The Windows Blog

Windows Phone Toolkit June 2013 update – summary

Adam Denning — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 22:39:31 GMT

This blog post was authored by Rohan Thakkar, a Program Manager on the Windows Phone team.

- Adam

Windows Phone Toolkit June 2013 update is now ready to download

Source code: https://phone.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest

NuGet package: https://nuget.org/packages/WPtoolkit/

The Windows Phone Toolkit project has always been an open source vehicle for the Windows Phone Developer Platform team to ship code that will truly help app developers. In the June 2013 update we fixed top issues reported for the October 2012 release and added localization support for all 51 countries or regions supported in Windows Phone 8.

To address localization, we followed guidance from the blog post Tips for localizing Windows Phone apps – Part 2. In addition, to be able to share the resources between Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8, we created a common shared project called “Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Localization” in the solution’s folder named Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Localization on CodePlex. The sole purpose of the shared project is to integrate the Multilingual App Toolkit with the Windows Phone Toolkit. It has no other files and is empty. Under the solution’s configuration manager, this project is marked to not be built. This way, anyone who only wants the toolkit source code doesn’t need to download the Multilingual App Toolkit. However, if you want to add your own localization support and build the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Localization project, you’ll need to download and install the Multilingual App Toolkit.

To give you more info, we’ve included the release notes for the Windows Phone Toolkit June 2013 update.

Installation

Instead of an MSI-based installer, you get the June 2013 update for the toolkit from NuGet or by compiling directly from source code. Here are some details for downloading and installing the toolkit.

If you have Visual Studio 2012 installed, congratulations, you already have NuGet!
If you don't already have NuGet installed, go to http://nuget.org and install the NuGet Visual Studio extension.
Be sure that you have NuGet version 2.1 or later for Windows Phone 8 projects.
After you have NuGet installed, install the Windows Phone Toolkit package from http://nuget.org/packages/wptoolkit.
Optionally, you can download the source and compile the assembly yourself.
If you're compiling the source yourself, you'll also need the Multilingual App Toolkit for Visual Studio 2012 to avoid warnings that the localized .resx files are missing.

What's new

Localization update

Windows Phone Toolkit controls are now completely localized to support all the countries and regions that are natively supported by Windows Phone 8. This was done with the help of the Multilingual App Toolkit for Visual Studio 2012.
The following localizations are available:

Windows Phone 8

ar-SA	az-Latn-AZ	be-BY	bg-BG	ca-ES
cs-CZ	da-DK	de-DE	el-GR	en-GB
en-US	es-ES	es-MX	et-EE	fa-IR
fi-FI	fil-PH	fr-FR	fr-CA	he-IL
hi-IN	hr-HR	hu-HU	id-ID	it-IT
ja-JP	kk-KZ	ko-KR	lt-LT	lv-LV
mk-MK	ms-MY	nb-NO	nl-NL	pl-PL
pt-BR	pt-PT	ro-RO	ru-RU	sk-SK
sl-SI	sq-AL	sr-Latn-CS	sv-SE	th-TH
tr-TR	uk-UA	uz-Latn-UZ	vi-VN	zh-CN
zh-TW

Windows Phone 7.5
The same as before but with some changes in the names of the countries or regions supported:

cs-cz	da-dk	de-de	el-gr	en-US
en-gb	es-es	fi-FI	fr-fr	hu-HU
it-IT	ja-JP	ko-KR	nb-NO	nl-NL
pl-PL	pt-BR	pt-PT	ru-RU	sv-SE
zh-CN	zh-TW

The specific changes for Windows Phone 7.5 are:

cs	->	cs-cz
el	->	el-GR
da	->	da-DK
fi	->	fi-FI
hu	->	hu-HU
ja	->	ja-JP
ko	->	ko-KR
pl	->	pl-PL
ru	->	ru-RU

Gesture listener sample

The gesture listener sample has been updated to show how Windows Phone 8 apps can avoid a dependency on the XNA assemblies.

SpeechTextbox

A new sample control shows how to create a speech-enabled TextBox control by extending the PhoneTextBox control to use speech recognition in Windows Phone 8.

Fixes

As in previous releases of the Windows Phone Toolkit, fixing toolkit issues is a top priority. For a full list of fixes, see Windows Phone Toolkit fixes.

Samples

There is a full-featured sample app that demonstrates how to use each of the Windows Phone Toolkit controls. We highly recommend that you download the latest source code and run the sample app to find examples of how to use the controls you plan to include in your apps.

10 classic Xbox games from Gameloft on sale through June 25

Michael Stroh — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 20:10:46 GMT

Gameloft, which has released a flurry of great Xbox games for Windows Phone 8 in recent months, has slashed prices on 10 of its classic titles—some by as much as 67%. The sale, which runs through June 25, includes hits like Real Soccer and Asphalt 5 (both $0.99, regularly $2.99), Let’s Golf 2 and UNO (now $1.99, regularly $4.99), and movie legends The Amazing Spiderman and The Dark Knight Rises (now $2.99, regularly $6.99). See the full list here

Welcome to the Windows App Builder Blog

Windows Apps Team — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:30:00 GMT

Welcome to the Windows App Builder blog! This is your one stop shop for everything related to developing and selling apps for Windows. We know that building apps is about building businesses; this blog covers everything related to your business including:

Understanding app business models and monetization strategies
How Windows features help drive engagement and connect you to your customers
Tips and tricks for developing and testing your app
How to submit your app and manage the store process
Ways to market and promote your app

In addition, this blog is an important part of our commitment to transparency into all aspects of the Windows Store, including important policy changes and explanations.

If you’ve been following the Windows 8 app developer blog or the Windows Store for developers blog then you’ll feel right at home here. With the upcoming release of Windows 8.1 Preview, we’re combining both these blogs into one. This way, you can get all your Windows development in one place—and you can look forward to lots of details about the developer story for Windows 8.1.

And speaking of the developer story for Windows 8.1: As you might know, //build/ 2013 is just around the corner. The conference begins on Wednesday, June 26^th and runs through the 28^th. If you’re attending the conference, we look forward to seeing you there. Many of us who have been posting to the blogs will be at //build/, ready to answer all your questions about developing apps for Windows 8.1. If you’re not able to attend in person, all the sessions will be available for online viewing. Plus the keynote and select sessions will be broadcast live from the event.

So stay tuned to this blog —we’re excited to tell you all about Windows 8.1!

Ted Dworkin, Director of Program Management, Windows Store

Ian LeGrow, Group Program Manager, Windows

Popular apps come to Windows 8

Steve Guggenheimer — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:08:00 GMT

Hey Steve Guggenheimer here, Chief Evangelist for Windows and your host for the Build conference next week. We’re only one week until Build and we’re really looking forward to getting together with developers in San Francisco to talk apps, code, industry trends, and of course have some fun. As we head into Build and the conversation on new apps, and apps yet to come, I wanted to take a moment and highlight strong app momentum for Windows 8.

