Category: Microsoft

The Perils of Pulling Out Your Smartphone Battery

Just a quick one tonight. If you have a smartphone with a removable battery (like an Android phone or a Windows Phone) you should take particular care to avoid accidentally or intentionally removing the battery while the device is powered up. Smartphones are essentially small computers with file systems contained within their internal storage. Pulling …

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Remedies for Stuttering Audio in Windows

Once upon a time, in order to get sound on your Windows computer you’d have to buy and install a sound card of which the most popular were the Sound Blaster line of cards from Creative Labs. Back in those days, The CPUs inside your computer had more than enough to do running Windows while …

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Nokia Maps 3D – Better Than Google Maps?

Nokia Maps 3D - Sydney Harbour Bridge

Here’s something to check out in your spare time. These days, Google Maps is often the place to go to get driving directions, traffic conditions and also a laugh at how you need to swim across the ocean to get to another continent if you attempt to get directions to an overseas destination. However, Nokia …

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SSL Support Extended in Windows Live Hotmail

Here’s a quick tip for tonight. A while ago I noted that Windows Live Hotmail gained optional forced SSL connectivity but at the expense of being able to access your account through the Windows Live Mail client software on your desktop. This was certainly a deal breaker for me as I prefer to use the …

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Unified Inbox Done Right on Windows Phone 7

Unified Mail Under iOS

Leading on from yesterday’s post about my first impressions of Mango Beta 2 for Windows Phone 7 I thought I’d share another notable feature, s”pecifically regarding the new “linked inbox” functionality which is Microsoft’s take on the unified inboxes you may find on other devices. So let’s do a comparison against one of the juggernauts …

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Windows Phone 7 Mango Beta 2 – First Impressions

Windows Phone 7 Mango Beta 2 - Customised Ringtones

Well, I have had about 24 hours with Mango Beta 2 for Windows Phone 7 and wanted to share with you some of my first impressions of this forthcoming update for this mobile platform. While it’s speculated for a September release, I could easily see this being delayed to October or later by the carrier …

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Windows Phone Mango is Go!

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get my desktop recording solution working the way I wanted this afternoon so I went ahead with putting Mango Beta 2 on my Samsung Omnia 7. I am currently testing rolling back to my backup just to make sure that works as expected before diving into any sort of usability …

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Boydo to Tango With Windows Phone Mango

Windows Phone App Certification Failure

Just a quick update tonight. I have managed to write a dummy app (just a simple Hello, World! one following some instructions I found on the web) and it has progressed far enough in the app submission lifecycle to score myself an invite for Mango Beta 2 testing and development. For the record, my app …

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Unofficial Mango Updates for Windows Phone

Just a heads up that there are plenty of unofficial Mango updates for Windows Phone 7 devices out in the wild and I have been reading up a bit on the various tools that make this possible. When I get some time (perhaps this weekend) I might give it a shot so I can get …

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Lock Windows the Fast Way

Here is a quick and simple tip for tonight. For people who have been using Windows a while (particularly from Windows NT onwards in corporate environments) you might be used to locking your computer by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del and hitting Enter to lock your computer. While that still works on Windows 7 you can cut that …

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