Database Info

are these applications available on Windows Mobile?

Looking at switching from an IPhone to a Winmo device (Touch Pro 2 to be specific) but need to know if some of the applications i use everyday are available. and at what price (if not free)
Shazam:Music Identification. real simple.
Pandora:found a few Cabs around, but no mention of compatibility with WVGA screens.
Urban Spoon: basically a program that uses your current GPS position to locate nearby restaurants.
Fandango/I.TV: shows local theaters, play times. allows purchase of tickets through the program.
Units: quick and easy unit converter.
now, are all these available with a nice finger friendly interface?
thank's for taking your time to help me figure out what all is available.

crazy talk said:
Looking at switching from an IPhone to a Winmo device (Touch Pro 2 to be specific) but need to know if some of the applications i use everyday are available. and at what price (if not free)
Shazam:Music Identification. real simple.
Pandora:found a few Cabs around, but no mention of compatibility with WVGA screens.
Urban Spoon: basically a program that uses your current GPS position to locate nearby restaurants.
Fandango/I.TV: shows local theaters, play times. allows purchase of tickets through the program.
Units: quick and easy unit converter.
now, are all these available with a nice finger friendly interface?
thank's for taking your time to help me figure out what all is available.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In my experience with WinMO, simple apps that do only one thing are rare. The iPhone developers are more on that path. With WinMo, you are more likely to find full featured apps. For instance, instead of having an app that will just find the info for a song, you will more likely find a music player with that ability. I think Pocket Music Player (?) can do that. Think more like what kind of apps are out there for windows, you tend to get clones of those for the mobile platform. That is good and bad. For a power user, it is good.
I do know that a good unit converter exists. I for get the name. For a good list of apps, lookup the 2008/2009 smartphone magazine winners and runner-ups for WinMo apps (search google for "best pps apps") and you will find it. It lists a lot of good apps. Also, look up "ppc freeware" for some other good sites.

Shazam exists, do a Google for MusicID, i have a feeling it is only available preinstalled by the carrier but i may well be wrong.
Don't know about the rest.

2- if it is not compatible the graphical layout will be smaller (but in most case it's all right)
3/4- Google maps or the Web do it
5- to many app on the web
D'rath

Yup...
As it's been said, Shazam, and Pandora already exist. I have Shazam MusicID running on my Kaiser on T-Mobile, and it works just fine.
For the other two, why not just use Windows Live (or Bing). Same things all in one app.
http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/index.html
if you're in love with the iphone UI, then that's one thing. But I'll be real... damn if I understand why one would want to install multiple apps that do simple tasks, when you can have one that does multiple tasks.
To each his own, I s'pose.

Sean D. said:
As it's been said, Shazam, and Pandora already exist. I have Shazam MusicID running on my Kaiser on T-Mobile, and it works just fine.
For the other two, why not just use Windows Live (or Bing). Same things all in one app.
http://www.discoverbing.com/mobile/index.html
if you're in love with the iphone UI, then that's one thing. But I'll be real... damn if I understand why one would want to install multiple apps that do simple tasks, when you can have one that does multiple tasks.
To each his own, I s'pose.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the Shazam Application is free? i believe i had heard somewhere it was pay per use.
i believe you underestimate the capabilities of both the Movie application and the "where to eat" application i am asking about. unless Bing can make totally random suggestions about restaurants wherever you are by taking your current GPS location and looking around.
i feel like i will get Smited here for posting this, but this is what i am talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTTIpM4L12s
also has reviews, menu, etc. i understand you can find places to eat with a simple google search. but that doesnt work when you have no idea where to start.
with the movie application you have the ability to read reviews, watch trailers, find show times at each theater, location and buy tickets. also has a normal TV guide. but i do not use that often. or can you easily do all this through the internet browser or other means?
i fear i may sound like a "Fanboy" for the IPhone, but i really am tired of the phones lackluster hardware and generally slow performance, and the less then appealing battery life.
but i do like these applications VERY much. they may only do one thing, but they do them extremely well. that's why i want to know if they are available on this platform because i am very interested in getting a Touch Pro2 when they become available.

