Merry Christmas & happy New Year to you all.

I first want to say a big thank you to all the regular readers of this blog. I really appreciate. I started it six years ago and the readership has always been on the rise. Thanks for that. Thank you also for using a Windows Phone.  It's the best mobile OS out there, no matter what others say. It's clean, refreshing and beautiful. Hope Santa brings you a cool Nokia Lumia, HTC 8X or a Samsung Ativ. Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you all. Have fun and enjoy the moment.

6 cool Xbox Live games prices drop to $0.99.

With the Holiday seasons in full swing, the Windows phone team  is offering some cool Xbox Live games at $0.99. Six titles are available for you to grab: Contre Jour, Doodle Jump, Mush, geoDefense Swarm, iStunt 2 and Kinectimals. Theses games are available in countries where the Store is open and until the end of the month. Unfortunately, the Windows Phone Store is closed for me, so unless they make these games free, I cannot take advantage of the offer. The game I'm craving for since it's release is Contre Jour. I will not mind buying it at full price ($2.99) when they open the Store in Mauritius someday.

This month's Windows Phone photo challenge: Happy Holidays!

There are two things I like to do during the holidays season: Gulp down a maximum of good food and take pictures. Yes, these are my two main activities. And this month Windows Phone photo competition theme is the Holiday Seasons. So I will need to find the perfect balance between my favorite activities.

Use your Windows Phone to snap pictures of what you think best despicts the Holiday seasons. Then email the picture to the Windows Phone team with "Challenge: Happy holidays" in the Subject line. Make sure you name the picture with your first and last name followed by the theme of the contest, that Happy Holidays.

All winning photos will be featured on the Windows Phone blog, Twitter and Facebook.

Check out the Windows Phone Team blog for more details about the contest.

Use your Windows Phone 7.5/8 to track Santa with NORAD's app.

The famous NORAD tracks Santa now has an app for our beloved Windows Phone for free to download on the store. NORAD Tracks Santa is right now an app that provides a countdown to December 24 when Santa will start its journey across the planet to deliver toys to kids. On December 24, that's when NORAD becomes interesting as the North American Aerospace  Defense Command starts tracking Santa using high tech systems including satellites, radar, Santa Cams and fighter jets. I've learnt that the satellites actually use Rudolph's bright red nose, which emits a infrared signature, to detect and track Santa. Cool.

Get the NORAD Tracks Santa app free on the Windows Phone Store.

On Windows Phone 7.5, Angry Birds Space has landed.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away Angry Birds Space a popular game was released for version 7.5 of Windows Phone. Grab your light saber and help the birds bring peace to the galaxy. 

"Rebel birds, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Imperial Pigs. During the battle, rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon the PIG STAR, and are racing to deliver the plans to the Rebel Birds. Now the need your help."

Ready to join the epic adventure? Angry Birds is  priced at $0.99 and a trial is also available. May the Birds be with you.

Weather Smiles update adds Windows Phone 8 support.

Remember Weather Smiles? It's my favorite weather app because it lets me view two locations on a live tile and displays 5 day forecast on the back tile. The update is for both Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8  and uses the latter's capability to resize tiles. Based on the change log, it seems that Weather Smiles takes advantage of the medium tile to now display 5 day forecast for two locations. Windows Phone 8 owners will love it. Check out the change log for more details.

New in V1.6.0:
- Added new setting to select between 1, 3 and 6 hour interval to update in background task. trial users interval is 6 hours only.
- New for Windows Phone 8 the medium tile size is taken advantage of for bigger font and non-scaled up tiled. Bigger, bolder an beautiful.
- New for Windows Phone 8, back tile now displays 5 day forecast for both locations thanks to larger medium tile.
- Small bug fixes, minor app interface aesthetic updates.

Download here. A trial is also available.

Tunein for Windows Phone updated; It now works.

Tunein on Windows Phone up to now is an app that only has a useless presence on my phone. Ever since it was released for Windows Phone, it never did work. I really mean it. The only thing it would do is stream continuously without emitting any sound at all. Like the developers never tried it on a Windows Phone before releasing it. I was excited today to see an update for the app. The first, I think, since its initial release. Well, guess what? Tunein now works. There is no change log about the update, so I don't know what has changed but it works.

To listen to online radios for free on your Windows Phone, download a free copy of Tunein here.

Nokia announces affordable Lumia 620.

Nokia has announced a new Windows Phone 8 phone today, the Nokia Lumia 620. The affordable phone is compact and sports a 3.8" screen WVGA with a resolution of 800x480, 512MB of RAM, 5MP camera as well as a VGA front facing camera. In terms of storage, the Lumia 620 offers 8GB of internal storage which can be extended with a Micro SD card up to 64GB. Add  to that free 7GB of SkyDrive storage.. The Lumia 620 is powered by a 1GHz Dual core Snapdragon processor and 1300 mAh battery.

Depending of countries, the Nokia Lumia 620 will be available in several colors including, lime green, orange, magenta, yellow, cyan, white and black. The device will first be made available in Asia at an estimated price of USD249 excluding tax. It will start selling in early January 2013 and will also be available in Europe and the Middle East.



Read Nokia's press release after the break.