There are great apps hitting the Windows Store all the time. In fact, at Computex in Taipei just 2 weeks ago, Tami Reller highlighted the growth from 70,000 apps to 80,000 apps in just 3 weeks.

Today I wanted to follow onto that by highlighting a few of the great apps hitting the store this week from these outstanding partners in our growing app ecosystem:

edjing:

edjing is a social DJ’ing app with a community of 2.5 million registered members mixing music and creating songs. With the edjing app on Windows 8, you get a wide variety of DJ’ing effects. You can bring in music from your personal music library and mix songs with those effects and then share them with friends on Facebook and Twitter. You can also customize the look of the turntables in the app with skins. With a “pre-cueing” feature in the app – you can preview tracks ahead of time and there is a feature called “Pitch Shifter” that is exclusive to the Windows 8 app. This feature allows you to change the music speed without modifying the tone of the song. The audio capabilities in Windows significantly reduced the time to develop the app at about 15 days versus 4 months for other platforms.

You will be able to download the edjing app for Windows 8 from the Windows Store later this week to start mixing and creating music.

Great British Chefs:

Great British Chefs is the UK’s leading award winning recipe site and they’ve just launched an app for Windows 8. The Great British Chefs app for Windows 8 is beautifully designed and brings in over 300 photographed recipes from 28 of the UK’s greatest chefs. With stunning photography, handy hints and tips, and instructional how to videos, you’ll have everything you need to reproduce the culinary works of great chefs like Marcus Wareing, Tom Aikens and Nathan Outlaw. Using the Search charm in Windows 8, it is super easy to find a recipe, share your favorite recipes with friends and family with the Share charm and pin your favorite recipes to your Start screen.

Download the Great British Chefs app for Windows 8 from the Windows Store today to start cooking your own culinary masterpiece.

Tesco Groceries:

Tesco is the UK's largest retailer and as such aims to serve our customers in a way which best suits how they choose to shop. Tesco worked closely with Microsoft as they brought Windows 8 to market to ensure that they could offer the best online shopping experience on the platform. They wanted to build on the freshness of the Windows 8 design and ensure that features such as check out and Click & Collect were built as native features in the application. Tesco customers are shopping at work, at home and on-the-go and working with Microsoft they have served up the best of Tesco's online shopping service and the best of Windows 8.

If you are located in the UK, download the Tesco Groceries app from the Windows Store today to start shopping.

Time Out:

Time Out is an International media group producing websites, magazines, travel guides and apps designed to be the essential guide to what's happening in cities around the world. Time Out's inspiration is now being brought to Windows 8, beginning with apps for Barcelona, London, Los Angeles, New York and Paris. The Time Out app for Windows 8, display content in a stunningly visual and interactive way, making it easy to browse, plan and share; to get the most out of your city.

Download the Time Out app from the Windows Store to discover your favorite city.

VEVO:

VEVO, a popular personalized music video and music entertainment platform, has come to Windows 8. The new VEVO app for Windows 8 provides users with access to 75,000 HD music videos as well as original programming and live concerts from popular artists all over the world. Right from the home screen in the app – you can access music videos by featured artists and the latest music video premieres. Using the Search charm, you can search for your favorite artists or discover new music with the various filtering options. And with Snap, you can watch your favorite music videos while browsing the web or playing your favorite games. You can also stay up to date with your favorite artists to view bios, upcoming tour dates and enjoy personalized music video playlists. And VEVO for Windows 8 offers VEVO TV, VEVO’s always on, broadcast-style music video channel, with a look at upcoming programs with a simple tap of the screen.

Download VEVO app for Windows 8 from the Windows Store to access your favorite music videos and artists.

Vyclone:

Vyclone is a unique social video service that brings together multiple views of a shared moment through videos that people co-create with friends. With the Vyclone app for Windows 8, you and your friends can effortlessly capture videos and bring them together for a single moment like a birthday, vacation or wedding. The intuitive touch capabilities paired with expansive UX makes content engagement and creation easy in the app. The Vyclone app also preserves landscape resolution when filming with Windows 8 tablets and smaller form factors. Vyclone found the great camera and audio capabilities in Windows 8 devices a perfect complement for their app.

Download Vyclone for Windows 8 from the Windows Store and start creating your own videos with friends.

Where’s My Mickey?

Where's My Mickey? is a brand new physics puzzler from Disney that comes to Windows 8 with stimulating weather mechanics and humorous animations. You solve challenging puzzles to see how the episode ends. You tap, swipe, and swirl to help Mickey collect water and complete each story. You get 3 episodes featuring Mickey for free with 2 Goofy episodes available for purchase. The game has a Live Tile, supports the Share charm and you can play the game with Snap!

Coming Soon: Where’s My Mickey will be available in the Windows Store for $4.99 (U.S.).

This is really just the tip of the iceberg and some really great examples of apps landing on the Windows platform. The excitement is continuing to grow and our entire team is excited to spend some time with developers from around the world next week in San Francisco at Build. Whether you will be able to join us live or follow along remotely, we’re excited to share even more exciting news next week! To hear more about great new apps released and follow the conversation at Build, follow me on twitter @StevenGuggs.

Required pubCenter Update for Microsoft Ad Units

Bernardo Zamora — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:20:06 GMT

Microsoft Advertising is committed to increasing advertiser demand and growing advertising revenue for mobile app developers. The latest improvements to increase developer monetization and end-user relevancy have just been released – these involve changes in the pubCenter categories used to target ad units. To fully leverage these new capabilities, developers need to visit pubCenter to take action to select one category for each ad unit and align that category with the selection in the Windows Phone Dev Center. This is a category update only and no app resubmission or certification is required.

What do you need to do?

For new ad units, just follow the instructions in pubCenter to enter the category when you submit new apps. Make sure you enter the same category that you use when submitting your app to Windows Phone Dev Center.
For existing apps that already use Microsoft Advertising ad units, you have until September 12 to update the ad unit information in pubCenter. Ads will not be displayed in your apps after September 12, 2013, if you don’t update the ad unit information.

You can read more about this change in the Microsoft Advertising blog post, Changes in PubCenter Ad Units.

Q&A: Britt Atack, 44, school athletic director

Juliette Guilbert — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:32:53 GMT

[Part of our occasional series spotlighting real people and their real Windows Phones. –.ed]

To all appearances, Britt Atack is an easygoing kind of guy. He pads around The Northwest School in shorts, t-shirt, and a well-worn pair of Vibram Five Fingers, calling out affable greetings to students and colleagues.

But his job as athletic director of this Seattle independent school for grades 6 to 12 means a demanding schedule and lots of juggling. So Britt, 44, relies on his HTC 8X with Windows Phone 8 to help him stay on top of his chaotic workday while preserving his laid-back demeanor. I sat down with him earlier this month on the Northwest School’s Capitol Hill campus to get the details.

What’s a typical day at work look like for you?

