There are a lot of exciting things coming in Windows Phone 8. This list is the five most interesting and important thing for me.

1. Improved Lock Screen Notifications

3rd Party Devs have the opportunity to have notifications appear directly on the Lock Screen. This essentially gives Windows Phone a notification center without being interruptive. The icon can simply update with a counter to show how many notifications each app has. After looking at how iOS5 handles notifications popping up on the lock screen it forces you to deal with it or have a lot o screen real estate covered up. Also the ability for the user to choose Calendar, Messaging and Phone additional information on the lock screen is very welcomed. Choice is good.

2. Improved Information Backup Options

Now Windows Phone users will have the option of backing up app list & settings, text messages and photos & videos. This goes a long way to knowing you’ll be able to access older messages that you may be in need of at a later date. The ability to backup videos to the cloud is great although most would be wise to utilize this feature while connected to Wi-Fi.

3. Voice Commands For Third Party Apps

If developers take the time to include voice commands specific to their app this will be one of the most valuable differentiating features on the platform this fall. If developers are lazy and/or unimaginative Windows Phone will trail iOS and Android by a  large margin. We’ve hopefully all see the INRIX app video and chumping at the bit to experience this in more of our favorite apps.

4. Bing Wi-Fi Search

The ability to locate nearby Wi-Fi spots is huge for me. As someone who likes to work in coffee shops and as many different places I can to keep my creativity flowing finding Hotspots is worth its weight in gold.

5. The improved overall experience of WP8

(video courtesy of The Verge)

So what are you looking forward to? Has the additional clarification on developer capabilities caused you to think of an awesome user feature or app? Share in the comments.

Check it out. Out of all the awesome leaked screenshots from the Windows Phone 8 SDK this is by far the coolest.

How can you not give this a thumbs up!

After dozens of tech blogs cherry picked snippets out of Skype’s user agreement and someone made the leap to saying Skype and Microsoft were working with law enforcement to snoop through user files Skype has ended their silence to set the record straight. Clear headed individuals have already understood that the situation was overblown and moved on.

Here is a snippet from Skype’s post":

“It has been suggested that Skype made changes in its architecture at the behest of Microsoft in order to provide law enforcement with greater access to our users’ communications.

False.

Skype’s architecture decisions are based on our desire to provide the best possible product to our users. Skype was in the process of developing and moving supernodes to cloud servers significantly ahead of the Microsoft acquisition of Skype. Skype first deployed ‘mega-supernodes’ to the cloud to improve reliability of the Skype software and service in December 2010. These nodes have been deployed in Skype’s own data centres, within third-party infrastructure such as Amazon’s EC2, and most recently within Microsoft’s data-centers and cloud. The move was made in order to improve the Skype experience, primarily to improve the reliability of the platform and to increase the speed with which we can react to problems. The move also provides us with the ability to quickly introduce cool new features that allow for a fuller, richer communications experience in the future.

Early this year we completed our move of all of our supernodes into Microsoft’s global data-center footprint so we and our users can benefit from the network connectivity and support that powers Microsoft’s other global scale cloud software including Xbox Live, Bing, SkyDrive, Hotmail and Office 365. This provides a real benefit to our users and to our ability to continue to scale the Skype product.”

To read the rest hit the link, Skype on Skype.

Well all the speculation and anticipation of Microsoft’s next major developer conference has been answered today. The next Microsoft BUILD developer conference will be held on Microsoft’s Redmond Campus on October 30th-November 2nd.

Why so late in the year? Well the dates correspond to the week after general retail availability for Windows 8 and presumably after the Windows Phone 8 launch announcement.

What will be covered besides Windows 8? Here’s a quote from Channel 9 “And in addition to Windows 8, we will have lots of other stuff to talk about, too: Windows Azure, Windows Phone 8, Windows Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012, and much more.”

Microsoft is also promising that this event will be like any other they’ve had on the Redmond Campus in a very long time. Good stuff. Are you going? If you are registering opens at 8AM (Pacific Time) on August 8th. For those of you into symbolic gestures its 8am on 8.8.

Source: BUILD

ts times like this that I feel like walking away from Microsoft for good. I remember very vividly Ballmer boasting about how Microsoft was going to get serious about the retail space. They showed off two slides indicating how much market penetration they would perform and the location of the stores. Now we’re getting confirmation that there will only be 44 Microsoft Stores by the middle of 2013.

Come on Microsoft. You have the cool new Surface family of products, a great mobile platform in Windows Phone 8, Windows 8 to showoff to the masses and of course Xbox and SmartGlass to showcase. While every mall worth visiting has an Apple store Microsoft apparently wants to play it nice and slow and miss yet another opportunity to gain a strong foothold in the consumer space.

One of the big advantages, if you talk to people close by an Apple store, is the ability to take their Apple products into an Apple store and get help. So the next time Ballmer opens his mouth in public and claims not to leave no space to Apple somebody please remind him that the retail space is still very much left to Apple and will continue to be the case for the next couple of years.

