to take in. Our new Sightline features lets you switch your view to only what’s in your direct line of sight, making it easier to spot great places that are right in front of you.
- Quick info– Get information while you look. Now you can quickly view a place’s address without leaving your camera view. Just tap to view the information overlaid on your display while you keep scanning. When you’re ready to learn more about the place, another tap pulls up its complete information.
- Pause your view. When scanning your surroundings in camera view, you can now freeze your view and study your options without having to keep your phone pointed at the target.
- Pin categories to start– Your most common searches with a tap. City Lens now lets you pin favorite categories to your home screen. Now wherever you are, you can find something you love nearby with just a tap.
- Create Live Tiles– What you want at a glance. City Lens lets you search for your favorite things whether it’s books or sushi and lets you pin your favorite searches to your home screen.
You can download it directly by scanning the QRCode below: Continue reading Nokia City Lens updated with Sightline feature but only for Windows Phone 7 → 
Microsoft has finally decided to communicate around Windows Phone 7.8 today and officially announced that the much anticipated update to Windows Phone 7.5 will be pushed out to existing devices in early 2013. This is obviously a bit of a downer given that everybody was expecting WP7.8 to come out before the end of the year mainly because the official wording during the June announcement was that it would simply be released after Windows Phone 8 (so we all assumed that it would be a matter of weeks not months). As previously discussed the Windows Phone 7.8 update will include the WP8 start screen with resizable Live Tiles, updated icons, more market and language support,double the number of accent color themes, the option to automatically display the Bing Picture of the Day plus the ‘A1B2C3’ PIN/password challenge to prevent accidental device wipes on phones connected to Exchange accounts and minor bug fixes. Continue reading Windows Phone 7.8 to finally be released in Early 2013 → 
I just finished watching the BUILD Keynotes after coming back home from work and came to the conclusion that Steve Ballmer has become the best demo guy for Microsoft. I highly suggest you take the time to watch his keynote to because I think that it’s the best one he has ever done so far. Anyway, let’s talk about Windows Phone 8. Microsoft has finally released the final public version of the WP8 SDK today which you can download from the source link below and start using to develop Windows Phone 7.X and Windows Phone 8 applications (no surprises here, it’s quite similar to the Leaked version I showed you this summer). Microsoft has also announced that developer registration to submit apps to the Windows Store will only cost $8 instead of $99 for the next 8 Days. So hurry up and start building amazing stuff. As an added incentive, for the next 8 days individual developers can register for a Dev Center account for just $8 (a 92 percent savings). Please note because this is a very limited time offer. You’ll be charged $99 USD or equivalent in your local currency, and we’ll refund the difference in the next 30 to 45 days. Watch for more details on Dev Center soon.
Those of you who are still wondering what is the exact Direct3D feature set supported by Windows Phone 8 should take look after the break as MS’s Shawn Hargreaves has posted an great deal of info today about this: Continue reading Windows Phone 8 SDK released: Direct 3D features detailled → 
Most of you have probably already seen the full Windows Phone 8 event that was live streamed earlier today so I won’t write an essay about everything that was shown. Instead let’s do a quick recap on what was new or simply not yet officially unveiled since Windows Phone 8′s initial announcement a few months ago. First of all Microsoft announced the newest version of Skype for Windows Phone 8. This new version of the app will fully integrate into the OS and allow seamless VOIP calling through the phone dialer and more features like background notifications and lock-screen integration. What’s new here (for Windows Phone) is that the Skype service will constantly be running in the background even if the app wasn’t triggered by the user. this means that calls or other notifications like messages will arrive as if they were regular phone calls or SMS. Most of the functionality of the UI and People/contact integration of the WP8 app are similar to the windows 8 version that was released just 2 days ago. Checkout the video below for a quick demo: Continue reading Windows Phone 8 launches with new features, Skype and new apps → 
Microsoft has just released the Windows Phone 8 syncing application for Windows 8 today a few hours ahead of the OS launch event taking place in San Fancisco. As previously revealed this application is only meant to work with WP8 handsets and not older generation devices who will have to still use the Zune software on Windows 8/7. I will be on Twitter later today live blogging the event as I’m going to be hanging around with the folks at Microsoft France and Nokia locally here in Paris. Check out the application description after the break: Continue reading Windows Phone 8 syncing app for Windows 8 released → 
Everybody knows by now that all of the current Windows Phone 7.X handsets on the market won’t be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8 and thus won’t have access to many of the new features packed in the OS. One of them is the Cloud/server based page compression that will be available as an option in IE10 to help users reduce their monthly data usage by compressing web content on Microsoft’s servers and pushing-it down to the handsets similar to what Opera introduced with Opera Mini many years ago and whet Microsoft developed for Windows Mobile 5.X as an R&D project named Deepfish back in 2007. Today Nokia is releasing the beta version of a similar concept via an new application named Nokia Xpress for all Nokia Lumia handsets. Instead of enumerating of all the features I’ll leave with the promotional video embedded after the break and a shortlist of notable functionalities. Continue reading Nokia Xpress cloud based browser for Lumia handsets released → 
