Apps

Major flight tracking app for Windows Phone gets new feature before iOS/Android in a latest update

There are apps that people must-have in the sense they rely on them for a specific service, and then there are apps that are must-have by the fact they are just so cool. Flightradar24 falls into that latter category, as we can’t imagine many scenarios where you 100% need this for daily life, but you still want it because it’s just impressive.

Flightradar24 (www.flightradar24.com) is a service that tracks, in real-time, all the planes in the world (or at least a whole lot). It uses your location to hone in on your area, and you can pan and swoosh around, clicking on planes and pulling up their flight info. In and of itself, that’s neat. But the app (which goes for $2.99) just received what looks to be a major update and it has blown us away for levels of 'awesome sauce'.

Head past the break to see our hands-on video of the app and mini-review...

Odds are you have a 500px or Flickr account if you enjoy photography. Doesn’t matter if the shots are coming from a DSLR or Micro Four Thirds camera, most photogs are part of some online community. Flickr is arguably the most well-known of those online communities, and while it may have grown stale in features the past few years, it’s still on top for most people. If you’re among those heavy Flickr users, you might want to check out Pixl for Windows Phone.

Our unique and very well received Disqus app for Windows Phone just received its maintenance release, to help patch over and fix some lingering issues from the initial rollout.

Version 1.1 is now live in the Store and should go a long way for those who had some problems.

Broken record time, what makes all of us happy? App updates. And today we’ve got the official eBay app getting a small little update that fixes some minor things within the Windows Phone app for all users.

Hurl released an official Windows Phone app last week, but the team has got in touch with Windows Phone Central to confirm that an update has been published to address issue with screen resolutions. Taking into account the feedback that has been provided by the community, the Hurl team has set out to address concerns and any problems that were experienced.

If you're not familiar with Hurl, it's a DNLA-type service, but for PCs. The service works after the official app has been installed on a Windows Phone and page set up on the Hurl website (www.hurl.net). Using your phone’s GPS (and your label) you can then connect up. Users can search online for videos, which can then be added to the queue for playback on the PC. The Windows Phone acts as a remote—it’s like SmartGlass but for everything else.

Taking notes and organizing data with Windows Phone has never been an issue. We’ve got Office, OneNote, and a variety of big name third party apps, like Evernote, to help keep you focused and on top of your work. Here’s another gem from the Windows Phone Store that you might like. It’s called Node and is currently free for a limited time.

We’ve talked about Grooveshark clients supposedly coming to Windows Phone in the past, and for reasons unknown, they have never materialized. There are “wrappers” for Grooveshark’s HTML5 website allowing users to stream music, but that’s quite far from a full app experience.

Now a fairly well known developer, SciLor, is evidently throwing his hat in the ring to give it a shot. What makes SciLor’s attempt a little more interesting is the fact he makes a popular Grooveshark app for Android called GrooveMobile, a PC downloader app for the service and he even had a Windows Mobile Grooveshark client back in the day. In other words, he has the chops and experience to actually pull this off in a non-amateur way.

I’ll be straight up from the beginning, I’m more of a Halo guy. But that doesn’t mean I’m not stoked that Call of Duty fans get this official app from Activision to track their stats. Yup, that’s right. Activision has released an Elite app for Call of Duty.

Vevo, that joint venture between Sony Music, Universal Music, EMI, and Abu Dhabi Media, picked up an update today for its Windows Phone offering. If you’re a fan of music videos and want to watch your favorite artists on the go, Vevo is a decent app to satisfy those needs. Let’s check out what’s new.

We’re one of the few lucky ones who don’t have to do a daily commute anymore (something for which we’re grateful) but on the occasion we need to venture against a sea of cars INRIX TRAFFIC comes to mind as a great planner tool.

For those of you who aren’t aware, INRIX monitors traffic around you in real-time but perhaps more importantly, it predicts traffic hours ahead based on current conditions. That means you can better plan by entering in routes and getting a deeper sense if you’ll be angry or happy during your commute.  Using that information, INRIX can give you an estimated time that you should leave, making it quite a unique app.