Apps

The team behind the new Facebook app for Windows Phone, which is currently in beta, has released a small update. Bumping the available version up to 5.0.1.1, we're looking at better support for special characters when entering text as well as a few other minor improvements.

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.

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.

I’m having a hard time recalling any other apps in the Windows Phone Store that are aimed squarely at all the Trekkies out there. But you do have one now, Star Trek App for Windows Phone 8 is a promotional app for the upcoming film: Star Trek: Into Darkness.  Let’s check it out.

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!

Back at Mobile World Congress, we gave you a demonstration of the new, redesigned foursquare app for Windows Phone 8. Co-developed with the fine folks at Nokia, the app looks amazingly fast and fluid and needless to say, our mouth’s were watering.

The app was given a fuzzy release window of March, but that was assuming it was ready for the Store (a few other apps have yet to come out too that were shown off). Obviously that time has come and gone, which can only mean it’s still not ready yet.

It's becoming quite the update central lately with numerous apps sporting new releases. We can now add both Dailymotion and Viber to the list of recently updated. What's new in the new versions? Your guess is as good as ours. Viber is a fairly minor bump from 2.2.2.0 to 2.24.0, whereas Dailymotion has leaped from 1.3.1.0 to 2.0, but we're not entirely sure what's included.