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If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Nokia Lumia, then downloading the Xbox SmartGlass app is a no-brainer. Xbox SmartGlass transforms your Nokia Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 into a controller for your Xbox, enabling you to interact with movie, music, and games content – right from your much loved smartphone. 

Xbox SmartGlass is all about helping you to extend the entertainment experience of the Xbox 360, by placing the power of the Xbox in your hands.

This companion enables you to delve into Xbox Music, Xbox Videos and Bing search, as well as browsing the Internet without having to touch your standard console controller. Connecting to your Xbox 360 much like your wireless controller does, there are no cables to entangle the experience.

To start with, the Xbox SmartGlass start screen displays what you’re currently doing on your Xbox 360 – just as a reminder, I guess. But beneath that, you’re presented with a list of things that you did on your Xbox – played a game or used Internet Explorer, for example. If you’re looking to interact, or play with one of those again, just tap the relevant icon. Otherwise, sliding the screen to the left or right will open up more options.

The discover panel presents you with a selection of featured movies, music and games titles. Selecting any one of these will allow you to dig deeper into the title, showing you details of the item.

If you’ve selected a game, you’ll be able to see if any of your (Xbox LIVE) friends have played the game, along with any achievements that are up for grabs. If it’s a downloadable game, you can then choose to download it to your console there and then.

Selecting a movie will bring up the synopsis, details on the cast and crew – of which are clickable, to show you other films they’ve starred in – and a related item section. There’s also a SmartGlass panel that contains a Video Guide. This guide displays information about a film as you’re watching it, springing to life when actors appear on screen, providing you with their filmography. Ultimately, it delivers a richer experience.

The SmartGlass panel also exists in any music title you’ve stumbled upon, but this contains the Xbox Music Experience. Much like the Video Guide above, it allows you to learn more about the artist that you’re listening to.

Offering tracks, games, or movies in the form of featured content is all well and good, but chances are you’ll want to search for something manually. Slide across again and you’ll reach the Bing search panel.

The great thing about this search function is that you can search by either the song/game/movie title, or by your favourite actor or singer. What you’ll be presented with is a long list of media items, all relating to what you typed in. Some may be songs, others may be games or films; just scroll down to discover new titles or find what it was you were looking for.

Xbox SmartGlass also acts as a trackpad when you’re using the new Internet Explorer that was added in this autumn’s dashboard update.

With Internet Explorer open on your Xbox, sliding your finger across your phone’s screen moves the cursor in exactly the same way on your Xbox – your finger becomes the cursor. Navigating the cursor to the address bar at the top will allow you to enter a URL, and to make things as simple as possible, Xbox SmartGlass launches a keyboard on your phone to allow you to enter in a URL from your Nokia Lumia.

When it comes to clicking on items or links, tap your phone screen to make that happen and zooming into webpages is possible by placing two fingers on the phone screen and pinching together – reverse that to zoom out.

What if you’re browsing the web on your Xbox and have to leave the house? Take that web page with you on your Nokia Lumia. Tap the icon at the bottom that resembles a phone with an arrow pointing to the screen and the webpage you were just looking at on the Xbox will be transferred over to your phone. You can now carry on where you left off, away from your Xbox and on your phone while you hop on a bus.

Xbox SmartGlass is free to download from the Windows Phone Store, so make sure you grab it today.

Do you use an Xbox 360 and Xbox SmartGlass? If so, tell us your experiences with it, using the comments section below.

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Published by Tom Hall on December 10, 2012

 

There’s been a lot of buzz recently about the the new additions to the Nokia Lumia family and it’s time now to shine the spotlight on the Nokia Lumia 820. And why not?

Let’s start with the recent photoshoot where the Lumia 820 co-starred with some of the excellent Nokia accessories, all captured on the Nokia 808 PureView by Marc for the excellent Pureview Club. The Lumia 820 was captured during some down time away from the set, and graciously allowed Marc to snap a couple of candid shots.

 

**Update** Robert sent me a note on Twitter that he’s had a few things to say about the Lumia 820, and I had to include it in this post. He reckons that the phone delivers a

‘capable and compelling package’

and that it

‘performs like a champ’.

For futher in-depth coverage of the phone, I turned to Michael Fisher at pocketnow who (in response to his readers’ requests) has posted a cracking review of the Lumia 820:

My personal highlight from the video:

‘a thin, heavyweight device’

He’s talking about the feel in the hand, compared to the Nokia Lumia 920. Michael also promises more videos in the future covering build quality and how the phone fares as a ‘daily driver’, so keep an eye out for those on his YouTube channel.

Have you got your hands on a Nokia Lumia 820 yet? Taken any amazing pics either of it or with it? We’d love to see either, so drop them in the comments or tweet us.

