New Feature Video for PhoneZune – Voice Recognition Lab

As promised, I’ve uploaded the video of the Voice Recognition Lab feature of PhoneZune. VRL makes it easier and more accurate to launch your song collection using your voice. It also enables the app to work with your voice by letting you decide how it should perform its recognition. The point of VRL is to give as much control to you, as the user, so that you can really tailor PhoneZune to suit you.

PhoneZune: New App Feature – “Your Voice, Your Rules”

I’ve just written a short post on an upcoming tool that will be included with PhoneZune. It’s aim to is to try and ensure that anyone can pick up PhoneZune and use it, regardless of what their accent, pronunciation or any other vocal idiosyncrasies. If development goes will this weekend, I’ll be releasing a video next week. You can read the post here.

Deadmau5 Live [Nokia show]

I don’t really think words are required here, but this is one amazing marketing performance. (It was performed at the London Milbank Tower)

Let your Friends Use WP on Their Android or iPhone

Explaining the Metro UI to someone, or showing them screenshots, just doesn’t give the full effect of how great it is. Microsoft have therefore solved this problem by introducing a browser based demo which lets non-WP users test-drive Windows Phone on their phone. Using HTML5, MS have really done a good job simulating what Windows Phone feels like. You (or whoever is using Android/iOS) can perform the test drive from their mobile by going here : (http://m.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/demo/index.html) You can also use this shortened link: http://bit.ly/demowp.

Using Voice and WP7 to Control Zune!

Update – I’ve written a post outlining the plans for this project.

This is currently a proof of concept project I created and would love to get feedback. I love creating unique things and this is something that I’ve been using everyday. Simply say the name of the song and it will start playing. You can also watch the song’s music video simply by using your voice and WP7. Let me know what you think!

Mango Update Being Delivered!

Mango updates have started rolling out to the public! As you can see from the update status pages (US, Worldwide), updates are now being delivered. It’s been some time coming, but this update is huge and I’m sure non-tech consumers will be pleasantly surprised with just how many new features there are.

WP 7.1 SDK Release Candidate Now Available

You can now download the latest RC version of the WP SDK which lets you create apps for 7.0 and 7.5 (Mango). It also includes the ‘Go Live’ license that lets your publish your Mango apps to the Marketplace. Click here to get to the download page for the SDK as well as the Release Notes.

Google Acquiring Motorola Mobility

With the the patent infringement cases coming against Android (from Apple and MS), Google have decided to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. It seems the main reason for this acquisition is to help Google protect themselves from further patent issues buy inheriting Motorola Mobility’s patent portfolio. Whether this helps or not remains to be seen as Motorola Mobility themselves have been subject to litigation. So what does this mean for Microsoft and Windows Phone?

Searching with the hardware button also searches the Marketplace in Mango

Not sure how well known this is but I’ve just noticed that in the latest SDK emulator, the hardware search button also searches the Marketplace as well as the web. For example, if I type in “ICE Alert”, it returns the usual web results (using Bing), but also provides a link to the ICE Alert app within the Marketplace (Screenshot below).

The Version Option is Invalid – Fix

Whilst most developers were enjoying the Mango SDK and device update, I kept running into a strange problem where app deployment always failed. The error message “The version option is invalid” was always being thrown so I could never test any projects (7.0 or 7.1). Unfortunately, I was also in the middle of updating and creating various apps for 7.0, so I didn’t have time to look in to the problem in any great detail. I tried uninstalling every version of VS2010 and Blend I had on my computer and installing the Mango Beta 1 and 2 from scratch. This didn’t make a difference as the error kept appearing. However, before starting a new project, I decided to take a deeper look into the problem and managed to fix it. So, for anyone who comes across this problem, this information might be helpful: