Help and Howto

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

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!

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:

• b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.
• c. Click Add an email account.
• d. Provide your Gmail account details.

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

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...

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

So you got a Windows Phone for Christmas? Sweet. If you're a developer, you're probably itching to start writing code for the device. If an advanced hobbyist, homebrew software may be more of your interest. While the emulator -- a part of the Windows Phone SDK -- rocks for testing locally, you'll eventually want to try the real deal by loading up XAPs on your phone. We'll cover the pros and cons of each approach to do so.
 

Though we give Google a lot of flak around here, after all, their "apps" for Windows Phone are basically non-existent (save one lame one), we'll give credit where it is due. Evidently, if you go to Google.com in IE9 on Windows Phone, you get the above screens, part of their continuing "make over" for Windows Phone.

The first prompts you to pin Google Search to your start screen. When tapped, it opens a new "blue" page that is properly formatted to be pinned. You simply select "pin to start" in the menu and it creates a tile.

Sure, we want more from Google on Windows Phone, but you have to admit it's a creative use of the "pin to start" feature for our OS. Heck, we'd like to see more sites adopt this little trick for site promotions, why not?

Thanks, abond32, for the tip!

While we consider the AT&T HTC Titan an excellent Windows Phone (here's our review) it has a quirky graphics lag or stutter at times. The stutter occurs more often with apps that have heavy graphics (Fruit Ninja is a good example) but it doesn't happen constantly throughout the game. Just enough to be noticeable.

WPCentral reader ElecktroDragon has discovered a temporary work around that eliminates the lag time and may identify the problem as being related to the Sound Enhancer Setting.  If you go into the Titan's Settings and turn off the SRS Enhancement in the Sound Enchancer setting, the lag goes away.  Based on the forums discussion, sound quality is just fine for the games without the SRS turned on.

While this seems to do the trick, it also means that for the time being you'll need to go back into settings to turn back on the SRS Enhancements when watching videos or listening to music to enjoy the sound enhancement.  We're still hoping that HTC can resolve this issue with a software update but in the meantime, at least we have a temporary fix.

Edit: This fix/workaround also applies to the HTC Radar/Radar 4G

Thanks goes out to ioannisgk for pointing this out.

By now, if you have ever sent a text message on Windows Phone, you would have noticed that a simple :-) gets turned into a full on smiley face on the phone. It's not groundbreaking but shows that Microsoft is paying attention to detail and it certainly enhances the experience.

Every once in awhile we get a "tip" on someone finding a new "emoji" (we still call 'em emoticons) while texting. Well, Microsoft has thrown together a whole sheet of the most commonly used ones. Yes, there are even more to be found, which is crazy.

While these are super awesome, we're hard pressed to imagine we're going to memorize them, let alone be able to bang 'em out quickly in a text message from memory. But we like a challenge! (Side note: we have conjured up "vampire bat" on occasion, which was...odd).

Source: Windows Phone Blog

We covered the screen capturing app for Windows Phone Mango not so long ago, but it's noted that the app is not able to take screen shots of games. The guys at Nanapho.jp have come across an easy work around that involves little effort. 

As one can see in the above photo, simply using the multi-task functionality, the user is able to save the screenshot of the game while in the task selection screen. Then simply use a photo editor to rotate and crop the image. There is a downside to this, as mentioned in their article, where the resolution of the captured images are 432×259 instead of 800x400. Check out an example below.

As well as gaming, this technique works when using the camera app as well as watching a movie. There's a slight sacrifice, but the functionality is worth it.

Source: Nanapho.jp (Translate)

About two weeks ago, on "Mango day", Microsoft quietly sneaked out a neat little app that's especially useful for those on limited 3G data plans. The app is simply called Cellular Data and all it does is create a Live Tile that directly links to your Data Settings page. This gives you a quick and easy shortcut for toggling your data on and off, instead of drilling down the Settings menu.

What makes it a Live Tile though is that it updates every 30 minutes with an on/off notification in the corner, letting you "glance and go" to see if your data is on or not, possibly racking up costly roaming data.

The app is free and certainly worth the install. Pick it up here in the Marketplace.

Here's a neat little trick. If you have Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9 installed, you can browse over to WindowsPhone.com and pin that site to your Taskbar for quick access. Simply drag-n-drop the icon in the address field to your Task Bar and you'll have a quick shortcut right to the new Web Marketplace. What's even cooler though is the built in jump-list that you get by right-clicking that shortcut. In short, it'll bring up the site's various sub-sections, like Marketplace, My Phone, How To, etc. for super quick access.

Neat-o.

via: Windows Phone Daily