skydrive

Timelapse Pro is a handy app for your Windows Phone for time lapse photography. We took a look at it a while ago and found it to be a very nice photography app for your Windows Phone. Timelapse Pro was recently updated to version 2.5 that adds Skydrive support and the ability to create animated .gif files from your time lapse footage.

You can still create videos from the time lapse photos through third party apps such as Windows Live Movie Maker. But if you need a quick way to generate an animated presentation from your pictures, the .gif creator comes in handy.

Once you finish capturing your photos, when you go to preview the footage you will still see the options to record more photos, save photos, or delete the picture set.  With version 2.5 the option to upload the video comes into play.

When you choose to upload the video you will be taken to an upload wizard where you choose the resolution size (up to 480x360).  Once the .gif is created you can choose where to upload the .gif file to. You can choose your Skydrive account or upload the file to Timelapse Pro's server (20mb size limit). Once uploaded you will be provided a link that you can share as you wish (email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

All in all, the update improves Timelapse Pro rather nicely. There is a trial version available (doesn't support the .gif upload feature though) and the full version of Timelapse Pro will run you $.99.  You can find Timelapse Pro here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Katana Labs has recently updated their popular Windows Phone document scanner, Perfect Scan to version 1.6. The update brings fixes for Dropbox integration, document auto naming and SkyDrive support to the Windows Phone app.

Some of the key features of Perfect Scan include:

• Scans multi page documents, Makes industry standard PDF files
• Upload scans to email, Skydrive, Dropbox and Google Documents
• Automatic page detection & perspective correction: straightens your page to perfect rectangle
• Image enhancement: crop, rotation, auto contract, grayscale, black & white
• Adds text to document: fill out forms on your phone
• Signs documents with your scanned signatures

We reviewed Perfect Scan some time ago and found it to be a very good document scanner for your Windows Phone. Adding SkyDrive support will only make app more versatile.

There is a trial version available for Perfect Scan with the full version running $2.99. You can find Perfect Scan here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

It seems that the recent SkyDrive upgrade is now causing some issues with SkyDrive and OneNote users on their Windows Phone when synchronizing documents and notes between the cloud and a handset (check out our howto for more information). Users are reportedly met by errors stating that the document and/or note is not available on the server.

Rest assured that your content has not been lost. All that's required is to reset Office on Windows Phone, which will wipe locally stored files and clear pinned items. Check out the following steps:

1. Go to Settings
2. Go to the Applications pivot
3. Select Office
4. Press the Reset Office button (if you get a message that Office could not be reset, reboot your phone and try again)

Source: Windows Live Blog, Live Help

SkyDrive, the Windows Live file hosting/sharing service, is set to receive a fairly major upgrade today, which will introduce a number of requested features. It's now much easier to manage office documents and other files on an account thanks to the ability to set permissions or share individual files within a folder. Not only that, but the team have now made it possible for files to be shared to social networks and for private links to be generated that can be shared with select personnel.

Multiple selections can be made to move, download or delete more than one folder. Folders can be created (and renamed) inline without having to click in multiple locations. Uploading to SkyDrive has also been improved by taking advantage of the HTML5 File API and now users can simply drag files and photos into the web browser window and onto the file listing. A upload overlay will then be display at the bottom right hand corner of the screen allowing the user to continue using the service.

As well as the above, support has been added for PDF and RAW file types, the photo slide show has been improved, and signing into SkyDrive is now more efficient (up to 50% faster). Check out more information on the SkyDrive blog (link below) with more screenshots. Unfortunately, still no more word on a Windows Phone app or more integration with the OS.

Source: Windows Live Blog

Microsoft's free cloud storage solution was recently updated with a UI refresh and a number of improvements and features included. We've now discovered that clients for Windows, Windows Phone, iOS, OS X and Android are currently in development. We've heard from readers that a more feature-rich SkyDrive solution is greatly desired so this is welcoming news for many.  Even Molly Wood pointed this out in her Windows Phone Challenge verdict.

As well as a Windows Phone app, LiveSide has reportedly learnt of greater plans Microsoft has for SkyDrive, one feature being device integration. According to the report SkyDrive will allow users to access and view files synchronised from each device via a single interface at skydrive.live.com. Devices added to Windows Live will be displayed under a section titled "Devices" in the SkyDrive navigation (below "Groups"), enabling a single location for access to all the files stored on the cloud.

What's unclear still is whether devices added to Windows Live will be able to use the free 25GB of storage offered in SkyDrive, or if they will be stuck with the 5GB "SkyDrive synced storage" for Windows Live Mesh. All in all, good news all around.

Via: LiveSide

We're using cloud services more and more with our Windows Phones, as well as with other devices.  One such service, Dropbox, can't seem to catch a break these days.

