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 beautiful piece of hardware to compliment the OS.

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.

Pokki, a new HTML5 based App Store

Pokki is a brand new app store for Windows (coming soon for Mac) that resides in the taskbar. Currently offering 8 elegant apps which include Facebook, Twitter and GMail. These apps are built using HTML5, CSS and Javascript. With the release of the SDK today everyone can start making there own creations immediately.

Currently in its beta incarnation Pokki’s framework is provided free of charge for anyone wanting to develop quick and light web applications that function outside the browser.

Streaming AirPlay on Mac & Windows

For those of you who own or have used an iOS device with AirPlay know how awesome it is when you can stream your content to another device with zero configuration. Currently your choices are limited to an Apple TV or an AirPlay enabled device.

For those of you with a Mac there is an elegant solution available called AirServer, which can stream audio, video and photos on to your Mac.

There are several apps available that have partial functionality on Windows.

• Shairport4w – Stream only audio
• AirMedia Player – Stream only video
• AirPlay for Windows Media Center – Streams all types (early beta)

They all require the Bonjour service to be running and QuickTime installed.

Make websites pinnable with IE9 and Windows 7

With the introduction of IE9 for Windows 7, pinning your favourite websites onto the taskbar has never been easier. An idea taken originally from Google Chrome has been further developed to integrate some of the new taskbar features from Windows 7.

BuildMyPinnedSite.com offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide to integrate these great new taskbar features onto your websites very quickly. It is highly recommended for anyone developing websites.

MetroTwit, the Twitter client for Windows

From its inception last year, MetroTwit has matured into a fully featured Twitter client. It is in part designed and developed by Long Zheng of istartedsomething.com fame. The interface is inspired by Microsoft’s Metro design language which in turn makes it a joy to read tweets.  It is by far the best Twitter client I have used on Windows and with development speeding ahead it is likely to remain the Twitter client of choice.