First thing in the morning, I work at home so I can take my daughter to school. But one of the tenets of my job is to be available for coaches, parents, and any administrative issues that come up. I’m in and out of my office all day, sometimes in meetings, but I need to know whether fields are rained out, whether a bus broke down. I need to coordinate with buses, parents, coaches, and officials, wherever I am.

How does your Windows Phone help you manage things?

It’s substantially changed my ability to do business in two places at once and to know about a problem in time to be able to fix it. I can look at those big squares to see calls, texts, my school email, my other email, various threads that are happening. Let’s say a parent is lost in Bellevue trying to find her daughter’s game, and she sends me an email because that’s the only contact info she’s got for me. Even though I’m not at my desk, I can see it and save the day. I used my phone to take headshots of the track and field kids for the state website. And I can update our website from my phone—I could never do that from my old Android. It took forever to load.

Why did you choose a Windows Phone?

The school was providing the phone, and I could have chosen anything—iPhone, Android. One of our IT guys had a Windows Phone, and he really liked it and spent 20 minutes showing me how it worked. The visual layout was clean, it seemed really intuitive, and I liked the aesthetics. Also, I didn’t want a big learning curve, and I was able to get up and running with 98 percent of what I need in 20 minutes.

It sounds like your phone is a pretty key part of your work day. Do you use it for anything else?

I’m on a pro Ultimate [frisbee] team with a bunch of young twentysomething guys, and they’re always sending funny stuff around via email. One guy made [ESPN] Sports Center for some amazing play, and everyone was commenting—that’s fun. I also like the grocery store effect, where my wife and I can stay in the loop when one of us is going to the store. And then one of my students just showed me how to set up Facebook on my phone. I didn’t know I could do that. She was like “Dude, just give me the phone.”

Popular Microsoft photo app BLINK adds animation, sharing features

Michael Stroh — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:14:41 GMT

Back in February Microsoft Research released BLINK, a handy free photo app for Windows Phone 8 that captures a burst of images when you press the shutter button so you can pick the best shots. It was an instant hit, racking up more than 317,000 downloads and hundreds of 5-star reviews in the four months since.

Today Microsoft scientists released an update to BLINK, and version 2.0 adds some mighty cool stuff: the ability to create and share short video clips. Grab it here

BLINK, a Lens app that integrates right into your camera viewfinder, captures a total of 16 frames, beginning just before you press the camera button and ending about a second afterward. As a Microsoft Research news article explains today, the new animation and sharing features were inspired by a simple observation: People seemed to be having as much fun flipping through each series of photos as they were deciding which shots to keep.

So the updated app adds a new button to turn a group of shots into an animated flipbook called—you guessed it—a “BLINK.” Notes the article: “It’s the perfect time span for capturing just a bit of motion—your baby’s breaking smile, perhaps, or a back flip off a diving board.” The updated app also provides options for sharing BLINKs with friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, email, and Socl, Microsoft’s homegrown social network dedicated to collages and other artsy digital creations.

Check out the video Microsoft Research put together to see a little tutorial of how it all works. Windows 8 users should also check out the new BLINK Cliplets app released today in the Windows Store.

Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat – Great Family PCs from HP

Kristina Libby — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:35:30 GMT

This week we are joining forces with HP to talk about a few of their great family PCs. This includes the amazing HP Pavilion All-In-One TouchSmart that we are giving away. Plus, we’ll be joined by some of the bloggers who have been testing and using these devices for months so that you can get a good handle on what other people think.

To participate in the Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat and be eligible to win the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 23 All-in-One, please do the following!

Join us from 12-1 PT (3-4 ET) on Twitter
Follow the hashtag #winchat
Follow @windows, @kristinalibby, @HP, @afinnie, @melissazieger, @gizmogladstone, @microsoftoem and @windowsblog to make sure you get the whole picture.
For full legal terms and conditions, click here.

Adobe CC Apps Available Starting Today

Gavin Gear — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:19:40 GMT

Starting later today, Adobe Creative Cloud subscribers can download, install, and use the new Creative Cloud apps from Adobe. In addition to the many new features in these apps, the entire Creative Suite has now been fully integrated with Adobe Creative Cloud, hence the “CC” in the new app names.

Windows is a great platform for these kinds of professional-grade digital post production apps because of the wide selection of powerful PC hardware, extensive GPU/Graphics options, device connectivity support, and storage technologies to name a few things. Wondering how these CC apps will run on Windows 8? I’ll be following-up with posts that will show these apps in action with some extreme hardware and display configurations, so stay tuned!

While there are too many updates and enhancements for CC apps to list in this blog post, I’ll walk through some of the notable changes to some of the more popular Adobe Pro-Photo and Pro-Video apps.

Premiere Pro CC

Premiere Pro CC feels a lot like Premiere Pro CS6, but has some great new features and improvements. I had the opportunity to use a pre-release build of Photoshop CC, and it took no time at all to ramp up and work at a normal pace.

New/Improved in Premiere Pro CC:

Enhanced GPU support including multi-gpu hardware configurations
Redesigned timeline with new shortcuts and new selective paste attributes dialog
Link and locate which helps find files that your project is dependent on
Multicam editing enhancements including multi-track audio sync
New closed captioning capabilities
More codecs and native formats built-in
Lumetri Deep Color Engine for efficient color grading

Photoshop CC

Photoshop CC has some very exciting new capabilities that I can’t wait to try! Here’s a high-level summary of some of the improvements and new features in Photoshop CC:

All-new Smart Sharpen with noise optimizations
Intelligent upsampling which enables optimal image resolution enhancement
Integrated Camera Raw 8 support
Camera shake reduction which restores image sharpness

After Effects CC

After Effects CC integrates the latest in 2D and 3D animation technology from Adobe. This new version of After Effects integrates improvements and features that unlock new possibilities for animators and film professionals including:

GPU and multi-processor performance improvements
3D Camera Tracker for better motion/object tracking
Live 3D Pipeline supporting CINEMA 4D objects and scenes
Warp Stabilizer VFX including selection of stabilized object from scene
Pixel Motion Blur for synthesized or enhanced motion blur

Do you have a favorite new feature in the new CC apps? Please leave a comment!

You can also stay up to date by following me on twitter here: @GavinGear

A Salute to Small Business Week: Windows 8 Empowers SMBs

Jay Paulus — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:29:00 GMT

Today is the 50th anniversary of National Small Business Week, a week long opportunity to recognize the contributions of America’s entrepreneurs and small business owners.

As part of my role at Microsoft, I work with a lot of small companies and Microsoft partners, so I hear first-hand how important technology can be for them. When talking about Windows use in business, people often focus on 1,000’s of PC deployments in large multi-national corporations; however, I think it’s a huge miss if we don’t look at how Windows 8 is being used by small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well.

For a small business, the mantra is often about stretching dollars to do more with less and this applies to technology budgets as well, ensuring that you are future-proofing technology investments and getting the most value possible. Here’s some examples of small businesses who are making the most of technology – in this case Windows 8 Pro – and how it has made their businesses more efficient, saving them valuable time and money. From a physical therapy clinic, to a Jiu-Jitsu gym, to a political social media app, these SMBs using Windows 8 are great examples of the 27.9 million small businesses in the U.S. today.