First, we have the Dropbox Reader that can drill into your accounts. Then Dropbox left the back door open to their services that essentially removed password protection. Now we see the cloud storage company has updated its Terms of Services claiming "worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty free, sublicenseable rights" to your stuff (yes, they use the word stuff in a legal document).

The TOS agreement may not be alarming to some but we thought you should know how Dropbox considers the content you place in their hands.

To quote from Dropbox's TOS:

"By submitting your stuff to the Services, you grant us (and those we work with to provide the Services) worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable rights to use, copy, distribute, prepare derivative works (such as translations or format conversions) of, perform, or publicly display that stuff to the extent reasonably necessary for the Service. This license is solely to enable us to technically administer, display, and operate the Services. You must ensure you have the rights you need to grant us that permission."

Dropbox does recognize that you retain ownership of your stuff and they clarify how they might use your stuff in their Privacy Policy. Basically they can collect your personal information to be used to contact or identify you in order to improve services and to better understand your needs and interests. They also have provisions to use your geo-location information and logging/cookie data.

Google has similar language (they use "content" instead of "stuff" and ) with their TOS but SkyDrive takes on a different approach. Microsoft doesn't ask for ownership but rather rights to access your content. Here's how Microsoft words things:

"You understand that Microsoft may need, and you hereby grant Microsoft the right, to use, modify, adapt, reproduce, distribute, and display content posted on the service solely to the extent necessary to provide the service."

It may sound as if all three are saying the same thing but a "right to access" and "sublicenseable rights" can be worlds apart. Granted I don't think Dropbox will start exercising their "ownership rights" but the wording of these TOS Agreements should give us pause as to what we put in the cloud as well as what service we choose.

source: Liveside

Update: In an effort to make it clear that Dropbox isn't claiming ownership rights to your "stuff", Dropbox has decided to make some revisions to their updated TOS. On their blog site, Dropbox states that "The language in this clause was more technical than it needed to be." Believing terms like "derivative works" and "sublicensable" could come across overly broad or out of place the revisions states,

"You retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are needed to run the Services, as explained below."

The only instances Dropbox will share your stuff is outlined in the Privacy Policy (which hasn't changed). While the TOS could have been worded simpler, it's nice to see Dropbox responding to customer concerns.

Thanks Rene for the tip!

As a Windows Phone 7 user, you shouldn’t be jealous of Apple’s iCloud service. Most of the functionality in iCloud is already baked into your phone via SkyDrive and Hotmail. The good folks from the Windows Phone Team posted a story to show us how it all works together. It’s a great primer for SkyDrive/Hotmail integration in general (if you don’t already have a Push capable email account, they link off to explain how to forward your current email to Hotmail, which does), and to sweeten the deal they have included screenshots of the improvements we mentioned a week ago. Those features include:

• Share photos stored on SkyDrive by way of email, text messages, IM - "SkyDrive lets you store thousands of pictures in the cloud. You can show them off to friends on your phone in the Pictures hub, and now you can share SkyDrive photos with anyone over email, text, or Messenger/Facebook."
• Share videos on SkyDrive - "With Mango, all the goodness you had with photos has been extended to videos. Once you’re finished shooting your video, you can caption it and share immediately on SkyDrive, and the upload will happen in the background while you move on to other things."
• Browse and search documents stored on SkyDrive - "Windows Phone lets you view folders and files directly on your phone, so when you group things on SkyDrive, you know they’ll be available with the same folder structure on your phone."
• See what’s been shared with you - "More than 70% of the folders created on SkyDrive are shared with other people, which makes it all the more important to see everything shared with you on your phone. This pivot view will show you the complete list of documents shared with you, letting you open and edit in Excel, Word, and PowerPoint."
• Search your SkyDrive documents - "If you store a lot of stuff on SkyDrive, being able to do a quick search is important. In the Office hub, you can easily search across your SkyDrive for the document you need without having to wade through your folders and other files."

Overall, a nice little package. Of course, it's already been mentioned by Micrsoft themselves that Skydrive will probably fold into the general LIVE services, including Xbox. So this is just the beginning of Redmond's big "cloud push".

Source: Inside Windows Live

There was hope. There were rumors. There was a chance that with the Windows Phone Mango update we could stream music files from our SkyDrive accounts.

But those hopes were dashed in a comments section over at the windowsteamblog. In a question to Mike Torres, a Microsoft's Group Program Manager for SkyDrive, in the comments section of his post on the new features heading to SkyDrive he was asked,

"If there is an mp3-File on skydrive is it possible to stream it to the phone?"

His response was short, sweet and to the point.

"With MP3s, the Office hub won't stream your MP3s, no."

So it looks as if the hopes of streaming music from the cloud have been dashed for now.  Still, the eternal optimist might point out that while Torres rules out the possibility to stream music to the Office Hub, he didn't rule out streaming music to the Zune Hub....

Or am I reading too much in between the lines?

Source: windowsteamblog via: LiveSide