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In just two short weeks, many people around the world will be celebrating one of the most exciting times of the year – Christmas. For those of you that haven’t even started your Christmas shopping yet (that includes me) and don’t know where to start (again, me), we’ve gathered up a small handful of apps that might make this time easier for you.

As we all know, Santa Claus is coming to town and he’s making a list – which he’s checking twice. At times like this, that’s without doubt the best place to start.

Let’s start by creating a checklist.

Fortunately, there’s an app built right into your Nokia Lumia that’s perfect for the job and it’s called Office OneNote. You’ll find it within the Office Hub.

 

Think about who you need to buy for and write their names down in OneNote. Then, beneath each name, write the gifts you plan to purchase for them. Once you’ve done that, highlight the item and press the to do icon at the bottom – the one that looks like a box with a tick inside of it. Repeat this with all the items and you’ll have a fully workable checklist.

Press the pin icon at the bottom to have this sent to your Start Screen for easy access as you’ll probably refer to this a lot over the next couple of weeks.

Next up, a shopping app.

Amazon Mobile gives you access to one of the largest online retailers in the world. With this app installed you can browse products just like you would on a PC, but with a great extra feature.

 

When you’re out and about in the shops looking for a bargain, you’ll want to make sure you’re receiving the best deal possible. Loading the barcode scanner from within the app (which can be pinned directly to your Start screen for quicker access) lets you compare prices of the product you’ve seen in store with those online at Amazon. You can also read reviews of that product to see if you’re making a wise purchase, and check availability at Amazon, too.

Fear not, Amazon Mobile purchases are routed through secure servers, just as they are on the Web.

It’s probably time to head back to that OneNote checklist you made earlier, and tick off that jumper you’ve just purchased for uncle Tony. It only takes a few seconds to do that.

eBay is another great online site for picking up a bargain. While this isn’t a conventional online retailer – it’s an auction site – it does offer a never-ending list of items, sold by people just like you.

 

Because eBay users often sell old items they’ve once owned, it means that the cost of those items is considerably cheaper than those you’ll find in the shops. It also means that if you’re looking for something that’s not produced anymore, there’s a chance you’ll find somebody on eBay selling it.

It’s often a great place for people to re-sell gifts they’ve received, too. Like those dodgy slippers you’ll receive this year from granny. Sssh, don’t tell her, though. Always accept your gifts with a smile.

You can do all this without having to get up off the couch, and instead right on your Nokia Lumia.

One thing’s for sure, if you order something online, it’ll need to be delivered – that’s one of the benefits of Internet shopping. However, hoping it turns up on time can be a tedious task.

Whenever you order something online, you’ll receive a tracking number so that you can, well, track your order. Package Tracker supports over 60 carriers and enables you to follow the progress of your delivery, without having to visit the numerous websites you’ve purchased from.

 

Whenever your package reaches a new milestone, such as arrived at terminal, or delivered, you’ll automatically receive a notification telling you about it.

Bing Maps is used to show you the location of the package, so you’ll always know where it is in the world.

One way to cut the costs of gift, or food purchasing this season is to use vouchers. Many places accept vouchers, offering 2 for 1 deals or money off purchases. Vouchercloud delivers vouchers to your phone – in the UK – in a number of ways.

 

If you’re looking for something specific, you can use the search function to find a good deal. Alternatively, and this is probably the most useful when you’re in the shops looking for a deal, is the Near Me function.

Using the GPS in your phone, Vouchercloud will show the best deals around you.

Most deals will probably be 2 for 1 deals at local pizza joints. However, look a little closer and you’ll see money off vouchers for hardware stores, clothing stores and others.

But don’t waste those pizza vouchers – treat yourself after a busy day shopping.

There we have it, some ways to make shopping at Christmas a little easier by using your Nokia Lumia 610, Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia Lumia 900, Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820.

Do you have any tips for Christmas shopping that we didn’t think of? Let us know, in the comments below.

Image credit: FutUndBeidl

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If you’re a sports fan then having a mobile phone is just as crucial as having a tennis racquet, some football boots or a cricket bat.

How else are you going to get live scores, fixture lists and the latest news?

My Nokia Asha 311 smartphone is the ideal device for these purposes and there are plenty of apps in the Nokia Store to satisfy the needs of any sports fan.

On your marks, get set, ready? Go!

 

This is the app formerly known as ESPNSoccernet, but if you were a fan of it previously then you can be rest assured that the name is all that’s changed.

This app still offers live football scores, fixtures, match stats and tables of all the major leagues around the world. In other words, this has all the vital information that a football fan will need. 

Sticking with football, there are a couple of other apps that you may want to try out. Live Scores (free) does what its name suggests and Goal News Launcher (free) brings all the stories from goal.com to your Asha device.

 

The sedate and charming world of cricket… The glorious sound of leather on willow! I love the tradition of clapping the batsman out as they walk to the wicket.

