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We've mentioned Bazaar before--it's the first serious attempt at a homebrew Marketplace for Windows Phone, a place where developers can centralize and easily distribute their work for end users, allowing people to keep up on updates and learn about new apps. That's important as browsing our forums, XDA or just watching our front page, while helpful, can cause you to miss things.
Previously though, Bazaar was restricted to custom ROMs as an addon app for Windows Phone. While extremely useful and impressive, this limited its influence. Today though that all changes with the release of the Bazaar Desktop client.
If you have a developer or Chevron unlocked phone, you'll definitely want this. The app is quite impressive allowing you to browse, as far as we can tell, all the homebrew apps that are out there. You have concise app descriptions including if it will work on your device (lots are restricted to Gen 1 devices, for instance) and screenshots to see what the app looks like.
Perhaps more importantly though is the ability to download and install directly to your phone, making the whole process extremely easy. The app simply piggybacks off of Zune Desktop and if you have your device paired with that app, it will "see" this one. That latter part is very useful as it even shows you already installed homebrew/sideloaded apps, making management a breeze (most of us are still limited to just 10 homebrew/sideloaded apps).
Other worthy mentions include Featured, Browse, and Favorites making it a snap to find an app (although even we admit that the homebrew scene is a bit anemic).
Bazaar for Windows Desktop is free, well designed and just works. For that we're giving it a big recommendation and a thumbs up to the hard work of the dev team who are certainly worthy of a donation. Get more information and screenshots at their distribution page: http://118.139.161.234/bazaar/BazaarForPC.aspx
Source: Bazaar for PC; via Plaffo
While it's been confirmed by Nokia already, the team over at WeLoveWP.hk have run some tests on charging the Lumia Windows Phone with a number of options. Turns out when put up against generic USB chargers (eg. Apple), USB ports and another Nokia charging unit, the Nokia Lumia adapters provided more charge for a faster rate of recharge.
Check out the summarised results below:
Should you have a Nokia Lumia charger in your procession, using it over your PC (or other USB based chargers) will pump the juice into your Lumia handsets at a faster rate.
Source: WeLoveWP.hk
Dialing numbers listed on websites is supposed to be an easy task on Windows Phone. The OS basically highlights the numbers (like a hyperlink) and when you tap them, you get the standard "Edit phone number" screen and the option to call said number. The system is based on detecting sets of 7,10 or 11 numbers with their appropriate hyphens, periods, etc.
Interestingly, some folks at XDA have discovered that this seemingly only works for US devices. More specifically, devices who's 'Region format' settings under 'Region + language' are set for English (United States). Even folks in Canada evidently have this issue which is odd, to say the least.
We tried the list of numbers found in this post at XDA with our US region settings and they all worked fine except for the last number--just as expected. When we switched to Estonia (and rebooted) those numbers were now un-clickable just as others are reporting.
We're hesitant to call this a 'bug' because for all we know Microsoft did this on purpose for some strange reason. Still, if you want this function, you can head to Settings --> Region + Language --> Region Format and change that to English (United States) to get it to work for now as a workaround. And Microsoft, if this isn't on purpose then you may want to fix it for future updates, kthxbai! As noted in comments, this is actually advertised as a US-only feature by Microsoft so if you want it, you'll have to use the above trick to get it.
Source: XDA; Thanks, James, for the tip!
And after ripping on Google for the last two posts, we decided it would be fun and ironic to mention that Google is now allowing multiple calendars to sync to your Windows Phone:
"We launched a few new features on Google Sync for our Windows Phone (7.5+) users. Multiple Calendars is a feature that lets you select which of your Google Calendars are synced to your device. Just navigate to m.google.com/sync on your phone’s browser and configure the calendars you would like to see. From that page, you can also configure which addresses you send mail as if you have custom addresses in Gmail. We’ve also improved search to look beyond the conversations that are stored locally on your device so that you are able to find more of your conversations, faster."
We've playing around with it for the last half hour and despite numerous syncs, we have yet to see our newly created calendar pushed to our phone. File that under "how the hell do you navigate Google Calendar" and/or "it's still rolling out". Your choice. Let us know in comments if you got it to work.
Either way, it's nice to see Google still paying attention to Windows Phone, even if they still call it Windows Mobile on occasion. Hey, even our "Search server" function seems to be working again!
Source: Gmail (Google+)
The Windows Live team have published an article on the official blog that'll help readers who are possibly considering to switch from Gmail to Hotmail for email and other cloud services. Should you be on the fence about leaving Google, and wish to take up Microsoft to host your e-life, there are only three simple steps you're required to take to achieve this goal.
1. Create a Hotmail account. A Hotmail/Live ID is required (name@hotmail.com/name@live.com) to use the web service, but there is no domain restriction. When signing up for an account (should you not already possess one) you are allowed to use your own personal domain for email.
2. Import your old messages from Gmail. Should you not wish to use an email client to do the job, a service such as TrueSwitch will work wonders moving across from Gmail.
