Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Playcast, an awesome media player for casting videos, songs, & pictures updated with Google Cast bug fix and more.


I first blogged about Playcast back in January of this year shortly after I purchased the app so I can cast my movies to my TV through my Chromecast, which has been renamed to Google cast recently. I believe Playcast is the only app in the store to do that. After the app was released, I ran into issues where I could not play some movies from my library and fortunately, Webrox, the developer, quickly issued a fix and I can now enjoy my movies serenely. 

Playcast has been developed to allow users to cast movies, songs and pictures not only to Google Cast, but also to Google Cast Audio, Apple TV (AirPlay), DLNA Smart TV, Miracast, Internet Box, Xbox One, Xbox 360 etc. Playcast cost $3.99 and offers a week trial before you make the decision to buy it and I can tell it is a well worth purchase. Plus the app is regularly updated with new features and fixes.

Today's update does not include any new features, but the developer added the following fixes:

  • Chromecast (Google Cast) bug fixes (was due to the new firmware)
  • Crash fix (bug in UWP: Crash while going to full screen sometimes)
  • DLNA server better handled (MonkeyServer)
  • Few minor bug fixes in UI.
Go check out Playcast in the store. Playcast is a Universal Windows App. Buy it once and use on your Windows Phone and Windows PC.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Twitter for Windows 10 Mobile gets a new beautiful design, content discovery, Moments and more.

Well that is kind of unexpected. Twitter today released a major update for Windows 10 Mobile totally making it beautiful and also bringing some new features that makes the app identical to its PC sibling. It even got the little heart in replacement of the star to 'Like' a Tweet. Really, the design is beautiful and on par with Twitter apps on other platforms with the addition of the black theme, which is not available on Android and iOS. Unfortunately, switching to black theme is not app specific and cannot be done in the app settings, is related to the system theme. There's also no way to navigate horizontally to switch between the different pivot screen. Overall, it remains a nice update and I expect it will get better in a future update.

Check out the full change log and update the app in the Windows Store:
Find the best of Twitter in an instant with Moments. Follow top stories through immersive pics, clips and conversations. Get insights and perspectives you won't find anywhere else. 
- Find the best of Twitter in an instant. 
- Get exclusive pics, clips and conversations. 
- Express yourself with a Tweet. 
- Find people and accounts that interest you. 
- Hello from this part of the world! 
- See the moment.

Friday, March 04, 2016

Microsoft adds camera translation for Arabic to Translator app for Windows Phone.

Last Monday I blogged about Microsoft updating its Translator app for Windows Phone with camera translation support for Romanian, Slovak and Serbia Cyrillic. Today, the Translator app for Windows Phone was again updated and this time Microsoft added camera translation for Arabic bringing the app version to 4.2. That is all there is to it. 

You can get the update here.

Microsoft has a slew of updates for its Facebook app for Windows Phone.

Facebook, the world's dominant social network, received a slew of updates on the Windows Phone 8, 8.1 and 10 platforms. The app is developed and maintained by Microsoft unlike other platforms where Facebook builds its own app. This update proves that Microsoft has been hard at work to bring some much needed features to the app and that will certainly please those who use Facebook exclusively on Windows Phone. Check out the full change log below and head over to the Windows Phone store to update Facebook.

Version Notes:
· Profile post editing 
· Cover photo management 
· Profile picture management 
· Threaded comments 
· Comment reply functionality 
· Album comment functionality 
· Create new albums via post composer 
· Share content to external sources 
· News Feed improvements 
· Interactive notification improvements 
· Contact sync improvements 
· Date & time localization improvements 
· Stability improvements 
· Improvements to Continuum experience 
· Bug fixes