Cricket fans are well catered for in the Nokia Store. Cricket Companion 4.0 provides ball-by-ball coverage of matches, news, results and those all-important statistics.

There’s also Cricket Calling (free), which provides many of the same features and for something a little different I really liked Cricket Wicket (free), which provides the sound of tumbling wickets and the crowd cheering in the background. It’s a tremendous ringtone option.

 

Keen golfers will really appreciate this mScorecard app. It helps you keep track of your score while you are playing and even uses GPS to help you track your distance to the green?

Armchair fans of the sport may be interested in Golf App (free) which connects to feeds of the latest golf news and also has tips on how you can improve your game – should you ever feel inclined to have a ‘good walk spoiled’.

There also has be a honourable mention for Nokia Golf Tour 3D (free) an engrossing golf simulator where you can play alone (against the conditions, of course) or against an opponent. Lots of fun and great graphics too.

 

Fans of Formula 1 have a great choice of apps in the Nokia Store – and that’s not even including all the racing games.

F1 Confidential promises to offer insider gossip, news and pictures from the pit lanes. If you’re seeking something a bit more conventional then ESPNF1 (free) is probably a better bet.

This has commentary and summaries or faces, latest standings, driver profiles and everything else you could hope for. Along similar lines is F1 Live! Lite (free).

World of Red Bull (free) is not solely devoted to F1, as it also features many of the energy drinks’ other daredevil sports, but you may want to give it a spin nevertheless.

We know it’s impossible to cover every single sport and with any list there’s always a risk that your particular favourite may get left out! But, with a sharp intake of breath, here are some other notable apps for lovers of the following sports:

 

Rugby devotees may want to download Rugby App (free) for all the latest news in the world of the oval-shaped game.

Talking of oval shapes, gridiron fans, or American Football, if you insist, can stay up-to-date with NFL Scores (free).

If you prefer your motor racing to be done on two wheels rather than four, then you should check out MotoGP Superbikes (free) or World Superbikes (free).

Is wrestling a real sport? I would suggest not, but either way there’s aWWE (free) and WWE News for you to choose from.

And, finally, the prize for the most esoteric and exclusive sports app in the Nokia Store has to go to Polo Club (free). For all the latest news from the world of polo!

Top image credit: foxypar4

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Near Field Communication – or NFC as it’s commonly known – is a technology that’s been growing for a couple of years now. But what is it and why would you want to use it? 

What is NFC?

NFC is a short-range wireless technology that allows the exchange of data between devices. It only works with short distances of about four inches at the most, so you have to be very close to another NFC enabled device to transfer the data.

Looking back at Nokia’s NFC phone history, you can see that Nokia  has been active in trialling the use of NFC for a variety of use cases.

Here are some reasons to get excited about having NFC on your phone.

1. Leave your wallet at home. With the Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, your smartphone has the ability to remember your credit/debit card details. At the moment, these details are stored in Wallet and can be referred to when you need to type in your card details, or also when making purchases from Windows Phone Store.

Additionally, the ability to tap your phone against an NFC-enabled point-of-sale terminal will be coming in the near future – you’ll then be able to ditch the real-world wallet for good and opt for a digital one.

2. If you’re out of town and staying in a hotel, your door keycard information could be stored on your phone, meaning you’ll never leave your hotel room again without the door key. While this isn’t immediately available, tests have already taken place in a chain of hotels by Nordic Choice Hotels showing that it’s a real possibility.

3. Use your phone as a pass for use on transport systems. Just swipe your phone across the NFC reader, like you do with already existing contactless travel cards. Contactless systems exist in the UK, Germany, China and all around the world.

4. Swapping business cards can be done virtually, easier and cheaper than it’s done now. Put two phones in close proximity with each other and let the phones do the transfer. You’ll never have to buy business cards again, as the data can be rewritten if needed when you change jobs, or change your number.

5. If you do a lot of browsing on your Lumia 920 or Lumia 820 and like to share those great webpages with your friends, you can now send and receive links via NFC.

When you’re on a website, selecting the More option will open up a few options. Select Share Page and then Tap+Send to start the link transfer when you’re phone is held against another NFC-enabled phone, or NFC-enabled Windows 8 PC.

6. Your loyalty is important for businesses and they usually offer a discount for returning customers.

In the future, loyalty cards could be thrown out and your details held on your phone. Buy those shoes you’ve had your eye on with a swipe of your phone. The store will also recognise your loyalty and give the discount.

7. Location aware apps could make use of this technology too. For example, users of Foursquare have to load up the app, find the location, and press the check-in button to check-in. However, there’s no reason that this can’t all be done using NFC.

Hold your phone to an NFC reader and let the system tell all your friends where you are.