As is typical with iphone vs WM, the iphone apps are going to look prettier. But the same things do, or can exist on WM.
I got Music ID here in the development & hacking section, for free. And it works fine on my Kaiser.
I *think* you can get movie reviews on Bing... I THINK! But I know you can find them, and get info about them, and where they're playing.
But it can get you random restaraunts from around you based on your gps, or cell tower location. You can find "restaurant" by typing, or speaking it.

for movie showtimes at nearby theateres, you can lookinto "flix" or "cinemo." flix is for the uk, franc, germany and soon to be for italy and spain too. Cinemo is for the US and Canada. They don't let you buy tickets, but they provide useful info. Both are hosted on this site, so look for it in the development and hacking forum.

orlandojumpoff said:
for movie showtimes at nearby theateres, you can lookinto "flix" or "cinemo." flix is for the uk, franc, germany and soon to be for italy and spain too. Cinemo is for the US and Canada. They don't let you buy tickets, but they provide useful info. Both are hosted on this site, so look for it in the development and hacking forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the info!

finger friendly is rare in winmo as of now...

one more question, when using google maps, (or TomTom, etc) can the program pull address information from contacts?
say im in google maps can i just start typing "current location" in the "start" and have it figure out i mean where i am now? and for the "End" can i just start typing my contacts name and have it automatically enter my contacts address?
and when viewing a contact, can i just click their address and have it automatically pull up Google maps (or any other navigation application) and show me that location?

crazy talk said:
one more question, when using google maps, (or TomTom, etc) can the program pull address information from contacts?
say im in google maps can i just start typing "current location" in the "start" and have it figure out i mean where i am now? and for the "End" can i just start typing my contacts name and have it automatically enter my contacts address?
and when viewing a contact, can i just click their address and have it automatically pull up Google maps (or any other navigation application) and show me that location?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can do the former, though not quite as you describe. You click the menu, go to Options and choose "Look up Contact". It then lists your contacts that have address info and will pop up the map to them and give you several options.
The latter you can't do with the built in Windows contact manager, but their might be a 3rd party one that can interface with Google Maps, I don't know.

crazy talk said:
i believe you underestimate the capabilities of both the Movie application and the "where to eat" application i am asking about. unless Bing can make totally random suggestions about restaurants wherever you are by taking your current GPS location and looking around.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you're underestimating the Bing app. It's not just a web search. The Bing mobile app uses GPS or cell towers to locate you, and then offers local search for restaurants, gas prices, theatre / showtime listings, local businesses. It also gives local weather and traffic reports, AND has a GPS mapping app to give you directions to anywhere you find. And it can even do location-based web searches, pulling up wikipedia articles or news items about places you're near. And the whole thing is built with a finger-friendly interface (although it's still rough around some edges). Heck, it's even got voice-command -- click the "speak" button, say "sushi," and it'll list the nearest sushi places.
Bing might not have every last feature of Urban Spoon or the showtimes app you're talking about, but it certainly has a lot of power of its own.

FloatingFatMan said:
You can do the former, though not quite as you describe. You click the menu, go to Options and choose "Look up Contact". It then lists your contacts that have address info and will pop up the map to them and give you several options.
The latter you can't do with the built in Windows contact manager, but their might be a 3rd party one that can interface with Google Maps, I don't know.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using the standard contacts app and have options for locating in Google maps, Bing (formerly live search), and Garmin XT. Garmin has a sub menu with locate and route to.
If you are running Google maps and you don't have 'locate in Google maps' in the menu for contacts let me know. I would like to find out what put it there.
By the way, as floatingfatman said, you can look up conacts in your mapping app. I can do this in Google maps, Bing, Garmin XT and Destinator.

Midomi is alot easier on the eyes than Musicid. As far as UrbanSpoon I wish there was an app for Winmo, but Bing is the next best thing. With emulators and all is there anyway to get it working on Winmo devices?

