Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet official apps for Windows Phone 8 released.

Three official apps for Windows Phone 8 have been released today by Discovery Communications that will let fans of Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet watch select full episodes of their favorite shows on their Windows Phones anywhere. I am not sure whether these shows or even the apps are available in all regions yet. I am downloading Discovery Channel as I write this.  

The apps have been designed to take full advantage of the features that Windows Phone 8 has to offer. All three of them have the same design and you can have them setup to use the lock screen to show current available shows or schedule so you never miss a show.

All three official apps are free to download on the Windows Phone Store. 

Discovery Channel
TLC
Animal Planet

Source: Windows Phone Blog

Microsoft Research releases Network Speed Test app for Windows Phone 8.

Microsoft Research added a new app to its collection on the Windows Phone store. Network Speed Test as its name suggests is an app that provides detailed information about your network speed, both download and upload. It was also designed to maintain a list of the networks that was tested.

The list of features also mentions the sharing of data with Microsoft for the purpose of helping improve their understanding of network quality and availability. The data is collected anonymously and is not meant for marketing purposes. 

Network Speed Test is free for download in the Windows Phone Store.

Wordament now lets you play against your Facebook friends.

The Xbox Live title has been updated today with support for Facebook so you can challenge your friends and share your best score. Twitter sharing has also been added. Wordament is very popular on the Windows Phone platform. Before the update, players were limited to challenging other players on the builtin leaderboard. Playing Wordament against friends will definitely be more fun.

Download Wordament for free in the Windows Phone Store. Wordament is compatible with Windows Phone 7.x and 8.

Where's My Mickey? for Windows Phone 8 released.

After "Where's My Water" and "Where's My Perry", Disney strikes back with "Where's My Mickey". A new game which stars Mickey and Goofy into another puzzle game involving water. There is actually more than that. Other ingredients include "lava and weather elements including clouds, wind and rain. A cloud, for example, can e used strategically to soak up water and release it elsewhere as rain". The game has more than  a 100 puzzles with Pluto also making asn appearance.

Where's My Mickey is available for $0.99 in the Windows Phone Store and runs only on Windows Phone 8.

Gameloft Sale: 10 games at discounted prices including The Dark Knight and Amazing Spider-Man.

10 games from games developer Gameloft are up for grabs at discounted prices on Windows Phone Store. Games like the Amazing Spider-Man and the Dark Knight Rises which are normally $6.99 are now available at a discounted price of $2.99. Other games like Assassin's Creed - Altair's Chronicles HD, Brain Challenge HD, Lets Golf 2, The Oregon Trail, Splinter Cell: Conviction and UNO gets discounted to $1.99 from $4.99. Asphalt 5 and Real Soccer are now at $0.99 (normally $2.99).

Some of the games will work on both Windows Phone 7.x and 8, except for the Amazing Spider-Man and the Dark Knight Rises. These two titles are fairly recent. Check out the full list here.

Source: Windows Phone Blog

BLINK update lets you create and save animated Blinks.

This is a very interesting update for Blink, the app that lets you capture a burst of images before even pressing the camera button. The update lets users save short animations and share them to Facebook, Twitter and Blink.so.cl. A Vine of sort and a welcome feature, but unlike Vine, Blinks can be saved to more than one social network. The comparison stops here, since Blink captures a string of pictures and stitches them together, you obviously won't get any sound. That said, check out the full Blink change log:

Version 2.0
- Camera settings - change camera settings such as scene mode, exposure, white balance and ISO in capture mode
- Animation - Quickly set the motion range for animation in addition to selecting the best shot after capture
- Sharing - Share the animations to BLINK.so.cl, Facebook, or Twitter
- In-app viewing - View the animations in the in-app history, wait for a moment and they start animating!
- Web gallery - From the in-app history, view your shared BLINKs in the web gallery
- Save another - Your BLINKs are always saved within the app. Come back and save another shot to camera roll or change the animation range via "edit" in the in-app history

Source: Windows Phone Store

Windows Phone 8 gets faster and accurate speech recognition.

Microsoft Research and the Bing team collaborated into making speech recognition on Windows Phone 8 twice faster and 15% more accurate. The announcement was made on the Bing blog via the Windows Phone team blog and the feature already being deployed in the U.S. with other markets to follow soon.

