social

Nokia has launched Oreo Skies (think Oreo cookies) for Lumia Windows Phones. The app enables consumers to gaze to the stars (or the sun if you're using it during the day) and explore a map of stars and constellations. Messages can be sent to friends via Facebook, and the whole idea is really a social app for the massive network (it's also available via the website as an app, but asks users to download on their Lumia smartphones).

We’re mixed on the whole “social internet thing” with Twitter about as far as we’ll go with the phenomenon. But there is little doubt that there is a certain demographic who want to engage with others on just about everything these days. Microsoft’s Socl (www.so.cl) project is a research effort to see what works and what doesn’t. While it’s not “public” yet meaning it’s not an official service, it just got closer to it today.

This morning, Microsoft tossed open the doors to anyone who wants to jump on board the previously invite-only service. We received an email via Outlook.com asking us to join the effort and since it uses your Microsoft Account, getting your “Me Page” is quite simple...

MeTweets is the latest Twitter client for your Windows Phone that claims to be perfect for the beginner as well as the power tweeter.

MeTweets spreads things out nicely on the main pages covering your timeline, mentions, messages, lists, top tweets and favorites. Don't care for so many pages? MeTweets' settings allow you to turn off and re-organize the main pages.

Let's get ready to...wait, wrong sport

When you’re done pounding down your scotch, you may want to watch some brawny guys beat the heck out of each other—if so the official UFC companion app for Windows Phone may just be your next download.

We say 'companion' because it expands upon the official Xbox UFC Live app for the 360--that app allows you to watch UFC fights through your 360 to your TV and more. (Of course you can use the app without an Xbox 360 too).

The app just landed on the Store for Windows Phone and it’s not half bad (though it does have the default load screen for a split second). Actually, the app had a really gorgeous Metro layout and logs into your Xbox Live account automatically.

Zite for Windows Phone - now available

We haven’t heard much about Zite (zite.com), a news service that’s owned by CNN, but we should start paying attention to it. Zite is not just a news-app but rather a service that finds stories based on your likes and interests which gets you away from the “information overload” that many of us experience today.

The app has been on iOS since late last year and is also on Android too but now the service is coming to Windows Phone and the CEO is quite excited—mostly because he uses a Lumia 710.

Telefonica introducing a cross-platform mobile messaging service

Tuenti (official website) has announced an upcoming Windows Phone app, as well as a solution for iOS. Currently the service is available for both Android and BlackBerry (as beta - launched today), with the remaining two apps coming in the next few weeks. So what's the deal with Tuenti and should you be interested?

Nokia is back to updating a lot of their core apps one of which we completely forgot about: Pulse.

We last covered Nokia Pulse when it was announced at Nokia World back in fall 2011. It’s Nokia’s social-app and at the time we had little use for it—there were no Lumias on the market and Nokia’s service wasn’t exactly all that feature-rich.

Today, Nokia announced that Pulse Beta (yup, it’s still not ready for official release) is going to version 0.9 within in the next day or two (ours is still at 0.8 in the Marketplace). The good news is there are plenty of new features coming with 0.9 that are making us reconsider using this app:

• You can now sign-in on Nokia Pulse with your Facebook account
• You can start a new conversation as soon as you open Nokia Pulse
• The Nokia Pulse live tile now shows more information about unread messages
• The overall performance of Nokia Pulse has been improved
• You can now consolidate multiple email addresses for a person…
• …and more easily correct a misspelled email address
• Your friend who aren’t using Nokia Pulse just yet will get a direct link to the mobile client for their specific phone for a mobile Nokia Pulse experience

Nokia Pulse is kind of powerful. It’s basically a messaging app on steroids. For instance it allows you to send mapping information (via Nokia Maps) to a contact for a meet-up, you can create groups for mass messaging, add in notes, reviews, phone numbers all with a few taps.

Back last year, Nokia introducing a messaging service was akin to when Samsung announced ChatOn—it’s kind of cool but there are alternatives out there.  Flash-forward today though and it’s a bit different—Nokia now means something and we’re much more inclined to jump on their ship as opposed to Samsung’s (then again, ChatOn is multi-platform, Pulse currently is not. However, Nokia Pulse is going to Android and iOS presumably after it is feature-complete on Windows Phone).

You can download Nokia’s Pulse here in the Marketplace. Being a beta, it is not yet restricted to Lumia phones. Let’s repeat that: currently ALL Windows Phones users can try this out but our bet is with v1.0 it will land in the Nokia Collection, so grab it and try it now. Also remember, you're looking for version 0.9 as the latest which may show up in 12-48 hours (we're still on the old v0.8).

Take a look at the video demo and announcement after the break along with the QR code...

This week in our Windows Phone developer interview series we're joined by David Hamilton, CTO and Co-Founder of Pepper. We took a quick look at Pepper from a recent Windows Phone User Group meet-up and were intrigued by both the idea behind the app and the vision for future cross-platform development.

So what's the deal with Pepper and how did it come to be? We threw Hamilton a set of questions for an insight into not only app-specific development, but how the team views Windows Phone against competitors. Head on past the break for the full interview.

Wouldn't it be useful if you were able to join a music-focused community on your Windows Phone, which would enable you to search, filter and attend music events? An app and service called Pepper aims to provide such functionality. Launching on Windows Phone (iOS, Blackberry and Android ports on the way), Pepper brings a new social network to the platform.

Finding live music events near your location has now been made a whole lot easier. Once an account has been created (takes two minutes through the app itself) users are able to follow venues and artists to find out where and when the next interesting event is. Any gigs or club nights that are to be attended can then be shared with friends to bring a number of people together for the evening. Best of all - it's free.