I have the touchpro2
midomi is a seems to be a really good app and it's free. it gives you the option to listen to a sample of the song, search youtube or buy the song. you could also hum or sing the song to start the search.
This is much more finger friendly than past versions of winmo. I'm sure it's still not up there with the iphone as far as that goes but it's getting a lot closer.

Animated Gif viewer

Devs... I have a feeling this would sell easily if made. I cannot find anything that can do it so far.

Resco Photo Manager does a good job with animated gifs...
www.resco.net

jeepers007 said:
Resco Photo Manager does a good job with animated gifs...
www.resco.net
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But that is for Windows Mobile. This thread is posted in the Android Apps and Games section. You had my hopes up for a second. Now I'm sad.

Ditto. After searching resco and photo manager for several minutes I realized there was no such app for Android. :*(

i just waiting for best advice...

I want a gif viewer too. That would be awesome! The thing with android is that it's still relatively new, so you probably have to wait a while before all the good apps start to come out like they do for WinMo

zephir365 said:
I want a gif viewer too. That would be awesome! The thing with android is that it's still relatively new, so you probably have to wait a while before all the good apps start to come out like they do for WinMo
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But there has been very little talk about having this feature on the android phones.. so who is to say some dev is actually working on it?
I would like to have the gifs animate like they are supposed to on mms, emails, web and so forth..

GIFs have a proprietary format. Google will not implement a GIF viewer because of the GIF licensing terms. You can implement it yourself though.
BR,
Adrian Vintu

adrianvintu said:
GIFs have a proprietary format. Google will not implement a GIF viewer because of the GIF licensing terms. You can implement it yourself though.
BR,
Adrian Vintu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GIFs do have a proprietary format, but that has nothing to do with why we won't see them implemented. They have been around forever and the licensing fees for it are so cheap it's a joke. Here is why it isn't integrated...
A long time ago camera phones were cool, but expensive. Most people didn't have one and those who did either couldn't shoot video or other video was very short and or terrible quality. Once they shot it, data networks or the RAM on other phones would not allow them to be sent or received. Thinking of a way to compress videos, they couldn't come up with something reasonable so all carriers used animated GIFs as they were low in file size and took up like 1/80th of even the shortest video clip usually....plus, there was already a plethora of them available due to No flash technology available yet or the slow implementation of the aforementioned tech. So all the major carriers started selling GIFs with their polyphonic ringtones...
Then comes the smart phone. Not only do almost all have cameras, but data is becoming a big deal You started to see Blcakberries, Win Mo devices, and Treos that didn't play GIFs. Why? Because handset manufacturers and carriers figured if you are sending GIFs, you would be the type of person who wants to send audio and video as well. Carriers make a HUGE push on data, Smart phones catch fire, and they stop licensing GIFs so that they die away.
Problem is you uncle who sends you funny crap all the time "Just needs a flip phone" because he is still afraid of the smart phone tech and afraid he won't understand how to use it...
That being said, there are still GIFs made today and a lot of classic ones that are hilarious. It would be nice to view them and if someone made an app, the royalties or one time licensing fee they had to pay would be well worth their profit.
P.S. I was working in the wireless industry at the shift and constantly being informed of these types of initiatives. It pissed customers off, but it sold smart phones which forced customers to add on a data pack pushing the MDRE on each account. Verizon still forces all smart phone customers to carry a data pack for the length of their contract.

any word on an app that does this?

cyan's browser does this already.

Is there anyone who can post a link to cyans browser so that i can install it on my non rooted N1 please?

You must be rooted, because without root permissions you can not access the /system/ partition.
I'm sure there were other changes that need to be made to the system other than just an apk, like a lib file for example which is also in /system/.
You can try it out by downloading the rom and extracting it yourself.

