tracking

If you pre-ordered a Microsoft Surface RT and have yet to receive shipping confirmation, you may still be able to track your Surface shipment.  Even without a tracking number. 

Here's how to go about doing it.

• Just go to the FedEx or UPS websites and choose track package by reference.
• Enter your Microsoft Order number and delete the "MS" prefix.
• Leave the shipping date as the 24th and enter your destination Country and postal code.

If your Surface order has left the factory, your tracking information should pop up. To be honest, I was getting a little worried that my order status was still listed as "processing" with a delivery date listed as October 26th.  In tracking my order by reference, I was relieved to see that my Surface RT is still slated for Friday delivery.

Chime in down below in the comments if you've found your shipping information and head on over to this WPCentral Forums discussion on the Surface shipments.

Thanks, Mr. Brown and abond32, for the tip!

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.

Feel the need to track your moods from day to day? Maybe even hour to hour? If so, there's a Windows Phone app out there that might be of help.

Mood Swing is a simple, straight forward, frustration free app that is designed to track your moods. Feel the need to share your joy? Mood Swing also has Facebook and Twitter integration to allow you to share how your feeling with your friends.

You choose your mood by the respective cartoon face and add what you have on your mind from a preset category list and optional text field. You can even attach a photo to your mood entry.

Once you save your mood, it is added to your mood history where you can see how you've felt over a period of time; view a pie chart of how your moods add up; and even read about what your moods may mean.

Settings allow you to choose an appropriate cartoon representation, add custom categories for the "What's on your mind?" entry and set your Facebook/Twitter integration.

Mood Swing could easily double as a diary and you could always use it to dispute your wife's/girlfriend's claims that you're always in a grumpy mood. The app is not recommended to illustrate how grumpy your wife/girlfriend can be though.

There are two versions of Mood Swing available over at the Marketplace. A free, ad supported version can be found here and a $.99 ad-free version that can be found here.

Last week a Federal Lawsuit was filed against Microsoft involving the Windows Phone camera. In a nutshell, the allegations claims that Microsoft is ignoring user requests to not be tracked and is collecting location data whenever the camera is used. While Microsoft has previously denied similar claims, the lawsuit alleges Microsoft was fibbing.

So, to re-affirm their position on such issues Microsoft has issued a statement in response to the latest round of litigation to strike the smartphone industry. Commenting to the IBTimes, a Microsoft Spokesperson stated,

"Because we do not store unique identifiers with any data transmitted to our location service database by the Windows Phone camera or any other application, the data captured and stored on our location database cannot be correlated to a specific device or user. Any transmission of location data by the Windows Phone camera would not enable Microsoft to identify an individual or 'track' his or her movements."

Additionally, Microsoft is doing their due diligence to investigate the claims raised in the litigation. In our own, non-scientific tests we found that GPS data is not included in the image's EXIF file (file containing all the data for that particular image.) when you turn off the GPS in the camera's settings. 

From the Windows Phone Settings Menu, go to Applications and choose Pictures and Camera. From there all you have to do is turn off the GPS settings and that particular data point will not be collected. The first image on this rainy day was taken with the GPS on, the second with the GPS off.  The inserts are the EXIF data and clearly shows the absence of any GPS data when the setting is turned off.

Granted, Microsoft could still be secretly ignoring these settings and transmitting the data to servers hidden deep beneath the Redmond Campus. But for now, we'll lean towards Microsoft being on the up and up with this issue.  No date has been set for the Court to hear this case and it's even possible the suit could be dismissed in the pre-trial motion phases.

source: IBTimes

File this one under "you've got to be kidding me!" but a proposed class action lawsuit has been filed in Federal Court alleging that Microsoft is tracking customers through the Windows Phone camera. No... seriously.

The claim has Microsoft intentionally designing the camera software to ignore customer requests to turn off you location services and send it to Microsoft anyways. Early this year, Congress was concerned about privacy issues and technology. In response to these concerns, Microsoft wrote Congress and assured them that they only collected geolocation data with the express consent of the user.

Mrs. Rebecaa Cousineau, the plaintiff of record, claims "Microsoft's representations to Congress were false." Mrs. Cousineau further claims that Microsoft transmits data that includes approximate latitude and longitude coordinates of the user's device while the camera is activated. The lawsuit, brought about on behalf of all Windows Phone 7 users, is asking for an immediate injunction, punitive damages and other remedies.

Microsoft has yet to publicly respond to this latest round of litigation. It's true that your Windows Phone camera can record your GPS coordinates to your pictures EXIF file but you can also turn that feature off as well as the overall location services on your Windows Phone.

Whether or not you are truly turning these feature off has yet to be determined.

source: Reuters

Last we covered the app 'Package Tracker' a simple but colorful program that allowed you to input a package tracking number and then enabled you check its status. We gave the app some great praise, mostly due to the UI and ease of use (plus, you can basically use it for free if you track less than 3 packages at a time).

However, its competition, 'Parcel Tracker' (see review) has added a killer feature: push notifications and a live tile. That makes Parcel Tracker a more "set it and forget it" app because now it'll notify you every time the shipment gets updated.

We've been using it for the last few days and it's worked pretty solidly for us, giving us a nice counter for missed notifications and in general, makes tracking our packages that much easier. Parcel Tracker is also better for international users because it has way more carriers available (of which you can disable for a shorter list, natch).

The app does fetch for $1.29 so we still like 'Package Tracker' for those of you who only use these kinds of things on occasion. But for those of us with Amazon Prime (hallelujah!), you'll probably want to give 'Parcel Tracker' and its push notifications a trial. Keep in mind though, the developer of 'Package Tracker' has said live tiles/notifications for his app may come as well. We'll keep an eye out.  Grab 'Parcel Tracker' here.