After a slight delay Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 has finally hit RTM status yesterday has you can see in the picture posted above showing Microsoft VP Terry Myerson signing on the big WP8 RTM billboard alongside other developers. Windows Phone 7 originally passed RTM on September 1st 2010 with devices hitting retail in November, while Mango hit RTM on July 27th 2011 with device shipping in October. If past history is any indication it’s obviously going to be a little be tricky for the OEMs and carriers to get the first batch of devices on the market before November at the earliest. The latest whisper on the streets are still pointing to an early November launch for the Nokia Lumia 920 though… Continue reading Windows Phone 8 finally hits RTM → 
The Nokia Lumia 920 may be the best thing since sliced bread but there are already millions of Lumia 800, 900, 710, 610 handsets in the hands of users who won’t be able to get the full Windows Phone 8 experience. This is Nokia we are talking about here and so far they have shown some awesome end user support in terms of exclusive software and hardware fixes. The company has just announced that in addition to the Windows Phone 7.8 update which will bring the new WP8 UI to current WP7 handsets, all Nokia Lumia owners will also get the following additional features: Continue reading Nokia to support current Lumia handsets with new features: Bluetooth file sharing and more → 
Once again, Microsoft’s undercover PR agency aka The Verge has released some brand new info about one of its upcoming products. This time it is the first screenshot of the soon to be released Windows 8 companion application for Windows Phone 8 which will finally replace the soon to be defunct Zune software and allow user to sync content between their Windows Phone 8 ( and WP7?) and Windows 8 (and also Windows 7 via a desktop version of this app..) PC. Continue reading Windows 8 syncing companion application for Windows Phone 8 screenshot → 
Nothing is official yet but according to Mary Joe Foley’s own sources Microsoft is set to commercially launch Windows Phone 8 on October 29th just three days after Windows 8. Technically we may have to wait a few more days after the launch event until we start to see the first Windows Phone 8 devices hit retail and carrier stores around the world. Remember that MJ’s sources are often right so October 29th may very well be the real deal. Continue reading Windows Phone 8 launching October 29th → 
I just took a quick tour of the Windows Phone 8 emulator bundled in the Windows Phone 8 Developer Preview SDK that leaked just a few hours ago and decided to take some screenshot to show you some of the new UI tweaks and Features implemented in Apollo. Beware that there’s a lot of images after the break and not a whole lot of text (just a few lines to describe what’s on the screen). So just hit the break to see what Microsoft has been cooking for this fall release and some nice features that have been long overdue. Continue reading New Windows Phone 8 Features detailed → 
The relatively big news today is the sudden appearance of the soon to be released Windows Phone 8 Developer Preview SDK which has leaked a few hours ago via Microsoft’s own password protected servers. Instead of making tons of posts detailing every single feature of the OS simply to generate hits I’m going to provide you with the detailed overview of the Windows Phone 8 application platform which I’m going to copy and paste (from the SDK) below after the break for those of you who aren’t able to get their hands of the Docs or the full SDK package. I’m also currently installing the full 1.3Gb Binaries on by Windows 8 desktop (important note: The WP8 Preview SDK is only compatible with the Windows 8 X64 Release Preview) and will make another post later on detailing the emulator. UPDATE: My WP8 Emulator overview is here. The following document will go into details comparing Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT (hint: there are some important differences), The Direct3D feature set supported by the OS, the built-in Native Nokia Maps implementation, Camera features, NFC features Native code and XAML support. So just head over to the break to check it all out: Continue reading Windows Phone 8 Application platform detailed → 
Nokia Drive 3.0 for the Lumia Windows Phone handsets has just been released to the marketplace a few hours ago. Those of you who took the time to read the user manual a little while ago should already what’s included in this newest release: • Find your way with turn-by-turn directions and voice guidance
• Track your location, speed, and the distance driven, even if not navigating
• Preload maps before traveling and use Nokia Drive offline to save data costs
• Save your most-used destinations to your phone
• Get a warning when you exceed the speed limit
• Get real-time info on traffic incidents and conditions on your daily routes using
my commute
Unfortunately the My Commute feature doesn’t work in some countries yet (only works in the US right now..lame) which is really disappointing given that real time traffic data is now supported nearly worldwide in Bing Maps and Nokia Maps. You can grab it directly from the Nokia Collection in the marketplace or by hitting this link with your Lumia phone or scan the QRCode after the break: Continue reading Nokia Drive 3.0 for Windows Phone released → | |
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