Cyanogens browser displays gifs very good. But if you save them, there is no way that I'm aware of to view them on the phone. I would love to have a gif viewer.

yes a Gif viewer would rock, I mean we all use gifs in the new world >.<

root explorer will display animated gifs just fine

danaff37 said:
root explorer will display animated gifs just fine
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it doesn't..Root explorer brings you to the system gallery app, which doesn't support GIF's. It just shows the first frame for me.

cyans browser haven't tested yet, but will when get my incredible, seems like a good browser, but would be really nice to have a dedicated program to just view gifs if you ask me. is this possible? Maybe a gallery program which allows you to look at normal photos and .gif animations all in the same program so you can just flick throughwhat ever you have in the folder?
Just a query as used to do this on my Omnia -.-

i just loaded a gif file and it played with the standard picture viewer

Yes, HTC pic viewer plays gifs (edit: ) and the browser too

[app requests]

I've seen a few App Requests posted as threads here, and I thought it would be a good idea to start a thread dedicated to act as a catchall for App Requests. I gather that we have Dev Dudes from major tech corps roaming around these halls, so why not have a list of apps we want as consumers easily available to them!
I'll kick things off with these requests:
-A good, integrated guitar/bass tuner with metronome and practice timer(s)
-Adobe Camera RAW interface
-Adobe Bridge for tablets
-VLC Player for tablets
-DJ mixing software that can use headphone output and HDMI [audio] separately for cue/mix output
Feel free to point us to apps that fill requests as they are developed or if they have existed before the request

Way to develop/compile your own android programs.... (or at least just do the developping/autocomplete, etc would be AWESOME!) and well. an app that could launch a ubuntu distro

sackofnoise said:
Way to develop/compile your own android programs.... (or at least just do the developping/autocomplete, etc would be AWESOME!) and well. an app that could launch a ubuntu distro
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Check this out: http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/

I'd like an app that you can instantly take a snapshot of the screen or take a camera snapshot and start to annotate on it right away, e.g you were browsing and came across something of interest and you want to add your own comments and underline or mark a specific area.
I know this can be done using repligo or ezpdf however it will involve a few steps to achieve using the Asus's in built snapshot feature and then converting the document to pdf in order to annotate but I want something instant without having to convert the file first, similar to htc flyers note taking app.

Can't you do this with Evernote? I just downloaded this last night but it seems really slick.
HasC said:
I'd like an app that you can instantly take a snapshot of the screen or take a camera snapshot and start to annotate on it right away, e.g you were browsing and came across something of interest and you want to add your own comments and underline or mark a specific area.
I know this can be done using repligo or ezpdf however it will involve a few steps to achieve using the Asus's in built snapshot feature and then converting the document to pdf in order to annotate but I want something instant without having to convert the file first, similar to htc flyers note taking app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I want a great football (soccer that is!) game! Fifa 12 or something! or Sometihng like Sensible Soccer, I tried tiny football but its not that great.

npompei said:
Can't you do this with Evernote? I just downloaded this last night but it seems really slick.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately, you cannot annotate using evernote although it is fantastic for taking notes, i use it at work at meetings. I want to be able to take a snapshot of the meeting agenda which is usually printed and then start to add notes against agenda items.

I'm just going to make a list of the things I think will make this brilliant - I'm a very small time developer, and don't have the skills to do these, unfortunately:
Something similar to Microsoft Onenote - Drawing/notes/annotations all in one
"Phone Sync" where you pick up your tablet, and it also becomes your phone for SMS, MMS, Calls, and you can share clipboards between the two - This would be brilliant!
Decent Twitter and Facebook widgets
Modified Launcher with resizable widgets, folders - ideally, LauncherPro optimised for Honeycomb.

I'd like to see the Monkey Island games and some of the old Cinemaware titles such as Defender Of The Crown on Android.

TonyHarrison said:
I'd like to see the Monkey Island games and some of the old Cinemaware titles such as Defender Of The Crown on Android.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can play the monkey island games nicely using ScummVM.
http://www.scummvm.org/

I designed an Android app for tablet which I think would be pretty easy to make, UI, name, logo and all, but... I'm not a programmer. Also I believe this will be an app which would be handy for a lot of people.
Since I designed, thought of and branded the app I really don't just want to give the idea away to anyone, but if any app developer is interested feel free to contact me and I could explain the concept to them.
PS: I don't want a share of the profits or to get paid for it or anything like that, all I would want is to find a developer who could do justice to not only the concept but also to the design since there are so many well functioning but terrible looking android apps.