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In 2012, start-up Discourse Analytics launched the Votifi app which creates an online community for peer-to-peer political discourse and networking. The app connects people across various regions around the issues they care about most. For instance, Votifi fostered real-time discussions during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The app also builds a profile of each customer’s political activity and views. These anonymous profiles help inform political campaigns, advocacy groups, and media companies by enabling them to better activate their supporters and conjoining online and off-line efforts, giving Votifi participants a voice with their political leaders.

“Windows 8 is a critical component for the long-term success of our business.” - Lou Aronson, CEO

Internally, the company also deployed Surface Pro running Windows 8 Pro. Lou Aronson, CEO of Discourse Analytics commented that he takes his Surface Pro with him everywhere: creating pitches on the go, sending a quick note while at a child’s sporting event, reading the newspaper over breakfast and jumping into multiple meetings a day—all while remaining connected and productive. He also noted that Windows 8 Pro allows the company to be device independent and connect people through new channels, which wasn’t an option with the iPad.

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The Romulo Melo Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy, based in San Francisco, teaches traditional Gracie Jiu-Jitsu for fitness, competition and self-defense. The company recently deployed Windows 8 Pro running on Microsoft Surface and has been able to truly transform how they run their business day to day by shifting to mobile devices.

With Windows 8, the academy is do everything from checking in students, to creating custom self-defense programs and manage their finances. Equally important for a small business that spans two continents is staying connected. The academy uses Skype to stay in touch with its Brazilian counterparts and SkyDrive to store and share student records and photos in the cloud from anywhere.

The academy has also stopped using paper based record keeping for signed documents instead adopting the DocuSign Ink app on Windows 8 Pro to increase its business efficiency. The app uses a digital secure system to collect legally binding signatures from new students on liability and on-boarding materials, partner agreements for new instructors, tax documents, insurance policies and leases. Also, once a year the academy takes a group of students back to Brazil to train at the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy. While traveling, the group uses DocuSign for everything from securing accommodations to setting up day tours for its students.

Since adopting Windows 8 Pro, the academy has benefited by streamlining its customer experience, dropping paper forms in lieu of digital signatures, and switching to tablets enabling the company to be more efficient and spend more time in the gym and less time in the office.

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Sports Reaction Center is a physical therapy clinic based in Bellevue, Wash., that specializes in sports injury management. The center was founded 30 years ago and focuses its expertise around serving the injury, recovery and training needs of athletes. In order to streamline its small business and more efficiently care for its patients, the clinic adopted the Windows 8 Pro Lenovo ThinkPad Twist convertible for its team of therapists.

“The Windows 8 tablets save the clinic so much time and hassle. What’s not to love? It’s awesome!” - Beth Hall, Office Manager

The biggest benefit the company has experienced with Windows 8 Pro has been reducing paperwork, time and cost; prior to adopting Microsoft’s technology, the therapists would often spend hours of their evenings documenting patient sessions. Now, the therapists take the tablets with them everywhere instead of stacks of paper. During a patient visit, a therapist can take injury notes on the tablet, send out doctor referrals and email their patients copies of exercise plans in real-time. Less paperwork means more time with the patients and happier therapists. The clinic estimates that it saves around 10-15 hours a week in documentation time by moving from paper forms and desktops to mobile tablets.

Beth Hall, the office manager at Sports Reaction Center, also uses a tablet to run the office behind the scenes, creating spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, conducting bookkeeping activities and filling out office orders using the touch-sensitive interface. She loves that the devices are lightweight, mobile and that everything is laid out with easy-to-use live tiles that let her know when she’s got new emails or upcoming appointments.

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And to see how SMB customers are benefitting from Office365, check out their blog here.

Say what! Speech recognition gets faster, more accurate on Windows Phone

Michael Stroh — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:10:44 GMT

Your Windows Phone is becoming a better listener.

In a blog post today, the Bing team announced that voice search and voice-to-text—two popular Bing-powered phone features—are now up to twice as fast and 15 percent more accurate, a feat accomplished by exploiting some recent biology-inspired artificial intelligence breakthroughs from Microsoft Research scientists.

Check out the video below to see Bing’s Stefan Weitz and MSR’s Michael Tjalve demo some of these improvements on Windows Phone 8—or just try them yourself (U.S. only for now). Tap the Search button, then the little microphone icon, and then tell Bing to find something. I said, “Show me movies playing in Seattle” and my search results popped right up. You can also try dictating a text message or email (again, just look for the little mic icon in each of those apps). If you’ve never played around with the phone’s speech recognition features, this how-to article is a great place to start.

Teaching a computer to understand the human voice in both real time and noisy real-life environments is no easy feat. And it turns out there’s a fascinating backstory to how Bing engineers and their Microsoft Research collaborators pulled it off. The Inside Microsoft Research blog dives deeper into the science behind today’s news.

As you’ll see, it revolves around something called deep neural networks. You pretty much need a PhD to understand the details of this stuff, but simply put what’s cool about the research is that it draws on biology and the human brain’s natural pattern recognition ability for inspiration. In practice, deep neural networks involve lots of mind-twisting math, racks of fast computers, and a mountain of data to learn from.

As the post notes, deep neural networks show promise for other phone-related applications, too. One is real-time language translation. Imagine popping open the Bing Translator app on your phone, speaking in English, and hearing your voice simultaneously translated into Mandarin—and the Chinese-speaking voice even sounds just like you.

Don’t expect your phone to do that any time soon. But as MSR’s Rick Rashid demonstrated at a recent conference (a story described in today’s post), it’s also not necessarily science fiction and just one example of what deep neural network research might someday make possible.

New Windows themes: kittens, puppies, and a world in color

Jennifer Shepherd — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:00:22 GMT

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but there are days when I envy my cats. Every morning, I head out the door thinking about everything I need to get done at work that day, whereas the only item on their agenda is to get in some serious napping. Cats elevate rest and relaxation to an art-form – they nap like it’s a calling. Well, maybe I can’t spend all afternoon slowly following a ray of sunlight across the carpet, but I can get myself some vicarious repose with the sleepy kittens in our new theme, and so can you. Conked out or half asleep, purring, dozing, curled up in circles, or tucked warmly under blankets, they’ll lower your blood pressure and may make you want to take a little catnap, too.

Kittens are not the only great sleepers. There are few things more adorable than the trembling of a sleeping puppy’s paws as he dreams of playing and running. Our next new theme features puppies living out their doggy dreams – playing with balls, chewing rawhide bones, chasing each other, rolling on grass, and inviting you to play, too. I love the sweet, goofy joyfulness of the pups in this theme!

Changing gears from lovable pets to beaches that stretch as far as the eye can see, the next new theme is the latest in our series of panoramic themes for Windows 8 and Windows RT, designed to seamlessly span dual monitors. This theme features some of the world’s most stunning shorelines, from Australia to Hawaii, the Caribbean, and more.