If there were any faith in RIM’s turnaround efforts today’s announcements had to drain all of that. Given RIM’s strong corporate underpinnings and international customer base growth there was always the sentiment that new, exciting hardware could give RIM the ammo it needs to fight off Windows Phone for 3rd place in the smartphone arena and take some ground back from Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. For years all the delays and miscalculations were laid squarely at the feet of former co-CEOs Balsaille and Lazaridis. Today’s announcements however paint the picture of a company who’s entire culture is crumbling at the seams.

The loss and shrinking of RIM’s revenue and market share was expected but the delay of the first BB10 devices until Q1 of 2013 is a death nail. Faced with Android and iOS improving on already leading mobile OSes and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 looking like an attractive corporate option RIM could not afford any mishaps or delays.

To be clear, I expect the pretty much all of RIM’s market share in the corporate sector to be gone by the time the first BB10 devices ship. Thorstein Heins might put on a brave face but its my best guess that the days of RIM as we know it is over and now the main question is how valuable assets like BlackBerry Messaging and Mobile Fusion is in today’s BYOD world. Keep in mind Microsoft’s InTune manages cross platform devices in the corporate environment and is getting a strong push by Microsoft.

So who benefits most from this latest turn of events: Apple, Android or Windows Phone 8?

For years Google has trumpeted the beauty of their Android platform being open source and beat the drum loudly that OEMs were free to use their Android mobile OS. Well Amazon took a version of Android, forked it, and placed their brand front and center. Amazon went so far as to create their own Amazon market for apps and digital content. This meant that buyers of the Amazon Kindle Fire were not pushed to use Google services and that means less data points for Google’s actual business-Advertising.

Google doesn’t take kindly to these type of things and the result is today’s unveiling of the Nexus 7 tablet. Google touts the pure and best Google Play experience is seen on the device and that certainly appears to be true. This just isn’t the main reason for the device, Google is clearly peeved that Amazon managed to rack up sales and cut Google out of profiting from their brand. This is a warning to their other OEM partners to not try to go the Amazon route or fear facing Google as their chief competitor.

As much as Google brings the best of Google Play to the tablet it can’t escape the certainty that they are aiming to destroy one of their own. It must be clear that Google is an advertising company first and foremost, any attempt at circumventing their search monopoly will be met with strong and swift action.

For you, the consumer, it’s a big time win. A $199 7” pure Google tablet running the latest and greatest from Mountain View packed with awesomeness that includes a Tegra 3 quad core processor, 12 core GPU and sporting and 1280 x 800 full HD display.

Google also announced a strong lineup of content partners pushing tv shows and movies available to rent and purchase. All your content is stored in the cloud too.

Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook now have legitmate, scary competition on the low end price market. It has to make Barnes & Noble’s joint venture with Microsoft look that much better. For Amazon it means a tougher road to tow and possibly a reason to jump to another OS. For the iPad it means they are still the cream of the crop  and their chief competitor is going to be Microsoft at the high end not Android. Other Android tablet OEMs have to be less than ecstatic themselves seeing Google stepping on toes without much care.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!, Facebook, Fhotoroom and Break MORE Aliens have all released updates for their respective apps.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!

– unclear what the update brings

Facebook

– New in 2.6: Added posting to my wall when posting to groups, custom privacy posts made as ‘only me’, groups with no picture no longer display black.

Fhotoroom

– v1.18 brings a fix to the Uploader

Break MORE Aliens!

– unclear what the update brings

If you’re a user of the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone series, now is a good time to check the marketplace for the goodies Nokia’s Kevin Shields gave us all a heads up on at the recent Windows Phone 8 summit. Despite whatever misgivings you may have about the lack of upgrade to WP8, you can’t help but be appreciative at the effort Nokia makes to support their Lumia line of Windows Phones. The best part is that the well isn’t dry with new apps set to roll out over the course of the summer. It must be said, nobody treats their users to more value added apps and services anywhere near what Nokia does.

Camera Extras have been detailed and includes the useful Smart Group Shot, Self Timer and Panorama features. An Action Shot is also included for those wishing to capture a lot of images in a small timeframe.

Play To is Nokia’s DLNA branded app that gives the user the ability to stream their music, pictures and video to DLNA compatible devices and TVs.

WPCentral is reporting that users do need the latest available firmware installed which for some users means Tango (8773) so if you run into any problems check for software updates and try it again.

You can download Camera Extras here and Play To here

Credit: Winsupersite and WPCentral

Available today for updates are Ask Ziggy, Fhotoroom, People  Search and Skype. Change log details for each are listed below.

Ask Ziggy

* Upgrades in release 2.5

* Language translations by voice (many languages supported). Speak in your native language.

* Fixed “or” and “are” echo issues.

Fhotoroom

*v1.17 Change Log

*Tag and User Search with Recommendations

*Fixed Camera Home Screen

*New Camera Home Screen Tile

*Updated Crop

*Updated TiltShift easier with single slider and smoother final results.

*Fixed scaling issue with Frames

*4 New Frames

*Better for Tango 256 MB RAM Phones.

*Now Control the Strength of Styles

*Several Bug Fixes

People Search

*NEW IN VERSION 1.3

*faster startup

*pin business cards to start (QR-tags)

*save number

Skype

• *All phonebook contacts with at least one number are shown in Skype contact list.
• *Ability to edit phone number in dial-pad before calling.
• *Bug Fixes