Windows Phone

Microsoft Advertising is committed to increasing advertiser demand and growing advertising revenue for mobile app developers. The latest improvements to increase developer monetization and end-user relevancy have just been released – these involve changes in the pubCenter categories used to target ad units. To fully leverage these new capabilities, developers need to visit pubCenter to take action to select one category for each ad unit and align that category with the selection in the Windows Phone Dev Center. This is a category update only and no app resubmission or certification is required. What do you need to do? For new ad units, just follow the instructions in pubCenter to enter the category when you submit new apps. And, enter the same category when you submit new apps to Windows Phone Dev Center. For existing apps that already use Microsoft Advertising ad units, you have until September 12 to update the ad unit information in pubCenter. Ads will not be displayed in your apps after September 12, 2013, if you don’t update the ad unit information. You can read more about this change in the Microsoft Advertising blog post, Changes in PubCenter Ad Units.

@seancassity The Lumia 928 does not have expandable memory, but check out SkyDrive for your storage needs:

Back in February Microsoft Research released BLINK, a handy free photo app for Windows Phone 8 that captures a burst of images when you press the shutter button so you can pick the best shots. It was an instant hit, racking up more than 317,000 downloads and hundreds of 5-star reviews in the four months since. Today Microsoft scientists released an update to BLINK, and version 2.0 adds some mighty cool stuff: the ability to create and share short video clips. Grab it here BLINK, a Lens app that integrates right into your camera viewfinder, captures a total of 16 frames, beginning just before you press the camera button and ending about a second afterward. As a Microsoft Research news article explains today, the new animation and sharing features were inspired by a simple observation: People seemed to be having as much fun flipping through each series of photos as they were deciding which shots to keep. So the updated app adds a new button to turn a group of shots into an animated flipbook called—you guessed it—a “BLINK.” Notes the article: “It’s the perfect time span for capturing just a bit of motion—your baby’s breaking smile, perhaps, or a back flip off a diving board.” The updated app also provides options for sharing BLINKs with friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, email, and Socl, Microsoft’s homegrown social network dedicated to collages and other artsy digital creations. Check out the video Microsoft Research put together to see a little tutorial of how it all works. Windows 8 users should also check out the new BLINK Cliplets app released today in the Windows Store.

Hot Apps will feature 5 of the hottest apps each week for the Windows Phone . In this episode Laura takes a look at:NBA Jam Contre Jour SynthPling! AppBundle Talking Tom Cat Please leave suggestions for hot apps that should be featured in the comments section, thanks!

Your Windows Phone is becoming a better listener. In a blog post today, the Bing team announced that voice search and voice-to-text—two popular Bing-powered phone features—are now up to twice as fast and 15 percent more accurate, a feat accomplished by exploiting some recent biology-inspired artificial intelligence breakthroughs by Microsoft Research scientists. Check out the video below to see Bing’s Stefan Weitz and MSR’s Michael Tjalve demo some of these improvements on Windows Phone 8—or just try them yourself. Tap the Search button, then the little microphone icon, and then tell Bing to find something. I said, “Show me movies playing in Seattle” and my search results popped right up. You can also try dictating a text message or email (again, just look for the little mic icon) in each of those apps. If you’ve never played around with the phone’s speech-recognition features, this how-to article is a great place to start. Teaching a computer to understand the human voice in both real time and noisy real-life environments is no easy feat. And it turns out there’s a fascinating backstory to how Bing engineers and their Microsoft Research collaborators pulled it off. The Inside Microsoft Research blog dives deeper into the science behind today’s news. As you’ll see, it revolves around something called deep neural networks. You pretty much need a PhD to understand the details of this stuff, but simply put what’s cool about the research is that it draws on biology and the human brain’s natural pattern recognition ability for inspiration. In practice, deep neural networks involve lots of mind-twisting math, racks of fast computers, and a mountain of data to learn from. As the post notes, deep neural networks show promise for other phone-related applications, too. One is real-time language translation. Imagine popping open the Bing Translator app on your phone, speaking in English, and hearing your voice simultaneously translated into Mandarin—and the Chinese-speaking voice even sounds just like you. Don’t expect your phone to do that any time soon. But as MSR’s Rick Rashid demonstrated at a recent conference (a story described in today’s post), it’s also not necessarily science fiction and just one example of what deep neural network research might someday make possible.