If like me you've never used voice search, this how-to article is the place to start. Also, check out the comparison video to see how fast and accurate the new Bing voice search for Windows Phone 8 is. Enjoy.

Windows Phone Photo Challenge: Summer Nights #Reinvented

It's been a while since the last Windows Phone Photo Challenge which I believe was in February. I'm too lazy to go check. If you are not familiar with the Windows Phone Photo challenge, it used to be a monthly challenge around a chosen theme. Selected photos are then prominently displayed on Windows Phone social networks. 

The challenge is back and the theme is Summer Nights #Reinvented. Participants are to use their Windows Phone to take photos "that capture how you’ve reinvented a summer evening this year." The winners will have their photos set as the cover photo on the Windows Phone Facebook page, Twitter account, Tumblr, Pinterest and the Insider newsletter.

Check out the Windows Phone blog for details about the challenge.

Nimbuzz for Windows Phone now supports offline messages/push notifications.

Nimbuzz is a multi-platform messaging app that supports multiple messaging services from Facebook Chat to GTalk and Yahoo Messenger. Besides chat services, Nimbuzz lets you also share pictures and videos with your friends and all that at no cost, except your data connection of course. The platform boasts 150+ million users. Among the updates, there is a feature that lets users send offline messages/push notifications to  facebook friends.

Check out the full list of new features:

-Get connected automatically to your friends already on Nimbuzz
-Get phonebook based friend suggestions, which you can accept or ignore.
-Phone number based registration introduced for quicker, safer password retrieval.
-Tap on any avatar to enlarge and view your contact’s full profile picture.
-Chat with your FB friends even if they are offline/Notifiable. Nimbuzz now allows you to send Push Notifications/offline messages to them.
-Overall performance Improvements (Connectivity, Design, Speed, Bug Fixes)

Source: Windows Phone Store

Evernote for Windows Phone gets updated with alarms, notifications.

Evernote for Windows Phone got updated with a an interesting feature today. Users will now be able to set alarms in their notes, thus making project tracking easier by setting a due date and get reminded with notifications. There's more. Notes can be ordered manually or by date. And finally, notes can be marked as done.

Evernote for Windows Phone is a powerful note app that is free on Windows Phone Store.

Official Twitter app updated; Gets 8 photo filters and Vine support in timeline.

The official Twitter app for Windows Phone got a nice update today. The app now supports photo filters. The filters can be applied to a picture taken within the app or selected from the camera roll. Watching Vine video within tweets is also supported.

New features:

*  Apply filters and effects to your photos

*  Watch Vine videos from your timeline

*  Compose Tweets seamlessly with the new integrated composer
 
*  Various bug fixes

Get the update in the Windows Phone Store.

glƏƏk! updated with ability to send images in Unification notifications.

glƏƏk!, probably the coolest Twitter client, got an update today with the ability to send images in Unification notifications. The latter is another app from glƏƏk! developers that brings a cross-device notification platform to Windows Phone devices. The latest update to glƏƏk! can be downloaded on the Windows Phone Store. The app cost $1.99. Check Out the Windows Phone Store live tile on your phone to download the update.

Download Unification for free.

Yammer update lets you preview Office and PDF attachments.

Yammer, the enterprise social network recently acquired by Microsoft, has been updated today. Among the features is the ability to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF attachments.

1.3.0.0 Update:
- Sign up for Yammer account from within the app
- Preview Word, Excel, PowerPoint & PDF attachments
- Support for higher resolutions
- Performance and security improvements
- Bug fixes including spellcheck

Official Adobe Reader app for Windows Phone 8 released.

The official version of Adobe Reader app has been published in the Windows Phone Store. Adobe's PDF Reader supports opening password-protected files, copy and paste, search for specific words and the ability to zoom. The app also supports hyperlinks and bookmarks.
Check out the full list of features. 

View and Open PDF documents
• Quickly open PDF documents 
• View password-protected PDFs and sticky notes
• Search text to find specific information 
• Select single page or continuous scroll modes 
• Easily zoom in on text or images for a closer view

Navigate through PDF content
• Use bookmarks to jump directly to a section in your PDF document
• Tap on links in a PDF to open linked web pages
• Quickly navigate through large documents using thumbnails

Copy text from PDF files
• Select and copy text from a PDF file to the clipboard

Available languages:
English

Download: Windows Phone Store