The next three themes all take a smaller, closer view of life – specifically the life of plants and flowers – all with photography from our Open Call. The first set, by Edian Annink, explores the secret world of mushrooms, hidden among the moss and undergrowth of the forest floor.

Photographer Chris Chung brings us the next two themes. The first is an exploration of the flora and foliage of award-winning Hong Kong Park.

Chung’s other new theme is a rainbow of fantastic flowers, ranging from hot pink through fuchsia, flame, orange, gold, lemon yellow, and back again to rosy pink.

Seeing life through rose-colored glasses can be great, but for a slightly different twist, our new Life in Lavender theme explores the world through a lilac-colored lens. From sweeping sunset landscapes to small, unfurling crocus buds, enjoy all the purple-colored beauty nature has to offer.

If you have ideas for other colors you’d like to see a similar theme of, let me know in the comments!

If you have an older version of Windows that can’t use themes, or if you prefer to use a single desktop background, be sure to check out the fresh wallpapers. Here are just a few:

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, you can also use these wallpapers on your Windows phone and on your Windows 8 or Windows RT lock screen.

And as always, I hope you’ll keep checking back on the Personalization Gallery, as we will continue to bring you new themes and wallpapers to keep your desktop fresh.

Inside Windows Phone - Use Location and Mapping in your Apps

Larry Lieberman — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:21:45 GMT

On this week’s Inside Windows Phone, Matthias and I review in detail how easy it is to add mapping and location functionality to your apps. For apps in which this is relevant, it is an amazingly easy way to radically improve the interactivity of your app and your connection with the user.

View the full post on C9 here, which includes much more detail on what was discussed, as well as a link to the full code samples we use in the video.

Let us know if you have any comments!

Tweet to @LarryALieberman Or @matthiasshap

App roundup: More of the best apps as chosen by a 13-year old

David S — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:00:00 GMT

I mentioned some of my daughter’s favorite apps in a previous post. She’s a great source for me because she consumes apps like nobody’s business, and always gives honest assessments. Since the first time I checked in with her, she has continued to download apps at a dizzying clip, and so I decided it was time to see what her new favorites are. The conversation went like this:

Me: So what good apps have you downloaded for your Surface lately?

Her: You should pay me for this.

Me: I’ll pay you nothing.

Her: I’m doing your job right now.

Me: Could you just answer the question?

Her: What do I get?

After exchanging a few more pleasantries, I was able to extract the following list:

Shuffle Party

Shuffle Party in a way is very basic. Just like in real shuffle board, you push a little puck-type thing and try to get as close to the edge without going over. And that’s pretty much it. But the beauty is in the details, especially the way the physics feel. There’s something very genuine here. All the near misses make you want to keep trying. Seriously. I defy you to stop with one round. The way the camera zooms along with the puck—with reflections on the glossy board flashing by—is also very satisfying.

I’m starting to see why my child has such a hard time finishing her geometry homework.

Brainteasers

OK, I have to confess that Brainteasers reminded me a bit of the logic section of one of the GRE or some other standardized tests. Except this is a fun version. You get a series of statements about various Clue-like characters and Clue-like settings, and deduce from them where a murder took place and who did it. I’m frankly terrible at this. But my daughter is great at it. And this is one I actually don’t mind her playing, because I think in a very sneaky way, it’s getting her ready for the SAT. Find that killer, kid! We need a scholarship!

Northern Tale

Northern Tale is a kind of role-playing strategy game, but a light and somewhat goofy one. There’s a dude with a beard named Ragnar. His kingdom has been cursed and he has to go on a quest accompanied by a couple of other fantasy-type fellas who do magic and whack things with swords. The story may be rote, but what makes it fun is the immediacy and accessibility. You don’t have to be a role-playing geek to start playing right away.

Sushi Chop

Sushi Chop is a fun twist on the cut-things-as-they-fly-through-the-air format established by Fruit Ninja. In this case you chop fish, not fruit. And you cut them more than once. And instead of bombs, you have to look out for stinky green fish. So, totally different? Well, maybe not. But while it doesn’t break new ground, this is a fun variation on a classic, with enough twists to keep you chopping.

Samurai vs. Zombies Defense

Samurai vs. Zombies Defense looks like your basic side-scrolling arcade-style action game. It’s not, though it has elements of that. Mostly it’s a strategy game in which you deploy farmers and archers against zombies. The zombies also appear to be samurais, so that’s a little confusing for me. Everyone has very big heads and the whole thing is more cartoonish than gory. Anyway, there’s plenty here to keep you from your homework.

And that’s the list. I hope none of the above makes you judge me as a parent. Wait, never mind that. But I would love to know in the comments below what you think about these games. All of them are free and available right now in the Windows Store.

—David S.

Hands-On: Working with Storage Spaces in Windows 8

Gavin Gear — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 16:48:31 GMT

Storage Spaces is an exciting new storage virtualization technology that is new for Windows 8. For background, you can read my prior post on Windows 8 storage solutions. In this post I’ll build on this topic and give you a walk-though demo of how to create and configure Storage Spaces and also include information on advanced tools for Storage Spaces management.

Background

Storage Spaces are built on storage hardware virtualization called Storage Pools. Storage Pools are collections of physical drives and are used by Storage Spaces for storage. A Storage Space is a logical drive object that uses virtualized storage from a Storage Pool.

Storage Spaces Demo

Creating a Storage Space is essentially a two-step process:

Creation of a Storage Pool. You select which available drives on your system will be used to create a virtualized pool of disk storage for use with Storage Spaces.
Creation of one or more Storage Spaces. Creating a Storage Space involves choosing a name, drive letter, resiliency options, and capacity. You can create multiple Storage Spaces in a single Storage Pool.

Here’s a video that will give you a walk-trough of the following:

Launching the “Storage Spaces” control panel
Creating a Storage Pool
Creating two Storage Spaces in the Storage Pool
Deleting Storage Spaces and the Storage Pool to reclaim the physical drives

As you can see, Windows 8 provides an easy experience for the creation and management of Storage Spaces. But what if you are more of the command-line kind of person?

PowerShell Management for Storage Spaces

If you need to automate the creation and management of storage spaces, there’s full support in WMI (Windows Management and Instrumentation) for the management of Storage Spaces. There are also several PowerShell cmdlets for Storage Spaces, so that you can manage Storage Spaces from PowerShell. This PowerShell integration provides a convenient way to either use the command line or scripts to configure Storage Pools and Storage Spaces. While a deep dive into PowerShell and WMI for Storage Spaces is beyond the scope of this blog post, you can get lots of detail HERE and HERE.

