Category: Microsoft Windows

With Mobile World Congress wrapped up for 2015, Microsoft has created and shared a quick video highlighting the big announcements from the company this year.  The video is just over a minute long and available on the Microsoft Lumia channel on YouTube.  You can watch it here after the break.

The big highlights from MWC 2015 for Microsoft circled around the all new Lumia 640, Lumia 640XL, more information shared about Windows 10 for Phones and Windows 10 as a whole while even the Surface Hub got a bit of attention as did Universal apps.  While Microsoft clearly didn’t have a huge presence at Mobile World Congress this year, the announcements were important and I think gave a good indication of where Redmond is going to be focused in 2015.

Every once in a while I see a beta version of an app that is so much better – so dramatically improved over the current production app – that I actually recommend it be installed.  The new Audible for Windows Phone beta is one of those.  If you have read this site any amount of time you know that I warn against installing beta software.  It tends to be buggy, do strange and often unexplained things, and it often is just not ready for primetime.  I’m not suggesting you won’t run into these issues with the new Audible beta.  What I am suggesting however is that it is so much better and more stable than the production version, even if you see a bug pop up it’ll be less than what you get today.

Yes, it’s that much better.

Audible for Windows Phone (BETA) – Free – Download Now

Last month I posted that a new Movies and Trailers section in Cortana had been become available here in the United States.  At the time it could be turned on but there was no content populated in that section of the Personal Assistant on Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview.  That seems to have changed today on both platforms.

Now if you open up Cortana and have the Movies and Trailers section enabled under Interests you will see movies that Cortana thinks you might be interested in along with show times of theaters near you for that movie.

The VLC for Windows Phone app has seen another update today, this one losing the beta tag that it has had since last year and also improving the HD video playback in the app.  The update, version… wait for it… 2015.305.1538.3384 is now available in the Windows Phone Store.  Remember that VLC is now a Universal app for both Windows and Windows Phone and in both case, they are free.

VLC for Windows Phone – Free – Download Now

VLC for Windows – Free – Download Now

Another day, another Windows 10 Technical Preview leak.  The leak is for Build 10031 and as with other leaked builds, there are a wide range of tweaks and adjustments (although apparently everyone is still freaking out over the Recycle Bin icon) but one significant visual change has come in this build:  Transparent Start Menu.

The site Wzor.net has posted several screenshots of what appears to be Build 10031 including the new Transparent Start Menu both in Start Menu mode as well as Start Screen Mode.

The updates just keep coming to 6Tag for Windows Phone.  The popular and far superior Instagram app has seen its forth update in 5 days and continues to add new features.  Usually when you see daily updates to an app it is to fix issues with the original big release.  Not the case with 6Tag.  The latest update has just dropped and it is version 4.0.4 for those keeping score at home.  In this update there are two new features:  A refresh button and a the use of geolocation from the image when you edit the post.

6Tag for Windows Phone – Free – Download Now