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Since we’re heading off into the weekend we figured we’d leave off with our quick impression of the Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T Tablet. Whew, that Samsung does not mind a long name, for sure.

So why are we doing this? Same reasons as always (1) I bought one this week (2) many Windows Phone users are also shopping around for tablets/hybrids and PCs. Let us be the guinea pig to test ‘em out for ya.

Head past the break for some photos and our hands on video tour of the device, including our thoughts.

Microsoft and Nokia are planning to tackle the smartphone market and hit hard with new low-end hardware, according to a report by Reuters. With multiple high-end products from Nokia, HTC, and Samsung already available, the company is now looking at the cheaper price points that attract a large portion of consumers. The Lumia 521 is such a Windows Phone that Microsoft hopes will win over the minds of consumers.

The Nokia Lumia 928 has reportedly been seen in disguise in New York City during a private Nokia concert held for "social influencers, lifestyle and consumer media". The Nokia Blog notes that numerous setups for recording video with supposed 928s in a thick black case was observed, and even a few Nokia folks had them closely guarded.

Nokia is believed to be announcing the mobile phone in the near future and should this report be accurate it can't be long now.

Some good news for all the Metrotube fans out there! You can now head to the Windows Store and download a beta of the popular third party YouTube application for Winows 8/RT. It’s been a fan favorite since it first launched on Windows Phone what feels like eons ago.

When you picked up your Nokia Lumia 920 a few months back you probably had a color in mind before heading to the store. Maybe you wanted Cyan or Yellow to stand out from the crowd. But you get to the store only to have your selection limited to whatever was on hand. You could have waited for more colors to come in, but you said screw it and took black because you wanted that Windows Phone 8 goodness right then and there. You could throw on a case and get a new color, but you’ll lose out on the beautiful industrial design of that high-end Lumia.

Why not just swap the shell?

Lighthouse Game Studio’s follow-up to Torchbear, the location-based game Greed City has been out on Windows Phone 8 for something like two months now. And in that time, the developer has released its fair share of updates. Each one of these makes the free game a little more rounded and more worthy of players’ time.

Today’s update, version 1.1.7 adds an exciting new feature: the ability to comment on other users’ actions, plus a few more minor features and bug fixes.

The Swedish television network Sveriges Television has released an app for Windows Phone. It enables consumers to watch favourite shows, clips and live broadcasts while on the move. While the app is essentially the mobile version of the network's website, it does enable playback directly on the device, which is handy if you're not currently at a computer.

We've covered Microsoft's push into the realm of two-step authentication quite extensively as the company continues to roll changes out and patch up broken areas of its backend. This includes the Dev Center app for Windows Phone, which caused issues for those who desired to utilise the app after upgrading their account to be more secure. Microsoft has now reported that it has fixed the problem.

We've been provided a heads up that Effectual for Windows Phone will be updated in the next handful of days. This upcoming release will add auto-suggest and spellchecking functionality, which is something we picked up in our previous coverage. What's more is the team has other features on its list for future versions.

The popular beer-focused social network Untappd (www.untappd.com) has launched a Windows Phone app. In a nutshell the network allows users to find nearby craft beers and bars, check out what beers are currently trending, as well as what friends are drinking. 

Along with late notice of this week’s new Xbox Windows Phone 8 release Angry Birds, we also missed out on advance notice of the Xbox Red Stripe Deal of the Week this time out. Hey, sometimes the crystal ball gets fuzzy, or somebody swipes it and leaves you with a plain old Magic 8-Ball. We’ll do our best to swipe it back real soon.

The important thing is the Red Stripe Deals are on sale right this minute! This time Xbox game Farm Frenzy 2 from Alawar headlines the week’s three discounts, down from $2.99 to only 99 cents. It went on sale once before back in May 2012, but for $1.99, so this time makes for a better deal.

Read on for an in-depth look at Farm Frenzy 2, plus links for its fellow sale game DrawStickman: Epic and the Jack of Tools Pro app!

A Windows Phone update is being pushed out for the AT&T HTC 8X but there's not much to go on as far as what the update accomplishes.

The OS version remains at 8.0.10211.204 and the Firmware reads 1532.20.20100.502. The update only takes a few minutes to install and there isn't anything obvious as to what the update brings to the table.

Our guess is this update is similar to the update Verizon pushed out recently and has a few patches here, a few fixes there. We'll see what we can dig up but in the meantime, if you see any changes after updating, let us know below in the comments.