Excellent posts!
Thanks for the interest and the activity on the thread!
I'm watching a thread where a couple Asus dev dudes have actually weighed in on an issue users are having, so I'm gonna see if I can't point them to this one so we'll have some ears that can make a difference. Hopefully some [all?] of the ideas here will filter thru and become reality!
Kudos to everyone!

I'd like an app that can sync via bluetooth (not via the web/cloud), incoming sms messages/caller id/missed call info, from an android phone directly to the transformer with notifications.
I know there are lots which do it via the web, but this isn't an option for me (pre-pay sim not contract).
EDIT:
Another idea for an app, don't know if possible to implement or not. When browsing google search results it would be nice to have an app that lets you see how many kilobytes or megabytes a website requires you to download, before you accessed the page. So that mobile users can see how much data is required and can manage their free allowance better, or not be charged a fortune.

A media player app that can
1. have gesture controls like moboplayer
2. have good codec support like moboplayer
3. can stream from server
4. and can hide the honeycomb taskbar!!!!

Settlers of Catan map generator
Would be cool to see a Settlers of Catan map generator with support for Seafarers, Cities and Knights, Harbours and a roll counter.

did it ever occur to anyone that now that there is a keyboard and mouse capabilities that someone should port an fps to the transformer?

I would love an app/widget that monitored the battery of both the Transformer and the keyboard dock. It's almost impossible to tell how much juice is left in the keyboard. If someone knows of an app/widget or a built-in way to do that, please let me know.
Edit: I would also love to see a folder app that integrates data from the Market, so if I download a game, it automatically adds it to the Games folder, etc.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

Eye-Fi for Android
I'd like to see a version of the EyeFi manager/control center for Android

still hunting for the torrent app to work with private torrents

alternate keyboard
since the dock is still in short supply it would be nice to have the ability to use my android phone as a keyboard/trackpad for my transformer through bluetooth or something. the entire screen could be a landscape keyboard that you could swipe down to access trackpad.

[Q] Your favourite Mango feature.

I presume most of us have Mango now officially or unofficially so as the title states, what is your favourite feature?
Unrelated note; if anyone wants an invite to Google+ PM me

There are lots of little things I'm really enjoying, but I'll at least narrow the list down to two:
a) The ability to only require a lockscreen password after a set time interval. Surprisingly useful!
b) Improved ListBox behaviour. Makes AlphaJax ad many other apps a joy to use instead of a jerky mess!
Sent from my HD7 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

err.. the ability to search contact by company name ahahahah...
and office skydrive ...

Even though the mult-tasking isn't actually working yet, I am enjoying having a way to switch between different tasks/apps quickly, instead of hitting the back button a bunch of times. It will be really nice once the actual multi-tasking portion is working.

1. The timed interval for password from the locked screen,
2. Unified inbox.
3. Pretty good bar code reader in Bing. Wish it would bring up a few more/better shopping results.

The new Bing utilities are great.
Multitasking & all the API's released to developers in general. Will allow for many things I've wanted.
Updated email & calendar - linked inboxes, threaded emails, birthday/holiday/facebook calendars all important to me.
New voice commands & dictation
Ability to add groups, and group features (group email ect)
Save settings in Camera
Full skydrive sync
Those are the big ones, but the whole thing seems amazing so far.

tiny17 said:
Even though the mult-tasking isn't actually working yet, I am enjoying having a way to switch between different tasks/apps quickly, instead of hitting the back button a bunch of times. It will be really nice once the actual multi-tasking portion is working.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What else are they going to do with it?
I was under the impression this was how its going to be? I hope your right but I'm curious as what's going to be added?
Id like to see an x on each window to close or swipe up or down to close...
Sent from my Windows Phone Mango Focus using Board Express

Ie9 is my favorite upgrade. I like that the OS performance is better in most areas. I like the new Bing features and more informative tiles.
I like the new phone layouts for placing and taking calls.
Like that I can switch and app, but no 3rd party aps take advantage from it yet as they all have to resume... and looking for a way to close apps in the task manager....
There are more but I'm tired of typing
Sent from my Windows Phone Mango Focus using Board Express

hi
large buttons!

