David K

Microsoft Vine Beta Is Live

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Microsoft has spoken about a new  project called Vine that was in private Beta and I can now confirm that the private beta has been opened up a bit (since I received my download copy:)). What is Vine? The Microsoft Vine Beta connects you to the people and places you care about most, when it … Read more

Speed City 3-D Game (And Others) Free

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Microsoft is providing free access to a 3-D bike racing game called Speed City from OmniG Software.  This is part of being a Total Access member so just by signing up you get a few free games and apps. Speed City, from OmniG Software, Inc., is a 3-D street racing game inspired by the rebel … Read more

Jack The Ripper – Not Just a Fart App

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Herm has done it again – this time with his release of Jack The Ripper. This isn’t just another fart application. It does start with 40 fart sounds that you can scroll through and select or play randomly. That alone would make me chuckle. But it also has a few advanced features. You can set … Read more

PocketDare – The Game Without Real Blood

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PocketDare is WM version of that old game where you took a knife pencil and tried to go between your fingers in order as fast as possible. This version obviously involves less risk – except pressing your screen too hard…almost as dangerous as losing a finger:) You simply need to go in order and press … Read more

A Fruity Game You’ll Enjoy

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Like Bejeweled? Good- then you’ll like Fruity:) The goal is to get chains of at least 3 like kind pieces in a row and you can accomplish this by swapping the positions of two adjacent fruits. Sounds simple enough…and jakobdam’s version is clean, quick and easy to use. Oh, did we mention it’s also free?:) … Read more

Marathon – GPS Trainer Released

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We’ve gone through a bunch of apps in the past that assist runners/bikers (here and here and here’s another one) but there’s a new kid on the block, and it has a nice addition to it – verbal stat announcements to keep you motivated. It’s called Marathon and it’s the work of Ooije of XDA … Read more

Midomi Music Recognition In The Wild

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Some of you have seen or used Shazam’s Music ID (which the iPhone advertises on its commercials) on WM devices but it’s carrier dependant and pay as you go. Well, the Omnia 2 includes a new piece of software from Midomi that’s a similar app which has been extracted. You just hold your phone up … Read more

New MOTO SURF A3100 UI In The Wild

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You know I always love to get my hands on as many user interfaces as possible. Well here’s the latest. It’s the UI from the new Moto Surf A300 which is Motorola’s latest entry into the Windows Phone game. It’s actually developed for QVGA screens (I hear Tilt users rejoicing already) but it ran fine on both my Tilt and Fuze (the Fuze did experience some slight resizing issues but I think none were a deal killer except for the fact that after using the photo viewer a slight portion of the image was left behind on all screens – yes that hurt each time:)). But let’s get back to the UI. It consists of a dial at the bottom (it scrolls to the sides like a wheel so sliding left brings up the next item on the right of the screen). There are panels for the following: home (go to Settings to add date, time, and calendar and the top bar can be pulled down like Sense and there are favorite apps there), favorite contacts, internet shortcuts, weather (with current and three day forecast), web updates (RSS feeds), pictures and video (that includes gallery and slideshow features and photos have a ‘rotate’ button) and favorite apps. So how does it run? It’s actually pretty nice. Again, I think that a user interface is very personal so I don’t want to judge it for you. It feels like PointUI or TF3D so you need to scroll through tabs and overall it was pretty snappy. Want to see some more screenshots?

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GoogSMS – Get Google Info Without Data

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We’ve already discussed ways to use text messaging to get a lot of information without using a data plan. Well now user vn1minh has put together a nice little interface so that you can easily have access to Google SMS functions. Now you can easily scroll through a list of the possible options (and each … Read more

Backup/Restore of TouchFlo Favorite People

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Zenkinz of XDA has been busy lately. He’s released Back FavPeople Up! an application that restores your TF3D favorites in the people tab. He also notes that this is advantageous over backing up the file pim.vol (where your contacts information is stored). I have tried restoring using pim.vol in the past and had some issues … Read more

Making Your Wishes Come True

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The other day Dr. Jim made a smartphone wish list and I just want to take a second to address some of his wishes and some other users. No, I can’t make the scroll bar go onto the left side until MS decides to prioritize it and this is the best I have to offer on multitouch at the moment, but I can give you a taskbar that has color gradients instead of being flat (that’s a pic of my taskbar :)), give you flicker-free tv-out, a 6 button gamepad, get S2U2 to mimic TF3D, fix the 6.5 lock delay, rearrange 6.5 programs in the start menu and provide bigger buttons.

Let’s do a quick one. Here is a bluetooth gamepad that’s been around for a while. It seems to have mixed results depending on the device so look into it before buying it but it does support  WM phones.

To remove the flicker in Core Player with the tv-out cables make sure you have it set to ‘directdraw’ and the flicker will be gone.

If you would like S2U2 to look more like TF3D then just use Demonizator’s skin.

Check out this post for removing the delay in the 6.5 device lock.

To make your phone more finger friendly just switch to 6.5 and you’ll get the menu and notification enhancements that are nice:) If you wanted to go all out check out this thread and the videos – pretty neat stuff.

If you want to change the program location in the 6.5 start menu then use Showaco’s reStart. There’s also a cab to add a 4th column in the start menu.

OK, now let’s talk about that taskbar issue…

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Resizing 6.5 Plugins to Your Resolution

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A while back we posted about all of the 6.5 plugins that have become available already and one of the complaints is that the plugins are set to various resolutions (so they only work for some but not all devices). Well OndraSter of XDA has provided a neat utility that you use on your PC … Read more