In order to give you an idea of how PowerShell can be used to manage Storage Spaces, I’ve outlined a simplified PowerShell command sequence below. The following commands would be used to perform the tasks that I showed in the video above: (partition management steps removed for clarity)

# Before this, identify physical disks to use, remove existing partitions

# Get disks that have been prepared for inclusion in Storage Pool
$pd = Get-PhysicalDisk –CanPool $True

# Create the storage pool
New-StoragePool -PhysicalDisks $pd –StorageSubSystemFriendlyName *Spaces* -FriendlyName “Buffalo 3T USB 3.0 Drives”

# Create Storage Space 1 using newly created storage pool
New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName “Storage Space 1” -StoragePoolFriendlyName “Buffalo 3T USB 3.0 Drives” -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -ProvisioningType Thin –Size 2.72TB

# Create Storage Space 2 using newly created storage pool
New-VirtualDisk -FriendlyName “Storage Space 2” -StoragePoolFriendlyName “Buffalo 3T USB 3.0 Drives” -ResiliencySettingName Mirror -ProvisioningType Thin –Size 2.72TB

# Now create and format partitions on Storage Space logical drives

Have tips and tricks or experiences to share with Storage Spaces management? Please leave a comment!

Find me on twitter! @GavinGear

Talking Retail: The New Windows Store Only at Best Buy

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:00:00 GMT

Today, we announced a strategic partnership to create the Windows Store only at Best Buy, a comprehensive store-within-a-store in 500 Best Buy locations across the United States and more than 100 Best Buy and Future Shop locations in Canada.

The stores within Best Buy will range in size from 1,500 square feet to 2,200 square feet and will be the premier destination for consumers to see, try, compare and purchase a range of products and accessories, including Windows tablets and PCs, Windows Phones, Microsoft Office, Xbox and more.

With that in mind, we wanted to talk with Chris Capossela, Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft, who has a passion for retail and is a serious tech guru. Chris is a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, who served as Bill Gates’ speech assistant in his early years, and most recently was Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Office Division. Today, as chief marketing officer, he’s one of the biggest stewards of the Microsoft brand, including how it comes to life in retail.

Brandon LeBlanc: What’s unique about the Windows Store only at Best Buy?

Chris Capossela: Well, unlike a lot of store-within-a-store concepts, this will actually be a department-level takeover within Best Buy stores. And they will be massive in size, up to 2,200 square feet in some locations. The other unique thing about the Windows Store is the people. There will be an additional 1,200 staff on hand to provide a great customer experience, whether it’s choosing the right PC or showing consumers how to stream Xbox music through their Surface. Finally, the online experience should be fantastic. We’ll have a full online Windows Store experience that will mirror the in-store look-and-feel and offer a full range of Microsoft products, even those from other places in the Best Buy store.

Brandon LeBlanc: Is this partnership solely focused on the Windows Stores in these 600 stores?

Chris Capossela: Actually, it goes well beyond the computing department in these 600 stores. It also means we will have a great Windows tablet table inside the Best Buy Tablet Department, Windows Phones in their Phone Department, and lots of space for Xbox in their Gaming and Home Theater Departments. So there will be a big Windows experience where we bring everything together, but we’ll also look great in the other departments where people go. And, of course, we also extend the partnership to Best Buy’s online experience.

Brandon LeBlanc: So, why is Best Buy the destination choice for Microsoft?

Chris Capossela: It’s more about being the best destination choice for consumers. Today, Best Buy is the No. 1 retailer of PCs in the world. We’re able to do some really unique things through this partnership to show the range of our products – from PCs, to notebooks, to Surface, to Windows Phone, to Xbox – and how they all work together. We’re creating a premium experience for customers at scale, and Best Buy has been an amazing partner as we’ve built this out. As we said earlier this year, retail is a priority, and this partnership with Best Buy is a prime example of our commitment to the customer experience in evaluating, experiencing and enjoying Microsoft devices, and the software and services that connect them.

Brandon LeBlanc: Is there a story you want to tell customers when they come into the Windows store?

Chris Capossela: We’ve heard a lot from customers over the last year. They’re buying tablets and other devices to complement their PCs. They’re using technology both at work and at play, and it’s blurring how they think of using tech in their lives. At the same time, they’ve asked us to showcase touch-first devices in a compelling retail environment. We’ve listened, and the story of the Windows Store is that we’ve delivered what customers want: more touch, more hands-on experiences and more opportunities to see Microsoft technologies and how they work together.

Brandon LeBlanc: How is the Windows Store configured – what kinds of experiences and scenarios can we expect to see?

Chris Capossela: It’s something that has to be seen to be believed. Looking at the store head-on, it will feature an innovation table in the front, highlighting the newest and best Windows technologies of the moment. There will be a dedicated Surface area and central showcase tables with the latest and greatest PCs, laptops, convertibles and more. The back wall will feature software and accessories. And there’s an ecosystem section with real-life scenarios across Windows devices. This ecosystem area is exciting, because it will show off stuff like Xbox SmartGlass and SkyDrive. Personally, I love how I can use SkyDrive on my PC and phone, and how it saves me time when sharing documents at work, and photos with friends and family. This is a chance to show our customers the same thing – to let them see how Microsoft technology can enhance their lives.

Brandon LeBlanc: What will be different for customers when they come into the Windows Store vs. the Microsoft Store?

Chris Capossela: Well, first of all, we’re committed to our Microsoft Stores. With 68 stores open in North America, we’re seeing great success in our growing network. The Windows Store at Best Buy is really just another great opportunity to reach customers in more places and give them choice in their technology-buying experience. We’ve taken learnings from the Microsoft Store into the Windows Store at Best Buy, and we ultimately feel this is another great channel to offer a superior experience for the millions of customers who rely on Best Buy to purchase their PCs.

Brandon LeBlanc: What’s in your bag now – which PC and phone?

Chris Capossela: I carry the Nokia Lumia 920 phone and the Acer Aspire S7 on the road with me. I also use the Surface Pro around campus during meetings, but I really love the Acer Aspire’s larger screen for road trips.

Come discover the Windows Store only at Best Buy beginning in late June through September. More information about the Windows Store only at Best Buy is available here at BestBuy.com.

Now in the Store: Fairway Solitaire for Windows Phone 8

Michael Stroh — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:06:48 GMT

Fairway Solitaire is an unusual but award-winning combination of golf and solitaire from Big Fish Games. The new Windows Phone edition features more than 350 hand-crafted courses—including 18 new ones you won’t find on any other phone. The app and first few courses are free—or unlock them all for $1.99. Download it now for Windows Phone 8.

The game has you aiming for long drives by playing as many cards in a row as you can. Sound difficult? There are golf course hazards like water and sand traps, and one comically angry gopher named McDivot determined to get in your way. But play your cards right and you just might play through. The game features a Live Tile that shows your running score (something else you won’t find on other versions of the game). Dozens of trophies, mini games, and a golf shop featuring power-ups, meanwhile, help keep you hooked.

Remote HTML5 debugging on Windows Phone with weinre

Charles Morris — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:07:00 GMT

This blog post was authored by Oren Freiberg, a Program Manager on the Windows Phone Browser team.

