Category: Software

With the recent release of the LG Fathom, a very vanilla Windows Phone, with hardly any third party software, reader Alamfour has a request for something similar for the HTC HD2.

Hi All,

Could one of the cooks please create a ROM similar to the following?

I have a need for a Vanilla WM 6.5.5 ROM. That is without sense, htc comm manager, or any htc customizations that are not essential for the ROM.

I would like no Youtube app and viewing youtube videos from m.youtube.com enabled as they are currently disabled and they redirect to youtube app. Also when viewing Youtube videos in IE and I try to go full screen it goes to fullscreen portrate mode, could landscape fullview be enabled also?

If their is already a ROM like this could someone please point me in the right direction as I have been searching for a few weeks now and found none. I did try Energy ROM titanium but it was too customized for my liking.

I would prefer not to have to cook my own ROM as I am not very good at it. I used to cook my own ROM’s for my Touch Diamond but I always had problems so I have given up on cooking.

Thank you

Does anyone have a favourite vanilla HTC HD2 ROM? Let us know below.

This post was submitted by alamfour.

Virgilp from XDA-Developers has finally created a much needed and requested Windows Mobile application that allows users to edit their MP3 ID3 tags.

The application, which features an attractive Sense Interface SDK based user interface, supports both VGA and WVGA but only ID3v1 tags.

Read more and download the app in this XDA-Developer thread here.

Via XDA-Developers.com

The first app to pull this admittedly excellent trick was called iDisplay, but it was slow and buggy. Thankfully, Air Display takes the pain and frustration—and most importantly, the lag—out of using the iPad as a spare monitor. More »










IPad – Apple – iDisplay – United States – Linux

Infosync has uploaded this promotional video for Office Mobile 2010, and seem to be making pretty much of the software.  They have even roped a Nokia VP to talk about the software, and does anyone else think his speech about the software would do just as well for Nokia adopting Windows Phone 7?

Office Mobile 2010 can be downloaded from Marketplace now.

Gregory T. Huang wrote:

Two longtime technology leaders are heading for the exits at Microsoft today. The Redmond, WA, company (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced this morning, amid swirling rumors, that Entertainment and Devices president Robbie Bach is leaving the company this fall. Senior vice president of design and development J Allard is also stepping down from his role, and will become a strategic advisor to CEO Steve Ballmer and his senior leadership team. The company didn’t say how much time Allard will spend in this new role.

Bach is a 22-year Microsoft veteran who has led some of the company’s most important and successful products over the years, such as Xbox in its battles with Sony; Microsoft Office; and Windows Phones. He is leaving the company to dedicate more time to his family and nonprofit work, according to a statement. Allard, meanwhile, is a 19-year vet who is widely known as a creative force behind consumer products like Xbox, Zune, and the Kin phone, as well as the Windows and TCP/IP product families. In his new role, Allard will keep a hand in Microsoft’s consumer strategy, according to the company.

Ballmer heaped praise on both executives on their way out. “Robbie’s an amazing business person and close personal friend, which makes his departure a point of sadness for me,” he said in a statement. “However, given the strong leadership team he has built, the business performance of E&D this year and the launches of Windows Phone 7 and ‘Project Natal’ this fall, we are set up well for success as we continue to drive our mobile and entertainment businesses forward.”

As for Allard, Ballmer said, ““He was one of the key drivers in our early work on the Web, and we’re absolutely delighted that J’s role with the company will evolve in a way that lets all of Microsoft benefit from his business insight, technical depth and keen eye for consumer experience.”

As part of the transition, Microsoft said senior vice president Don Mattrick will continue to lead the Interactive Entertainment Business, and senior vice president Andy Lees will continue to lead the Mobile Communications Business. They will report directly to Ballmer as of July 1. (They had been reporting to Bach.)

News of the re-org, to borrow a bit of Microsoft-speak, comes on the heels of another notable departure at Microsoft. Earlier this month, 17-year veteran Alex Gounares, the former technology assistant to Bill Gates, announced he is leaving to join New York-based AOL. We’ll be watching to see if the senior executive brain drain continues—and who steps up to fill the voids.

