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A new image has leaked out tonight revealing for the first time Window Phone 8's new "live" lockscreen wallpaper feature. We have mentioned live lockscreen wallpapers before, specifically when the Windows Phone 8 SDK leaked over the summertime (and we told you about them even before then). The feature is not quite as “live” as Android where things are actually moving around, wasting your battery. Instead, this is truly useful.

The image above, received by the site Nokia Innovation, shows three examples of this Live locksreen wallpaper: Bing, ESPN and USA Today. The former will refresh the lockscreen every day with Bing’s latest background, ESPN can show you sports scores presumably of your favorite team and USA Today highlights news via tile images.

Looks like Windows Phone’s big brother Windows 8 has coughed up some interesting details on allowing games to be paused, resumed across various platforms. The Xbox Live games, Minesweeper, Solitaire and Mahjong all seem to indicate we’ll finally experience the dream of picking up one device and resuming play on with another.

Early on in Windows Phones lifecycle, we saw a demo of the continuous client principle with the arcade shooter The Harvest, but so far, this kind of interaction has all but eluded us. Whilst these games are essentially turn-based, this could be the start of great interactive experiences coming to Windows Phone.

With the launch of Microsoft's new Outlook.com, which is set to replace its current Live (formerly Hotmail) email service, a number of Windows Phone owners quickly acted to save their desired @outlook.com email address. All good and dandy, but using the new Outlook address in place of your Live ID is a separate matter.

Should you decide to completely replace your Live ID with your new Outlook address, then you'll be required to reset your Windows Phone to be able to make use of integrated services and the Marketplace. This is a pain for those who have a lot of apps installed and have the device set up to the way that suits the owner. The good news is that all your purchases are saved and moved across to the new Outlook address, but what if you weren't aware of the fact you'd need to reset your device and don't wish to do so?

The Windows Phone UK team held an exciting event in Camden last night. The Into Live Event saw live performances from local bands, and even the popular Noisettes. As well as the music, a steady flow of food and alcohol were on the table with each attendee receiving two free drink tokens (much like the HTC launch event for the TITAN and Radar). I went along with Robert Brand from Glance and Go Radio and also managed to meet up with Tom Warren from The Verge. So what was down at Proud Camden?

Ah, Facebook. We don't really get nor use it very often but we recognize that we're in the minority on that one. We also have those friends who meticulously and methodically check their status, friend count, "Likes" and what have you numerous times a day.

For those people, we humbly direct you towards Friend Tracker, the new app from Rudy Huyn (TVShow, MyEncyclopedia, Fuse, etc.). The app is simple enough: it looks through your contacts who are synced with Facebook and/or Live and keeps track of who's there, who's not and showing you a graph of the number of friends and activity.

According to the app's "How it works" section, Windows Phone checks this about once a day. But if you really want "real time" you can have the app login to your account and pull down the info on a much more frequent basis, like every 30 minutes or so.

It's a nifty little addition and completely free. Plus like all of Huyn's apps, really elegant. Here are some of the other features:

• Live tile
• Statistics on the number of friends
• Scheduled agent

So if you need to keep abreast of your social status, sounds lke you'll want to pick this up. Grab it here in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Wordament, the free (ad-supported) Windows Phone indie game from You vs. the Internet, is expected to be re-released as an Xbox Live title on the Marketplace. The multiplayer word game puts players against one another to find as many words as possible from the same grid of 16 letters. The announcement detailing this upgrade was published back in February.

The Xbox Live version -once released- will remain free and ad-supported, much like Minesweeper, Sudoku and Breeze. Before it has time to return with achievements and whatnot, it seems someone has got ahead of themselves at Windows Phone HQ. Should you filter the web Marketplace games catalogue to display Live enabled titles, you'll see an odd listing.

We're not entirely sure why Wordament is present on the Xbox Live list of Windows Phone games, but this further confirms an imminent re-release of the word game. it's good to see such a popular title receive Live features, especially after someone proposed using the game concept. We'll update with more information as it's made available.

Thanks Illum1na for the heads up! 

We'll be honest, we had no idea there is a live YouTube section on their site (http://www.youtube.com/live) but indeed there is, so it only makes sense that some of you would want to watch it on your phones. The app YouTube Live by wsoftvn (devs of the excellent easyTube, easyWallpaper and easyHeartRate) has just been released and it is currently free and ad-free to all. Last we checked, free is a good deal and there's not guarantees that it will last. In other words, you may want to grab it now.

Although the selection of "live" shows on YouTube is a little niche (lots of gaming and Arab channels) when you find something you want to watch, YouTube Live works extremely well. We just streamed a news conference over T-Mobile's "4G" HSPA+ pipes (admittedly a much better network than AT&Ts for raw speed) and it went without a hiccup--in fact it looked great.  Here are some of the live channels:

• News: CBC Live, MNT, NTV, TOLOnews
• Fashion: Fashion TV, Fashion One, NY Fashion Week
• Sport: Sport Tonight (soccer), Davis Cup (Tennis), WSB (boxing), Wrestling
• Music, Gaming, Chatting, Talk Shows, etc.

It also has a nice layout, showing what is live now, what is coming up soon and what is coming up in the next 7 days. While we wish YouTube's live selection was better, the app itself works great (we just wish the English Al Jazeera as able to stream). So with that, we have to give it a thumbs up for you to try. Even if you don't use it all that often, it's worth the price.

Pick up YouTube Live here in the Marketplace.

It seems Microsoft has worked some magic on backend services for Windows Phone, as users and sites alike are reporting they're now able to view images that are attached to tweets in the People and Picture hubs. Twitter integration is handled via Windows Live, which was introduced in the Mango update, but was limited to displaying text-only tweets. Now when viewing "What's new?" in the People hub (and Pictures hub) images are now displayed along with the tweet.

Have you noticed the change on your handset(s)? Let us know in the comments!

Source: LiveSide; Thanks, thenet, for the heads up!

We lightly touched on the three screens dream of Microsoft back at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Los Angeles earlier this year. CEO Steve Ballmer wrapped up his speech with a slide that showed the tight integration between products, seen above. For a good example of the "three screens" vision, check out the RC-AirSim demo.

Tim Carmody at Wired has published a superb write up of the integration we are starting to witness between Microsoft's product line. He spoke about the Xbox Companion app for Windows Phone that Microsoft’s Derek Snyder demonstrated. Derek created a scenario where you are watching an animated film on the Xbox but can't put a name to one of the voice-actors. The first call would be to get out a smartphone and search on Google or IMDB. With the Xbox Companion app, you can see all the relavant information about that film you're watching right in your hands.

"What’s more, it doesn’t just do this over Wi-Fi, if the Xbox and WinPhone are on the same local network. It can do it completely through the cloud, using the common Windows Live ID on both devices. If the Xbox had 3G/4G cellular data like the Windows Phone does, you wouldn’t even need a local router."

We're getting away from the central workstation with file browsing and one means of input. Metro will enable more intuitive ways to browse files, apps will integrate with each other to pull photos as well as other media, which will make the system appear less layered and more fluid. Why keep visiting Explorer to find files when apps can pull the content for you in one place?

There's no central hub with Microsoft's "three screens" philosophy. Windows 8 (tablet and desktop), Windows Phone, Live and Xbox will be connected, not only by service and information, but by interface. There's nothing different. Someone who's never used a Windows Phone before, but is on a Windows 8 desktop on a daily basis, will feel right at home with the familiarity of Metro. Personal information, contacts, social networking and everything the consumer needs is all synchronised between Live enabled systems.

And with Skype on board, this really is Skynet. Check out the full article at Wired, it's worth the read.

Source: Wired