A step in the Windows Phone direction

After owning five iPhones spanning three distinct generations, I recently made the jump to Windows Phone 7 in the form of the Nokia Lumia 800. The decision to abandon a great phone and years of procuring just the right apps wasn’t easy. The iPhone truly did revolutionise in the way we use our mobile phones. But once an innovator is now quite stagnant in offering a handful of features to the phone and OS every generation.

Microsoft has skilfully created a fresh & stylish yet very utilitarian mobile operating system. Windows Phone 7 and its Metro design language has brought some excitement back into my daily mobile experience in just a week of using it. Some recognition must be given to Nokia for making such a gorgeous piece of hardware to compliment the OS. I will be detailing my experiences while I delve deeper into this operating system and its familiar development environment.

The New Task Manager

One of the stand out features of Windows 8 that hasn’t got much attention is the updated Task Manager. It displays a wealth of useful information laid out logically and in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Some of this functionality existed in previous versions of Windows but was not nearly as accessible.

I am very impressed with Windows 8′s new dual approach of supporting novice and power-users alike. A good example of this can be seen on the initial launch of Task Manager where it is launched in a minimal state and can be expanded easily to the full fledged manager. Some of these exciting features and more can be seen in the new Windows 8 Developer Preview or you can follow the Building Windows 8 blog from Microsoft.

XBMC Movie Set Creator

Annoyed by having to manually create movie sets in XBMC I created this small utility to automate the creation of .nfo files for a folder full of movies as described in the XBMC wiki.

Thought I’d share this as it is a real time saver if you have large collections.

Notes:

• Creates .nfo files based on the folder name.
• Assumes folder & movie in “<MovieName> (<Year>)” format ie. “Avatar (2009)”
• TMDb lookup with conflict resolution
• Basic folder browsing through interface (double-click subfolder item)
• Basic log indicating .nfo creation success

Download: v0.1.0.56 BETA
.NET Framework 4.0 required. You will be prompted
to install it if you do not already have it.

Updates to this app will be available through the new ‘Labs‘ section on this blog.

Control multiple PC’s with one mouse & keyboard

There has always been a very effective way to control all your PC’s across multiple operating systems by the use of Synergy. Until now there has not been any serious competition in this field.

Today Microsoft has introduced it’s alternative named Mouse Without Borders. This further develops the Synergy idea by allowing files to be dragged across the multiple PC’s. Unfortunately it is currently only available for Windows. Definitely worth taking Mouse Without Borders for a spin.

Next level in augmented reality: SLAM

The next step in augmented reality using NASA’s Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology seen here being demonstrated in this iPad 2 game. The game works without any markers and provides free spatial movement within the game. It all works amazing well. Check it out.

MetroTwit Show, the Twitter visualizer

It’s nice when the Twitter visualizer you’ve always wanted materialises out of the blue in such style. MetroTwit Show has just filled a large void where users with large displays and TV’s yearning to consume auxiliary information such as twitter trends & topics at a glance.  It is built on Silverlight 4 and installs instantly on your desktop with a single-click on its homepage.

Currently it allows read-only viewing of Twitter trends & searches. This is just the first release with many more features expected to be added. No doubt this app will start appearing on large displays near you.