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Epicurious is a must-download on any platform its available for, and a sore exclusion on any platform it’s not. Today, finally, Epicurious, and its thousands of recipes, is available for free on Android. More »

Augmented reality might be the future, but my favorite application of it yet transports you far into past. StreetMuseum—an iPhone app from the Museum of London—overlays four hundred years of historic images on today’s city streets. More »

A few months ago, we gave you the full current version of Ashampoo Burning Studio 2010. We’ve now gone one stage further and have the Advanced edition available for you to download, from this Friday, as an exclusive. The Advanced version adds more functionality over and above the regular edition. Improved features include an updated burning engine, a major update to the supported driver database, plus an improved user-interface.

When can you download Ashampoo Burning Studio 2010 Advanced? It will be made available, exclusively through the V3.co.uk Software Store, from midday this Friday through to midnight Sunday. There will be another full app promo following Burning Studio 2010 Advanced.

Keep one eye on the V3.co.uk Software Store for the Lavasoft Ad-Aware Plus promo which goes live Thursday, the Ashampoo Burning Studio 2010 Advanced promo that goes live Friday and then another full app (to be announced) that goes live next Monday!

V3.co.uk Software Store link.

Wade Roush wrote:

Creating Web-based marketplaces for “crowdsourcing”—farming out digital piece-work to freelancers around the world—has been a hot business idea for the last half-decade. IStockphoto does it for stock images, TopCoder does it for enterprise software, Innocentive does it as a supplement to corporate R&D, and uTest does it for software quality assurance testing. But when push comes to shove, how well do these companies know and trust their networks of contributors, most of whom they’ve never met? A couple of weeks ago Boston-based uTest found itself at the mercy of its own crowd—and emerged with an encouraging story to tell.

At uTest, 25,000 software testers in more than 160 countries log on over the Web to do on-demand testing of software applications, helping the applications’ makers catch bugs and glitches, troubleshoot usability problems, and simulate performance under realistic loads. Twice a month, uTest pays its active testers via Paypal or Payoneer (a New York-based network that delivers payments using prepaid Mastercard cards).

According to Matt Johnston, uTest’s vice president of marketing and community, uTest ran into a glitch of its own the evening of Saturday, May 15, as it disbursed payments for the first half of May. It transferred funds to Paypal and Payoneer twice—meaning that all testers who had done any work in early May received double their usual fee.

“I won’t go into specific numbers, but it was a non-trivial amount of money,” Johnston tells Xconomy. (He also wrote about the episode on uTest’s blog last week.) “We’re talking well into the five figures”—way more than the venture-funded startup could afford to lose on a bookkeeping error.

But right away, uTest started to benefit from an unexpected side effect of being in the software-testing business. It wasn’t PayPal or Payoneer who detected the problem, but the testers themselves. And being testers, they sent in bug reports.

“If you saw an extra $200 sitting in your bank statement, you might go, ‘Huh,’” says Johnston. “But software testers, they say ‘Oh, this is an interesting defect.’ They are wired to point out flaws. The first reports we got were not just ‘Hey, you paid me twice’—they were, ‘It looks like I’ve got two separate transaction IDs for the exact same amount, seven seconds apart.’ They were diagnosing it for us, like it was just another software defect.”

This was late Saturday night, Johnston says. The company had to decide quickly what to do about the problem. PayPal and Payoneer politely informed uTest that there was nothing they could do—there’s no such thing as an “undo” button for electronic payment (for good reason—the idea of PayPal debiting your bank account without your consent is more than a little scary). “We ultimately came to the conclusion that we had to be really transparent about it, and tell our community …Next Page »

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The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft is soon to undertake a major re-organization of their Entertainment and Devices Division, the home of Windows Phone, Zune and the XBox 360.

Apparently on part precipitated by the likely departure of J Allard, CTO of the group, the division’s poor performance against rivals Apple and Google could see a much wider reshuffling of responsibilities in the area, with Wall Street Journal suggesting even Robbie Back, President for the group, may be at risk.

