A lot of people including myself have been asking when Microsoft would update the most awesome panorama app. 

Well today on the Windows Phone blog Joe Belfiore announced that the app is going to be in the Store as we speak.  This app is more than just your run of the mill panorama app it can stitch together a full 360 degree image.

The app was excellent on WP7 I can’t wait to see what it does on WP8.  I really could’ve used this on the recent cruise that my wife and I took.

Here are some of the updates:

- Lens integration – Quickly capture and view panoramas by launching Photosynth directly from the camera.

- View shared panoramas—New sharing capabilities let other Windows Phone 8 users view your panoramas on their phone, and as always you can show off your panoramas by email, Facebook and Twitter.

- More camera controls – Adjust for various lighting conditions by using new exposure and white balance locking options

Here is a little Friday funny a few hours early or right on time depending where you are in the world.

Recently the CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer’s made an announcement to employee’s who work remotely must come in to the office or well you know the other option, not be an employee anymore. 

As a software developer I’ve done a mix of home and office time.  While I don’t have children at home coming into the office to interrupt I do have dogs and cats that love to distract.  (yes both)  It does take discipline to stay focused and on task at home but I believe it takes the same focus while in the office. 

For me I share an office with a fellow dev and we have Product Managers/Owners coming in with new feature requests or bugs to talk about.  Which in turn pulls our attention away from what we are currently working on; and then takes time to get back on the original task that you were working on.

I believe both ways of working have their benefits.  While in the office our team will have these out of the blue organic talks about our business and website that we may not have had if we were working remotely.  However, if you have a team of really solid communicators, I’m not just talking about over the phone but in all forms, (IM, Video Chat) you can still have these moments of brilliance.

One can understand that Yahoo is in a rough spot right now, to say the least and that they need all hands on deck to right the ship.  However, I don’t believe that all your employees need to be physically in the office at all times to get the collaboration that can create magic.  I also think that a sweeping memorandum like this can hurt your company and obliterate employee morale. 

What we here would like to know is what you our fearless readers think?  Do you work from home and get worked up when you think your boss may say to you "come into the office or else"?  Or are you in complete support of being always physically in the office?  Or do you say who the hell is Yahoo?

I’m am embarking on writing an app for Windows Phone for a friend.  I wanted to see if there is any interest from you the reader on a series from start to finish on this topic.  This would include: getting your environment set up, setting up a free… that’s right free source control for your code to be safe and backed up, and the basics of coding up the app.  There will be some other stuff thrown into the mix as we go.  So is this something that you may enjoy?  If so please let us know in the comments and if we have enough of a response we’ll be creating a Windows Phone App in no time.

What’s this something brand new from Skype?  This just hit my inbox at almost 3:00 a.m Mountain time.

So it looks like another way for all of us to keep in touch without hitting up our Wireless Provider Messaging plans.  Bonus is that it is available for all the major OS’s: Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, and yes Windows Phone.  So give it a go and let us know.

Here’s a screen of the email I received:

[spoiler]

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I just recently procured a Windows Phone for a project that I am going to be starting up.  And well I’m really loving it so far.  I do miss a couple of items from the Apple ecosystem but I’ll leave that for another post when I can get around to it.

Now for the topic at hand, custom ringtones.  If you are an early adopter and are on Mango there is a few simple steps to getting custom ringtones on your phone.  Background I had several ringtones that I made for my iPhone 4 that are in the .m4r format.  I used an awesome and might I add free audio tool called Audacity. 

First things first go download Audacity I went with the new beta but you should be fine with the current release.  Then you’ll need the FFmpeg import/export library plugin. 

There are a few restrictions to the ringtone files:

• 39 seconds or shorter
• smaller than 1 megabyte (MB)
• saved in MP3 or WMA format
• not copy-protected (i.e. DRM free)

I fired up Audacity and opened up one of the .m4r files to convert and set the Project Rate to 16000 Hz to keep the file size under 1mb:

Then you click File –> Export and select WMA:

I converted a couple of my iPhone ringtones that were in .m4r to .wma files as shown here:

So now you fire up your beta version of the Zune desktop app and go to your Collections and you can drag and drop the newly created .wma ringtones that you created into your collection.  Now you Edit each file and create a new Genre for it titled Ringtone.

Now sync up your phone and drag your new ringtones to your phone:

And there you have it, custom ringtones for your Windows Phone on Mango.  Enjoy!

I know what your thinking, Mobility Digest has a forum?  Your damn right we do and there is some great stuff in there.  And we need your help, the avid Mobility Digest reader. 

So there are a couple of ways to access our forum.  You could always use the computer of your choice to get there or you can use an app on the mobile device of your choice called Tapatalk.  Tapatalk is an app that we here at Mobility Digest have installed on our server.  It gives you our loyal readership a great interface into the forum. 

Feature listing from the site:

Tapatalk has apps for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone.  They cost about $2.99 but it’s a great app with tons of features for forums that have it installed like ours!  Once you have it installed click on the Network button at the bottom of the app and then click the Search menu item at the top right and search for Mobility Digest.  And all you have to do is login after that with your forum info.

The one other awesome feature of this app is that for forum Moderators it has those features built in as well with this latest release.  I bought this app early in it’s development and have loved it, especially with this last update.

So we have a forum and a Windows Phone App developed by Mobility Digests very own Danny Lam so get a move on and start contributing it’s what can make a great site that much better.

Note: I included links for iPhone and Android but couldn’t find a link to open it up in Zune for you Win users, but if you do a search in the Zune app on your computer for Board Express there are two versions a free which is readonly and a Pro which is $2.99 and does it all.

Let us know if you get it and what you think.

No the heading isn’t wrong OneNote has come to the iPhone.  Just like the Bing app, the OneNote app brings the Microsoft goodness to us iPhone users.  Let it be known that you must have or create a Live ID in order to use OneNote.  You can also sync your desktop OneNotes with your Live ID and Skydrive for a great and free sync solution.  At the time of this writing it is also stated on the iTunes page that the app is free for a Limited Time, so I suggest hopping on this one quickly in order to save some cash, for let’s say beer.  (Or Cap n’ for DSmith) 

Of course there are some little hiccups to this version 1 app.  Currently there are issues logging in for users, which I have also experienced.  Fear not the MS team are looking into the issue.  It took me about 40 tries to get logged in so keep trying.  Also some of my Note books are not showing tables with images properly instead it’s showing [table] tag.  So it seems like some parsing errors.  But again it is to be expected in a version 1 product.  The Bing app wasn’t perfect when it came out either. 

I am switching to OneNote after having used Evernote for a few months now.  I was able to switch my existing Evernote’s over to OneNote by using the Ever2One Converter. 

So if you have used the iPhone version of OneNote:

• Have you been able to log in yet?
• What do you think of the usability?
• What is your note taking app of choice and how does it compare?

Please leave us a line in the comments with those answers, we want to hear from you folks.

That’s right it’s rolling out right now as we speak.  If your not familiar with Google Instant here is a basic breakdown of it.  You bring up google.com on your browser start typing in the search field and boom the page starts searching while you type, giving you the results that you have come to love from Google.  Android has it and now us iPhoner’s have it as well.  I use this all the time while I’m at work and looking for some code help.  Here’s a few images to tease you with.

Well I don’t know how many of you know about the Facebook presentation today but here is what has come of it.  Android and iPhone users get updated applications.  Live right now in our respective stores.  What’s new you ask? 

What’s New In This Version:
- Groups: share photos and posts with small groups of friends
- Deals: discover great deals around you
- Places: tag more friends after you check in, add photos
- Various bug fixes

Now I do use Facebook to keep up with family and friends across the globe but I haven’t really used Places all that much.  So I’m not sure how much more value I’ll get from the new Deals API but hey more is better in my opinion.  I know Facebook is one of my daily used apps and I’m sure it is for much of our audience.  I also recently kicked a raging Mafia Wars addiction that still holds some of our team hostage.  Let us know how it’s working for your and what you think of the new Deals section.