Crazy Windows Phone 8

The Lumia 900 sold me on Windows Phone. The 900 is a marriage of fresh hardware with a fun operating system. I dig the Start Screen with the Live Tiles. There are some shortcomings. The camera sucks, to be sure, and the phone isn’t yet available on Verizon. Plus, after using the phone for several weeks, it was clear that the phone’s large screen is wasted on Windows Phone 7.5. It’s more of the same concerning the 900′s HTC cousin, the Titan II. Microsoft clearly agrees.

13 Windows 8 worth-full features

The Metro interface

Windows 8 is the Metro interface. Designed for touchscreen computers and tablets, and built to use HTML5 and CSS3, Metro ties into Internet apps like SkyDrive and Flickr. As with Windows Phone 7, you can swipe to navigate through tiles showing live Web info like stocks and news as well as more traditional apps.
But Pund-IT analyst Charles King questions whether businesses will really see benefits from Metro, saying it is mainly just a new paint job over the existing Windows interface.

Windows 8 still Unseen

Considering that 2012 will be the year of Microsoft's dramatic upgrade to Windows 8, one might have thought the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show last week would be filled with prospective hardware platforms for the new Windows operating system. it might have seemed logical to expect that to hear lots about tablets with Windows 8. But news on that front was surprisingly...quiet.

While CEO Steve Ballmer talked Windows 8 at his keynote and showed a Qualcomm prototype tablet running Windows 8, Intel's Paul Otellini briefly showed a and Lenovo unveiled its innovative Idea Pad Yoga, a Windows 8-primed convertible notebook whose screen can twist around to turn into a tablet, little chatter was heard on the Windows tablet front.

Kid creates ‘Windows Emirates’

12-year-old Mahmoud El Din Mahmoud develops new operating system, which he calls ‘Windows Emirates’.

ABU DHABI - At 12, when kids his age are usually hanging out, playing football or learning new interests, Mahmoud El Din Mahmoud is already a pro on computer programing, adept at cracking codes and has designed his own home computer operating system (OS), which he calls ‘Windows Emirates’.

 The Egyptian student’s ingenuous OS was developed by re configuring the Windows XP and adopting some of the well-liked features of Windows, Mac and Linux and removing those that are not popular.

“Windows Emirates has animated setup screen, easier way to access files, transparent bitmaps with special colours in the bitmap files and 3-D support. Moreover, it is seven times faster and fully transparent, giving it a better look, the system info features the seven Rulers of the Emirates, Shaikh Zayed and the UAE flag,” Mahmoud described. It also has some information on the UAE and the President, Shaikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, both in English and Arabic. But Mahmoud had to breach Microsoft’s security protection to do this.

Xbox LIVE app turns Windows Phone into 360 remote

Microsoft’s December 6 Xbox 360 Dashboard update will also bring a new smartphone app, Xbox LIVE for Windows Phone, turning your handset into a remote control and info terminal. Bing-powered content search will browse through movies, TV shows, music, games and apps, Microsoft’s Major Nelson confirms, all from the smartphone screen, as well as showing your own recent activities.

That will include your recently played games, as well as any apps you’ve used on the Xbox 360. There’ll also be access to the Zune video catalog, with extra detail on the movie, TV show, music or game currently playing through the console.

Microsoft has baked more friend activity support into the WP7 app, including the ability to see which friends are online, which friends have beacons, and see a list of friends who have recently played, in addition to showing achievements and related items. You can invite friends to join you in a game, directly from the smartphone app.

Finally, there’s support for remotely controlling the Xbox 360 from your Windows Phone. In addition to picking a search result and triggering play, buying media and navigating through the console in general there’s play/pause and skip forward/back for video and music.

Xbox LIVE for Windows Phone will be a free download from the Windows Phone Marketplace, and will be available from tomorrow. Courtesy | Chris Davies

Get Familiar With The New Windows 8

Transition to Windows 8 may be quite painful for those wielding a mouse and keyboard so today we've thought to bring you 10 valuable tips and tricks that can familiarise you with the upcoming operating system from Microsoft. Some of the followings can be done solely using a keyboard and a mouse and some may be performed even by touch enthusiasts. Most of them were tested in the Windows 8 developer preview version so they may be removed by the time the final build arrives or, even become obsolete. Let's start, shall we?

10 Windows 8 Tips and Tricks

1. Turn the device OFF: Believe it or not, this was a challenge even for me. To do this from the Metro interface, you'll have to move the cursor on the Start button in the middle-left corner and then click on Settings. A menu will appear in the right side, where you will need to go to Power and then choose to shut down the computer. Careful, as the computer will not truly shut down like in Windows 7, unless you turn off the Hybrid Boot.

Will Windows 8 go perfect ?

A new rumor suggests that Windows 8 may not have a classic desktop when run on ARM tablets and notebooks. Is this a good idea?

Microsoft’s decision to mix and mash the classic Windows 7 desktop with the brand new Windows Phone-like Metro-style UI of Windows 8 has been controversial since we first saw it. In our tests, we found that while the OS worked well enough, the styles and design of the new and old desktops clashed.