1. Xbox live screen
2. merged inboxes

1. new xbox live
2. custom friggin ringtones! ( still trying to figure out how to get the custom alert sounds working)
3.IE is way better!
EDIT: for some reason, the podcast downloading from the phone doesnt work. says i need to check my data connection.

So is IE9 faster for everyone? Because it is straight up balls for me >.<

Not only is it faster but it also loads the pages correctly (Finally) my favourite feature has to be threads, it is so damn useful

1.Multitasking (Adding X button will be Perfect)
2.Groups
3.Chatting in Facebook and Hotmail
4.Save Camera Options
5.Linked emails
6.Software speed
7.New way to shutdown the device by sliding the lock screen down after pressing shutdown button.
8.New Layout
9.Grouping app Alphabetically
10.Battery Saver
On the other hand, Some languages still not supported
Search result doesn't find anything
Noway to backup SMS
Still some errors as it is a beta version.

Audio Confirmations
Audio Confirmations! Especially when the locksreen is on and the voice asks you, "would you like to read, reply, or ignore the text".
This is a feature you have to enable in "Speech Settings". It is very useful. You can set it to always on, Bluetooth and Headsets, Bluetooth Only, or wired headset. Give it a try....

IMO the most impressives are :
1. The Unified Message system...
Now all messages (and i mean all SMS-MMS-Facebook-Win Live) are in one place and have the same way of working.
If you try to text a contact the system tells you if he is online (FB or Messanger) and offers to send the message via them.
2. Contacts and Groups. Make a group (family or friends) and put some ppl in the group.
Then pin the group to start page. Fisrt it will give you a fast dialing option for them, and the most impressive
is that any message or FB event/notification or fotos that comes from one of those ppl on the group
will be there live with nice rotating animation.
You must try this ...its Fantastic

I like the new Zune player with Smart DJ.

Social Notifications and Groupings...
This is my favorite. If I have a family group it lists the updates from Facebook or Live which is nice to see. No longer is it necessary to go through a useless FB list in search of specific components about people I want to know about (impossibly difficult to do with any lengthy FB contact list.)
General Social notifications - if someone makes a comment on your picture in FB or in Live I like how the ME tile becomes useful by flipping over and giving you the notification. This is extremely useful to stay on top of the things you care about.
Pictures
I like the dynamic change of the tile - it's a nice eye candy feature
Turning a online gallary picture into a wallpaper is easy without copying to the phone
The people hub is pretty nice to see all your top contacted friend's picture quickly and easily
IE9 - much improved - EXTREMELY better
Local Scout - cool as hell
MOST USED TOOL - Voice to Text for SMS - absolutely killer feature with almost a 90% accuracy rating on short phrases.

Too many to list..
Here are my favorites in no particular order -
1. Shortcut to "Now Playing" on the volume drop down for music
2. unified messaging via Threads
3. Bing Vision
4. Updated zune player w/ "Related" artists and smart DJ, clearly marked downloadable songs for zune pass
5. Faster application and game installs
6. Improved Xbox live interface

[Q] Favorite Surface RT Apps?

Just wondering from a utility ("widgets", battery meters, other things specific to Windows RT) standpoint, what are y'all installing?