The dilemma of finding the perfect phone is not entirely new. With the number of phones available in the market (you only have to browse online stores such as everbuying to know what I mean), it can be difficult to choose which one to buy. The windows phone is one of those that are getting a buzz from many tech-savvy consumers. This Microsoft’s offering that rivals the iPhones and the Android phones. There are advantages to choosing a Windows phone over other kinds of mobile. Here are some of the things that make your life as an owner even sweeter: Home Screen Once you open your Windows phone, its unique interface greets you. It has the essential icons on the screen. The other buttons that are not really important are gone. Even the signal, WiFi, and battery indicators are removed from the home screen. Now you’re left with a minimalist screen and you realize how other phones have too many things going on. Aside from that, there is also uniformity. You can adjust the boxes, but they remain on the same grid. Navigation With the minimalist interface, this phone is very user-friendly. It is really intuitive. They got rid of the home button. The actions can be accessed through a bar on the screen. Those actions that are less used are found under a more menu tab. Battery Saver This interesting function is something that Microsoft did well. Just like a laptop, you now have the option to use your phone in a weakened state in order to save up on your battery. This function turns off Multitasking and Push Email. What’s New Feature Aside from integrating Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter has also been connected to the new windows phone. This allows you to have control and be updated with your different social networking accounts. The What’s New hub shows all of your friends’ status updates. You can also customize the People Groups to group your friends and see their statuses. Unified Messaging With other mobile phones, you need to have different applications for different types of messaging. If you’re using Skype, Facebook and other messaging apps, you need to download each of them. Windows phone provides a unified messaging that integrates text, Skype, and Facebook messaging into one. This is seamless and makes communication even more convenient. Hubs This is considered one of the biggest elements of the phone’s interface and acts as a shortcut to applications. Photo Hub and Music Hub contains all of your photos and music, respectively. For the Music Hub, you can access your music both in your phone and in the cloud. The hubs are not just there to house your collection, it’s also functional. Applications that can be used for playing music, like Deezer, can be integrated in the hub. Microsoft Office You can now easily view your documents through your mobile phone. There is also a downloadable full version that those who are heavily dependent on such documents can buy. Through the full version, you can also create documents, like Excel and Word, through your mobile along with choices of templates. There is an option for you to save it either in the server or in your phone.

Get familiar with the GameMaker: Studio IDE from YoYo Games and the basic functions you can use to build your Windows 8 game easily and quickly. Game On Virtual Event On-Demand Videos: (Part 1) Welcome & GameMaker 101 (Part 2) Building your First Basic GameMaker Game (Part 3) Windows 8 Features (Part 4) Create New Assets and Find Free Ones (Part 5) Putting it Together (Part 6) Add Advertising to your Game (Part 7) Get Help

In this session, Daniel Egan will take the learnings from the previous session(GameMaker 101) and build the beginnings of a platformer game using GameMaker: Studio for Windows 8.Game On Virtual Event On-Demand Videos: (Part 1) Welcome & GameMaker 101 (Part 2) Building your First Basic GameMaker Game (Part 3) Windows 8 Features (Part 4) Create New Assets and Find Free Ones (Part 5) Putting it Together (Part 6) Add Advertising to your Game (Part 7) Get Help

Enhance the user-experience for your game and create and immersive gaming environment. Daniel Egan will show you how to integrate Windows 8 features into your game to provide a rich experience for users.Game On Virtual Event On-Demand Videos: (Part 1) Welcome & GameMaker 101 (Part 2) Building your First Basic GameMaker Game (Part 3) Windows 8 Features (Part 4) Create New Assets and Find Free Ones (Part 5) Putting it Together (Part 6) Add Advertising to your Game (Part 7) Get Help

Your game can be better with your own custom assets and believe it or not, you can create these yourself! Bret will show you how to take on this challenge. To augment the assets you create, we'll show you some other great (and free!) assets you can use in your game.Game On Virtual Event On-Demand Videos: (Part 1) Welcome & GameMaker 101 (Part 2) Building your First Basic GameMaker Game (Part 3) Windows 8 Features (Part 4) Create New Assets and Find Free Ones (Part 5) Putting it Together (Part 6) Add Advertising to your Game (Part 7) Get Help