Devices have become an expected front in the OS war, after Microsoft successfully fended off challenges in the desktop, netbook and server front from OS’s like Linux and  OSX.

Hopefully the re-organization would be a sign of a renewed focus by Microsoft, and also hopefully it will not result in another lengthy delay while Microsoft reboots all its efforts.

Read more at Wall Street Journal here.

Via Engadget.com

MobilityDigest is covering upcoming Windows Phone 7 software, and one of the apps which really stand out is this remote for Windows Media Centre. The app does what many apps promise but not deliver – provide fast access to the media on your computer without itself having a complicated interface.

Personally I think this is one app Microsoft should be providing themselves ad shipping with every Windows Phone, but as that is not likely, hopefully this app will come after release also.

Read more at MobilityDigest here.

Well after a great whole month with the Droid Incredible, I had to let go, and now have the Kin One and Two in my hands. The device was delivered to me today with everything in tacked, and so far I have some positives, and a little negatives.

Positive:

The devices are very small, and are also very easy to hold. It loads very fast, and allows me to log into my Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Windows Live, and Rss feed, which makes it the most connected device ever. The menu system looks great, but mostly due to the images taken from my twitter and facebook account and placed on my background.

Negatives:

This device has some negatives. The most notable is the really complicated, and hard to understand menu system. The device is a bit hard to navigate, and takes quite some time to get used to. The buttons are very hard to use, and it is also very easily missed and it leads you to the camera or power off.

Well I will do some reviews, videos, and more with the device, but as usual I like to wait a bit before I give a review. I do that because then I have a great idea of what I am talking about, and can do it with great details. Look out for more this week.

Oil Reporter isn’t a public shaming campaign for BP—no, that’ll take care of itself just fine, thanks. This iPhone app, which lets Gulf Coast residents record every oily bird and patch of ruined swampland, is about fixing things. More »










Apps – Gulf Coast – Business and Economy – Google – IPhone

A new version of the attractive MyNote application has just been released.

Version 2.6 brings faster start-up, improved and smoother writing, further customizations, such as the number of notes visible on start-up and much more.

The app, which supports devices of all resolutions, can be downloaded here.

The Phoenix Wright franchise deserves a lot of credit for sticking to one of the least appealing-sounding concepts in game history. So anyway, here goes: Phoenix Wright, the comedic litigation game, is in the App Store for $5. Oh dear. More »

We gave away Lavasoft Ad-Aware Plus 8.2 (one year license) back in early April and it was a success. One caveat from Lavasoft was that people had to register during the duration of the promotion, which was a fair request. Problem is that this didn’t always go to plan and the activation server was overwhelmed at times, leading to people unable to activate the product, thus ending up with the free version, instead.

So, with Lavasoft’s permission, we’re repeating the 24 hour promotion and we’re giving you the full current Lavasoft Ad-Aware Plus 8.2 for one day, between 9am GMT Thursday and 9am GMT Friday. It ends Friday as we have another full promo over the weekend.

Keep referring back to the V3.co.uk Software Store for more info and the go-live, this Thursday, but remember to activate your license during the 24-hour giveaway!

V3.co.uk Software Store link.

Nearly everyone has old tapes, cassettes, VHS videos, LPs and other old audio sources with some of our favourite tracks. I’m game enough to admit that I found one of my old favourite extended S-Express tracks on an ultra-rare 12″ vinyl the other day. Borrowed a friends record player and remembered how great that track was. Gone are the days where we could find this track on Napster and other, well, less legit sources. The solution is to record the old audio from our LPs via a cable connected to our computer. We need the software to process the audio, however.

MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 16 deluxe is a application that should be part of everyone’s toolkit. It enables you to record from just about any audio source, then process this audio, touch it up, add effects, cut elements from the source and then export it in in a digital format you can play on your MP3 device or computer.

Until end of May, we have more than 30% off MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 16 deluxe. This offer won’t repeated and was agreed with MAGIX, through May, for one-month-only!

MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 16 deluxe link.