Not a utility but I am loving the Netflix app they done a top job with it

Its hard to find anything decent. Its seriously amazing how absoulutely awful some of the selection is. One of the highes rated apps in Music is....
Krishna Aarti
Overview: "This is a beautiful app which gives the feeling of being close to Lord Krishna, a great music in teh background set the ambience for personally the Shringer for the Lord."
Seriously Microsoft SERIOUSLY!!!!!
With all their billions they couldn't have thrown a few dollars toward a few small programmers. They couldn't have gotten some of their own programmers off their butts and sent them over to look at apps like MX Player Pro or Poweramp for android and have their programmers come up with something comparable. They couldn't search for the top apps in each category on android and iOS and hire some small developers to come up with good alternatives.
Micro$$ couldn't get just a couple good apps in each category?
I swear its as if the only thing that mattered to them was the number of apps at launch - if its 10,000 fart apps at launch that's just fine.
OK rant over.
Its really slim pickings overall. I've got Netflix installed. Kindle. Evernote. Pin-a-Note. Multimedia 8. Sticky Notes 8. Gtasks HD and toolbox for Windows 8 installed that's it - mostly becaused I've felt obligated to install something.
Hope this all picks up. I've been checking the app market ever day sometimes a couple of times per day. It seems like they add maybe 3 or 4 apps a day overall - pretty bad so far.
Edit:
OK had to do this. My appologies in advance.
Search 'Fart" in Store : Results: Fart 101 - Girl Farts - Fart Soundboard Pro - Fart Soundboard - Funn Farts - Biological Piano -Burp soundboard pro
Search "MKV" in store: Results: 0
Search "Flac" in store: Results: 0
At least Microsoft knows our priorities....

All my storage pro is my favorite -paid version. Manages all your cloud storage acts and local in one place and can move stuff between them. Found it when looking for dropbox access.
I have a different take on the matter -I think app selection is going fine and more will come as win 8 gets going more. Here is a very interesting article on the matter:
http://www.winappupdate.com/

guitar1969 said:
All my storage pro is my favorite -paid version. Manages all your cloud storage acts and local in one place and can move stuff between them. Found it when looking for dropbox access.
I have a different take on the matter -I think app selection is going fine and more will come as win 8 gets going more. Here is a very interesting article on the matter:
http://www.winappupdate.com/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good article. Have you noticed that there are no desktop style apps? I'm wondering if the reason there is an app shortage is Microsoft.
The article points out how hard it can be to make productivity apps in Metro. But why haven't any existing desktop apps been re-compiled for RT? Where are the VLC media players for desktop?
Perhaps the lack of software is Microsofts own fault. I wonder if they even allow third party desktop apps? If one submits a desktop version of your video or music player for RT does it get denied?
If so, then Microsoft has just committed suicide. If they provide a desktop environment for RT but prevent all the existing desktop software from using it, then what is the point? It exists just for office? Microsoft themselves couldn't come up with a Metro version of office. So why would they limit developers to Metro only?
Suppose, for example, Intuit decides to re-compile their entire Quicken Suite of apps for RT. Do they then get denied because it doesn't have a metro interface?
So I ask again - why are there no desktop apps for RT?

Digital Man said:
Good article. Have you noticed that there are no desktop style apps? I'm wondering if the reason there is an app shortage is Microsoft.
The article points out how hard it can be to make productivity apps in Metro. But why haven't any existing desktop apps been re-compiled for RT? Where are the VLC media players for desktop?
Perhaps the lack of software is Microsofts own fault. I wonder if they even allow third party desktop apps? If one submits a desktop version of your video or music player for RT does it get denied?
If so, then Microsoft has just committed suicide. If they provide a desktop environment for RT but prevent all the existing desktop software from using it, then what is the point? It exists just for office? Microsoft themselves couldn't come up with a Metro version of office. So why would they limit developers to Metro only?
Suppose, for example, Intuit decides to re-compile their entire Quicken Suite of apps for RT. Do they then get denied because it doesn't have a metro interface?
So I ask again - why are there no desktop apps for RT?
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i don't think you're allowed to deploy a desktop style app for ARM, it has to be a "metro" style app, so some new UI is necessary, no quick recompile and post to the store.
apps will come, it's just going to take a little time.
some of my favs are:
jetpack joyride
netflix
evernote
fliptoast
metrotwit
inrix
newegg
trackseries
smartglass
kindle
angry birds space
wordament