- Charles

Exciting news for HTML5 developers on Windows Phone 8: weinre (WEb INspector REmote) support has arrived! Weinre is a remote DOM inspector tool that web app developers can use to quickly solve the challenges of testing and debugging HTML5 content on mobile devices. Now, thanks to Microsoft Open Technologiesand the contributing community, you can use the latest version of weinre to ensure that your mobile website or web app works great with Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8.

Using weinre, a developer can inspect HTML content and modify the style and layout of a page in real time on a Windows Phone 8 device or emulator. You can also see errors as they occur in the weinre JavaScript console.

Demo

To see weinre in action, check out the demo video of an HTML5-based app being debugged on Windows Phone 8:

Getting started with weinre on Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Phone 8

Getting set up with weinre takes only a few minutes! Just follow the steps in Olivier Bloch's detailed article Now on IE and Firefox: Debug your mobile HTML5 page remotely with weinre (WEb INspector REmote).

How was this done?

Microsoft Open Technologies worked with the weinre community to remove weinre’s dependencies on WebKit. This opens the door for developers to debug their webpages on other standards-based browsers, including Internet Explorer 10. If you are curious about how you can adapt your WebKit-optimized site to support Internet Explorer 10 and make your site more compliant to the HTML5 standards, check out Charles Morris’s article on Adapting your WebKit-optimized site for Internet Explorer 10.

PhoneGap Challenge

If you already are using weinre on your other PhoneGap apps, join the PhoneGap challenge! It’s a great chance to launch your app on the Windows Phone 8 platform, use weinre, and you might win some prizes.

We would love to hear your feedback after you use weinre with Internet Explorer 10 on Windows Phone 8. Please comment below to let us know what you think.

N.O.V.A. 3, a first-person sci-fi stunner, launches on Windows Phone 8

Michael Stroh — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:48:31 GMT

Gameloft’s highly-anticipated first-person shooter N.O.V.A. 3 ($6.99) touched down in the Store this morning. The game costs $6.99 and runs only on higher-memory Windows Phone 8 models. Buy it now

In the game, you play under the helmet of Kal Wardin, former officer of the Near Orbital Vanguard Alliance, who’s been called back to war-torn Earth. His mission: liberate it from the alien Volterite army and recover a mysterious alien artifact.

But you’ll probably be mesmerized less by the game’s storyline than its stunning sci-fi visuals, which practically make you forget you’re not at home sitting in front of your Xbox. The game features 10 immersive levels across the galaxy and 20 Xbox Live achievements. It also lets you play alone or against others, either online or via local W-Fi. Group battles look especially cool: The game features 7 multiplayer modes with 12-player fights—and voice chat to coordinate your moves with friends in real time. In N.O.V.A. 3, multiple allies can also now hop in the same vehicle to head off to battle.

This game definitely sets a high bar for mobile FPS titles. What’s your favorite shooter for Windows Phone?

Windows Phone 8 Samples Update

Adam Denning — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 21:34:48 GMT

This blog post was authored by Andrew Byrne (@AndrewJByrne), a Senior Content Developer on the Windows Phone Developer Content team.

- Adam

The Windows Phone Developer Content team is continually adding new code samples that you can download from MSDN. In this post, we introduce you to the 10 latest samples that we’ve posted on MSDN. Each sample includes a readme file that walks you through building and running the sample, and includes links to relevant, related documentation. We hope these samples help you with your app development and we look forward to providing more samples as we move forward. You can check out all of our samples on MSDN.

Stored Contacts Sample

This sample illustrates how to use the ContactStore class and related APIs to create a contact store for your app. This feature is useful if your app uses an existing cloud-based contact store. You can use the APIs you to create contacts on the phone that represent the contacts in your remote store. You can display and modify the contacts in the People Hub on your phone, just like contacts that are added through the built-in experience. You can use the APIs to update and delete contacts you have created on the phone and also to query for any changes the user has made to the contacts locally so you can sync those changes to your remote store.

Basic Storage Recipes

This is a “Windows Runtime Storage 101” sample for Windows Phone developers moving from isolated storage and System.IO to Windows.Storage and Windows.Storage.Streams. The sample demonstrates how to write to and read files, in addition to how to enumerate directory trees. It also demonstrates how to pass data from one page to the next, and how to persist application state when the app is deactivated.

Trial Experience Sample

This sample shows you how to design your app to detect its license state when the app launches, and how to detect changes to the license state while running. It comes with a helper class that you can use in your app to wrap LicenseInformation functionality.

Windows Runtime Component Sample

This sample demonstrates the basics of creating a Windows Phone Runtime component in C++ and consuming it in a XAML app. The sample demonstrates three scenarios: the first scenario illustrates how to call synchronous and asynchronous methods to perform a computation. The second scenario uses the same computation component to demonstrate progress reporting and cancellation of long-running tasks. Finally, the third scenario shows how to use a component to wrap logic that uses XAudio2 APIs to play a sound.

Company Hub Sample

This sample demonstrates the construction of an app that is capable of deploying line-of-business (LOB) apps to employees of a corporation. The sample uses an example XML file to define the company XAPs that are available to employees for secure download, and shows you how to dynamically access that file at run time. Then it shows you how to install company apps, enumerate the apps, and then launch the installed company apps. This app is just an example framework and requires additional work beyond the sample to be functional.

Image Recipes

This sample illustrates how to use images in your app efficiently, while giving your users a great experience. It tackles downsampling images, implementing pinch and zoom, and downloading images with a progress display and an option to cancel the download. We’ve taken a recipe approach: each recipe is delivered in a self-contained page in the app so you can focus your attention on the particular part of the sample you are most interested in.

Azure Voice Notes

This sample uses Windows Phone speech recognition APIs and Windows Azure Mobile Services to record voice notes as text and store the notes in the cloud. It shows how Mobile Services can be used to authenticate a user with their Microsoft Account. It also demonstrates how to use Mobile Services to store, retrieve, and delete data from an Azure database table. The app generates text from speech using the Windows Phone speech recognition APIs and the phone’s predefined dictation grammar.

Kid's Corner Sample

This sample illustrates how to use the ApplicationProfile.Modes property to recognize Kid’s Corner mode. When the app runs, it checks the ApplicationProfile.Modes property. If the value is ApplicationProfileModes.Alternate, you’ll know that the app is running in Kid’s Corner mode. Depending on the content of your app, you may want to change its appearance or features when it runs in Kid’s Corner mode. Some features that you should consider disabling when running in Kid’s Corner mode include in-app purchases, launching the web browser, and the ad control.

URI Association Sample

Use this sample to learn how to automatically launch your app via URI association. This sample includes three apps: a URI launcher, and two apps that handle the URI schemes that are built in to the launcher app. You can launch an app that is included with the sample or edit the URI and launch a different app. There is also a button for launching a URI on another phone using Near Field Communication (NFC).

Speech for Windows Phone: Speech recognition using a custom grammar

A grammar defines the words and phrases that an app will recognize in speech input. This sample shows you how to go beyond the basics to create a powerful grammar (based on the grammar schema) with which your app can recognize commands and phrases constructed in different ways.

