Apps

Although for many, Internet Explorer is a fine and dandy web browser for their Windows Phone, having an alternative (even if it can’t be native) is still a nice thing to have as an option. Step in UC Browser, which for many offers a different perspective on web browsing in addition to some unique features.

Currently, UC Browser sits at a lofty version 2.9 but 3.0 is right around the corner. With 2.9, users can already take advantage of UC’s cool feature list, including cached video for offline, “modes” for viewing at night, incognito, text-only, etc., customized themes, Lockscreen wallpaper, Smart Downloads for grabbing ringtones, wallpaper, music and more.

Good old Microsoft has released an official Live Event app for Windows Phone 8 devices that will allow users to stream tomorrow’s live NEXT Xbox announcement to their devices.

Microsoft has previously has such an app for their Xbox 360 console, allowing users at home to watch on their big’ol TVs but they didn’t have anything available for their Windows Phone lineup. Now, they seemed to have rectified that with the official Live Video Player app.

RBC Canada has released an official app for Windows 8. The app enables customers to login and manage accounts. Numerous features are available, including the viewing of account details, transfer of funds, view / delete payments and pay bills. Just like other apps we've seen released in the past, customers looking for a native banking experience will be able to take advantage of more convenient access.

If you’re out and about this weekend, traveling around, you may want to update that Hulu Plus app for Windows Phone 8. The popular TV streaming site for the US got a teeny update to 1.0.0.1, which you should know by now means some bug fixes and not new features.

Last Saturday I got the chance to check out a Hackathon down in San Diego. It was a great event and I’ll be telling you guys about that later on. But the app that won the overall hackathon is now in the Windows Phone Store. Map Wallpaper is a clever lockscreen app that gives you your current location at a glance. Let’s check it out.

If you’re a movie buff (and really, who isn’t?), then you’ll want to peep a relatively new app called Film Closet from Vaggelis Diatsigkos, a student at the University of Patras (Greece). The app is available for free on Windows Phone (7.x and 8) and Windows RT.

The app is what it sounds like: a repository for all things in movies these days. Think of IMdB but with more meat to it and a solid Modern UI design. The app accesses TheMovieDB for its info and it should allow users to access more than 60,000 movies, including all current and upcoming releases.

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There’s nothing quite like waking up to some screenshots of the new beta version of WhatsApp, the popular mulit-platform messaging client. We’ve already detailed some of the changes coming for the future Windows Phone 8 branch, an update that looks to be quite massive. But for those on 7.8, we’re told that version is getting updated as well.

Though the 7.8 branch of WhatsApp evidently won’t ditch the background audio API for connections (more on that below), it does bring some other new features and at least shows that the WhatsApp and Nokia teams aren’t forgetting 7.x users with the planned update.

Microsoft has unleashed this weeks Windows Phone Red Stripe Deals. Pricing has been slashed on the Xbox game Super Monkey Ball 2, glƏƏk!, and Hockey Nations PP.

For those not familiar, every week Microsoft discounts the pricing on a Windows Phone Xbox title as well as a app and game from independent developers. You easily identify them by the red stripe that surrounds the app/games Store icon tile.