A few that haven't been mentioned:
OneNote, Woot Attack, Zentomi Reader, the metro Remote Desktop app, Blu Graphing Calculator (if you're a student especially, but it's my favorite calculator for any purpose at the moment, not just graphing), Trackage, 8Zip (which will be even better when they get RAR support), LastPass, Simply Authenticator, Youtube+, ComicsJolt, Fhotoroom.
Freda is the best epub reader so far, but isn't great yet.
IM+ is a necessity for me as well, but like on every other platform I've used IM+ on, it's not a great app.
I really do need an MKV app myself, but I'm hoping that come soon enough. There's one for Windows 8, just not on ARM yet.
---------- Post added at 12:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:53 PM ----------
Digital Man said:
It seems like they add maybe 3 or 4 apps a day overall - pretty bad so far.
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I agree that the app situation isn't exactly amazing, but they have been adding 50-100 every weekday so far.

jhoff80 said:
I agree that the app situation isn't exactly amazing, but they have been adding 50-100 every weekday so far.
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Where are you getting these numbers - I've been checking each category, with newest apps listed first and at most I usually see one or two new apps in each category - is there someone (website) keeping track of the additions?

Digital Man said:
Where are you getting these numbers - I've been checking each category, with newest apps listed first and at most I usually see one or two new apps in each category - is there someone (website) keeping track of the additions?
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Search for * and you'll see everything, often even before it shows up under the "New Releases" section. Don't get me wrong though, most of them are still garbage.

Sooo, I just tried Jetpack Joyride. I wonder how this performs on Android tabs, but on the Surface RT it's playable, but far from fluent, especially when you get faster. It's quite a nice game, but Microsoft really needs to optimize here, as I think the hardware in the Surface RT is certainly good enough to get good performace, WinRT just has its quirks (at least up to now).
Well, I got 12 days left to try out, hope things change till then.

jhoff80 said:
Search for * and you'll see everything, often even before it shows up under the "New Releases" section. Don't get me wrong though, most of them are still garbage.
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Great tip thanks - thats exactly what I was looking for - now I can keep a running total of change per day - think I'll make myself a chart with the number at say 7:00 PM every day and see how fast the market is growing.

Digital Man said:
Where are you getting these numbers - I've been checking each category, with newest apps listed first and at most I usually see one or two new apps in each category - is there someone (website) keeping track of the additions?
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WINAPPUPDATE.COM is the best place to learn about app counts and new apps. check out his twitter account.

News Bento and Tweetro are my two most used apps. Lazyworm is also bringing Metrotube to RT...and if Tweetro is any indication...its going to be beautiful. Tumbukum (Tumblr) and Cracked.com are really nice as well.

-Zeppelin- said:
Sooo, I just tried Jetpack Joyride. I wonder how this performs on Android tabs, but on the Surface RT it's playable, but far from fluent, especially when you get faster. It's quite a nice game, but Microsoft really needs to optimize here, as I think the hardware in the Surface RT is certainly good enough to get good performace, WinRT just has its quirks (at least up to now).
Well, I got 12 days left to try out, hope things change till then.
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Most of the apps out right now have obviously been rushed out for early adopters and are far from optimized, that isn't going to change in 12 days. In a few months things will look better and I think in a year the store will have most of the useful apps that are popular on iTunes and the Android Market.

We really need a pdf writer / printer of some sort to make the surface a true business device. I searched "pdf" in the store but no hits. I also think the store is not really optimized for searching by keywords unless the search term is in the name of the app or somewhat obvious.

guitar1969 said:
We really need a pdf writer / printer of some sort to make the surface a true business device. I searched "pdf" in the store but no hits. I also think the store is not really optimized for searching by keywords unless the search term is in the name of the app or somewhat obvious.
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Right now the only thing you can do is convert pdf's in Office and work with it that way, hopefully a better solution will become available soon.