3. Connect your Gmail account. You have now successfully set up your Hotmail account, but one more optional step is available. You can have Hotmail actively retrieve any future messages that you receive on your Gmail account by carrying out the following:
Rocking out Hotmail is arguably the best way, should you not be using Exchange of course, for Windows Phone email users, since improvements have been made to the service and it integrates seamlessly with all other Microsoft products.
Source: Windows Team Blog
I spend a lot of my day designing Metro stuff for Windows Phone. And the majority of that time is spent creating mockups of each area of whatever app I am doing, along with testing it with each accent color.
Embarrassingly however, every few days I head over to Bing and search for the accent colors. I've gotten so used to this that I forgot how silly it is.
I almost hit myself tonight when I saw this really simple, but awesome little swatch file for Photoshop that I should have made for myself months ago. So if you're a designer, or a dev that does design, or have PS installed for no conceivable reason at all, head over to the source and download and run the swatch file.
Source: timmykokke
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Howdy WPCentral Forums members. Today, I want to give a quick tutorial on how to use the WPCentral 'Pictures and Albums'.
This is a great addition to our forums as members can use it to host pics to use when making new posts (no need to "hotlink" or host them yourselves). With this option, users can add pictures to their albums where they can chose to share them with others. Going further, anyone can use your pictures or optionally you can hide your albums so only you can use them.
This tutorial will cover step by step how this is accomplished, so join me after the break...
Read more
Those of you who follow the Microsoftie world will probably know of the Samsung Series 7 Slate. Microsoft gave these out for free to every attendee of the BUILD developer conference in Anaheim this past September (press had to return them though). Roughly a month after the conference they popped up on the Microsoft Store available for pre-order - albeit slightly nerfed.
I finally bought myself one in December for Windows 8 development. Since then I haven't really touched any dev in Windows 8 (going to wait for the Beta) and have just been using it as my secondary Operating System. What I have been doing on the Slate though, is WP7. And it's awesome!
Take a look at the spec's below:
- Display: 11.6 in SuperBright LED-backlit HD (1366 x 768) - 8 finger multi-touch
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2467M 1.60 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
- Hard drive: 128 GB SSD (also available in 32GB and 64GB)
While it doesn't look particularly powerful in relation to today's desktop's and laptop's - it really does pack quite a punch. Booting into Windows 7 takes around 20 seconds to be fully loaded and Windows 8 a mere 10 seconds. For day-to-day tasks there isn't a single program that my 6-core Phenom can run faster (presumably this is because of the SSD).
Here is a short video demonstrating an app, Relaxify X, running in the emulator, along with deploying it to an actual device:
So if you have a thousand bucks spare and want a really shiny late Christmas present, I suggest picking one of these up. There's no denying that they are very expensive for what you get compared to a traditional laptop, but if you're looking to get into the Windows 8 market early, or just want to do Windows Phone 7 development without being tied to a device then it's perfect.
The other day we mentioned that certain props were on their way out for your XBox Live Avatar. Agree or disagree with Microsoft's policy you may find the need to control your child's access to explicit music, videos or games on their Windows Phone or XBox Live console. If so, here's how to go about it.
You'll need log into your (or your child's) Xbox Live account over at Xbox.com.
If your child's account is part of a family membership you'll need to go to the Family Center section that is listed under the XBox drop down menu at the top of the screen. Find your child's Xbox Account, hover over the name and a pop-up menu will appear. Choose the Privacy and Online Settings option.
If your child has a stand alone account, the Privacy and Online Settings will be listed on their profile page just below their avatar.
The Privacy and Online Settings page contains settings to regulate activity, privacy and content on the Xbox Live console and Windows Phone. If you scroll down to the bottom of the options and you will find the "Music, Music Videos and Windows Phone Games" option. You have options to allow access or block access to such titles. Make your choice and click "save" to preserve those settings.
The choice to block or allow access to such titles is not for us to decide but with many finding Xbox Live consoles and Windows Phones under the tree this Holiday Season, we thought we'd share this how-to just in case there is a need.
via: mobilityminded
This is an interesting albeit very limited hack for 1st generation Samsung phones using WP7 Root Tools. The trick allows you to use basically any size alert on your phone as opposed to the 39 second/1MB limit and you can use different formats, including .aac , .amr , .m4a , .ac3 , .aiff , .flac , .mka , .mp2 and .ogg format (with only .m4a working for SMS).
Now in order to do this, your Samsung phone needs to have interop-access -- not just unlocked -- in order to run the WP7 Root Tools. In theory, if you could get access to the registry and copy/paste files to the /windows folder, you could do this on any Windows Phone, but these tools are a bit limited now.
Finally, if you set your alerts too long, there's no way to dismiss them. It's a complicated hack and seemingly a lot of work just to have a wicked cool and long alert, but hey, it's your phone. While we want to change our email and SMS alerts like everyone else, we'll wait till Microsoft hopefully offers some more customization in further updates.
Get the instructions from XDA Developers.
via WPXBox