This post is just a glimpse of the latest Windows Phone samples we’ve added to the MSDN code gallery. From launching apps with URI associations, to dictating notes and storing them in the cloud, we hope that there’s something for everyone. We’ll be sure to keep you posted as new samples are added to the collection, so stay tuned. In the meantime, grab the samples, experiment with them, and use the code to light up your apps. You can download all Windows Phone samples at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wpapps.

And The Winner Is…..

Stephen L Rose — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:41:05 GMT

As per our blog post last month, we had a contest in the Windows booth co-sponsored by Toyota Racing Development (TRD) for a chance to win passes to a Nationwide Series Event. Thank you to all the TechEd North America attendees that stopped by to see Alex Bowman’s Windows/Surface branded car and registered for the contest..
And the winner is…. Doug Gilmour from Chicago, Illinois! He is the winner of a pair of Hot Passes to the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas on November 1 and 2, 2013. Doug Gilmore has received a prize package valued at $575 and includes the following:

Admission for winner and one (1) guest to attend the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Challenge at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, Texas on November 1 and 2, 2013. Approximate Retail Value (ARV): $100 per ticket, $200 total.
November 1^st access to the RAB Racing team garage and hauler for the #99 nationwide car driven by Alex Bowman to watch practice.
November 2^nd access to the #99 Alex Bowman RAB Racing pit stall
A team radio to listen in on all 2-way communications of the team and driver in the nationwide race on November 2
Meal with the team on November 2
A photo opportunity with RAB Racing and driver Alex Bowman before the race on pit road, with the photograph to be autographed after the race by Alex Bowman
$375 Visa gift card to assist with travel expenses. ARV: $375

Congratulations again to Doug and we look forward to some cool photos from the race!

This month’s Windows Phone Photo Challenge: summer nights #reinvented

David Chen — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:46:58 GMT

We’ve been impressed by all your submissions to our past Windows Phone Photo Challenges. So we want to show them off even more.

This month, we’re changing our Facebook cover photo to feature one of your photos. We’ll also showcase select fan photos on Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, and the Insider newsletter.

Our latest theme is Summer Nights #Reinvented, so send us photos taken with your Windows Phone that capture how you’ve reinvented a summer evening this year. On each photo that is selected, we’ll display the first name of the person who took the photo, their hometown and the name of the Windows Phone device used to take the photo. We can’t wait to see what you share!

Here’s an example of what your photo will look like on our Facebook page:

To submit your Windows Phone Photo:

1. Take an awesome photo with your Windows Phone.

2. E-mail your entry to windowsphone@microsoft.com.

3. In the subject line of your e-mail, please write “CHALLENGE: SUMMER NIGHTS #REINVENTED”.

Feel free to take a look at our previous winners too: Pets, Favorite Places, Happy Holidays!, Love, and Photosynth.

When you send in your photos to windowsphone@microsoft.com, please let us know which phone you took it with, which photo apps you used, your name, what city/state/country you’re from, and 2-3 sentences describing the photo, the story behind it, and why you think it represents summer nights #reinvented. Here are some more details:

The photo you send must have been taken with (and edited, if you prefer to edit) on a Windows Phone. Please attach the original JPEG file to your e-mail, with metadata included.
Please name your image file using your first and last name, followed by the theme of the contest (this month it’s “Summer”). So, for instance, my e-mail might include a photograph named DavidChenSummer.JPG.
Please use the highest resolution possible when sending your photos. One entry per person, please.
This challenge runs from now until 11:59 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, June 25, 2013.
Entries may be featured on our social channels within one week of submission. Entries will be judged on their creativity, resourcefulness, aesthetic beauty, and just the overall impression your photo makes on us.
Read the full rules here.

Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat with Surface #winchat

Kristina Libby — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:28:26 GMT

This week we are excited to host our Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat with the Surface Team regarding their new offer. On May 31^st, Surface announced that you will be able to get a free touch or type cover when you purchase a Surface RT. This offer is good at all retailers that carry Surface (including Microsoft Store) and online. You can find out all the locations at Surface.com.

This offer is valid in the US and Canada, and a separate offer is currently underway in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Please follow the Surface Blog for future updates.

To participate in the Tech Tuesday Live Twitter Chat and be eligible to win a Surface RT + Type or Touch Cover, please do the following!

Join us from 12-1 PT (3-4 ET) on Twitter
Follow the hashtag #winchat
Follow @windows, @kristinalibby, @daniellaycock, @surface, @microsoftoem and @windowsblog to make sure you get the whole picture.
For full legal terms and conditions, click here.

Now in the Store: MapQuest for Windows Phone 8

Michael Stroh — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 18:31:14 GMT

It’s always nice to have options—and now there’s a familiar new one to help you get from A to Z. MapQuest, one of the original web-based mapping services, released its first Windows Phone app this morning. The app is free and works only on Windows Phone 8. Download it now

The MapQuest app gets the job done and looks good doing it. The clean, modern design shows real-time traffic conditions, calculates driving routes, and supplies voice-guided directions. Handy optional map layers make it easy to find restaurants, hotels, and other places of interest. Pin your destination to Start for quick access, with Live Tile updates based on your current location.

I definitely felt a little fond rush of nostalgia when downloading the app this morning. The service, which traces its origins all the way back to 1967 and a Chicago-based maker of paper maps, burst onto the web as MapQuest in 1996. (Today it’s owned by AOL.) Those printable maps reliably guided me to a lot of college parties back then. Now they’re going to help do the same for my kids’ play dates. How about you?

Lenovo opens PC manufacturing line in the U.S.

Brandon LeBlanc — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:33:43 GMT

Lenovo passed this along to me earlier today and thought it was worth a quick blog post. Lenovo recently just held a grand opening ceremony for its very first U.S.-based PC production facility in Whitsett, North Carolina.

The facility is 240,000 square feet and just 10 miles outside of Greensboro. Until the addition of PC manufacturing, the facility was serving as a logistics center, customer solutions center and national returns center. With the addition of PC manufacturing, 115 new jobs have been added. The new U.S. PC manufacturing line began operating in January. It will produce many of the new Think-branded PCs such as the tiny ThinkCentre M92p desktop, ThinkPad Tablet 2, and ThinkPad Helix convertible Ultrabook. Lenovo is on track to be fully ramped up on production by the end of this month.

To celebrate opening the PC manufacturing line, Lenovo donated 36 ThinkCentre Desktops made in Whitsett to the Greensboro YMCA to be used for youth development and education programs.

With a lot of PC manufacturing done overseas, it is great to see OEMs like Lenovo bringing some PC manufacturing to the U.S. to help drive jobs and boost the economy, as well as enhance North America’s customer experience. Lenovo’s operations in North Carolina, including their headquarters and the manufacturing center, are estimated to positively increase output for the state by more than $1 billion, as reported by the recent economic contribution analysis from the North Carolina Department of Commerce.