8. Sending photos or videos to your friends or family is now made really simple, by using the Tap+Send feature on your Lumia 920 or Lumia 820. Selecting the Tap+Send option within an image or video will start the process – tapping your phone against another NFC-enabled phone will complete it.

That’s just eight ways NFC could be useful to you when you go about your daily routine. But I’m sure there are more ways to use this technology that we’ve not thought of. NFC is going to make lots of things much easier, leaving you with more time to do other, more important things.

How would you like to see NFC used? Will you be using NFC? Let us know your thoughts and ideas, in the comments box below.

Image credit: StockMonkeys.com

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In my post last week about customising your Nokia Lumia’s dialler, I made the innocent point that it was not the most obvious part of the smartphone that you could produce apps for.

As I asked at the time, how can you improve on a numerical keypad?

My attitude sums up why there are bright young things out there creating apps and changing the world, while I am merely writing about how brilliant they are!

One of those bright young things is Cara Zheng, 25, of Guangzhou, China, who is part of a three-strong team who look after the highly-rated RapDialer app.

Cara, who works full-time as an accountant, has been involved with RapDialer since December 2011, when it was still just an idea inside the head of the chief designer James Yi.

Just a couple of months later it was available to download on the Windows Phone Marketplace, and Cara has been helping out ever since looking after operations, testing, customer service and much more. The third member of the team is designer Joe Zou.

Rapidly approaching its first anniversary, the app now has thousands of users in over 68 countries and is available in 12 languages – with three more to follow shortly.

I was particularly struck by how the team invites suggestions from users and asks volunteers to help them make RapDialer available in their local languages.

In an interview with Conversations, Cara spoke about the importance of user feedback, why Windows Phone 8 is a great opportunity for them and what’s to come in RapDialer v3.0.

When James had his first Windows Phone, he found it inconvenient because of the lack of a smart dialler. He was also unsatisfied with well-known dialler apps in iOS and Android.

Then he was inspired by the Windows Phone user interface and tried to make a powerful but simple and clear smart dialler with a new experience. The enthusiastic response from users proves it’s viable.

At the very beginning, when Windows Phone was still in its early stages, feedback focused on those things that we could not do because of Windows Phone restrictions.

However, with the gradual improvement and development of RapDialer, old users are maintained and new users come in. They start to offer new ideas they hope to have, and tell us how they feel when new features are added.

Three people in the RapDialer team cannot discover all the bugs, but users help us to discover and revise them. So users’ feedback is like a mirror; reflecting our good and bad points. 

We summarise suggestions from users and pick up the urgent and valuable ones. For example, users who are used to Blackberry phones, asked to have the 1-99 speed dial feature and some users asked for full-text search, so they could select items to display or be searched. These features were added and had a good response.

We have users from 68 countries and many warm-hearted users ask to be allowed to translate RapDialer into their mother language, simply because they use it every day and like it very much.

Most of them are fluent in English and are able to understand our app’s idea. Most importantly, many of them are developers, students, teachers, or have app translation experiences. 

This is an advantage in both costs saving and helping us broaden international markets.

The first version translation work is usually done with high quality but since our app is always developing and new features are added continually, the first translator may not be able to follow translation work promptly.

We may need to wait for a long time until they give feedback or ask another translator to do it. Overall, volunteers’ help is still a good way of working.

We spent lots of time finding a way to compile the same codes to WP7 and WP8 .xap files at the same time and we need to make adjustments on different behaviours in WP7 and WP8 for the same API.

We value intellectual property protection of our app but unfortunately, no free or cheap but reliable WP8 Code Obfuscation Tool is available, which temporarily stops us from publishing the WP8 version.

Also, we are in great need for WP8 devices to test, but currently they are expensive and not so easily obtained in China.

Yes, we believe customer growth will boom in the WP8 era, which is the greatest opportunity to us.

In v3.0, we will go further, to give RapDialer more the feel of being a toolkit instead of a simple dialler. For example, cool and quick switching between T9 keypad and QWERTY is coming, as well as function expansion in SMS.

Since we are also busy in our jobs at the end of the year, v3.0 expects to be published in the first half of 2013.

Image credit: King….

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Published by Joel Willans on December 11, 2012

Audio speakers have come a long way since Ernst Siemens slapped a patent on the first loudspeaker back in 1877; US researchers have even used nanotechnology to turn cow bone and a stethoscope into a speaker system. Agricultural-medical mash-ups aside, let’s see what else has hit the shelves over the years.

Siemens (yeah, one of those Siemens) wasn’t the only audio buff polishing his patents in the early days of audio-tech; in the 1890s, Thomas Edison developed a diaphragm-and-stylus contraption that was used in the very first talking pictures, though not to any great success: it became known as the machine with the ‘Wee Small Voice.’ Hmm.

Early 1900s -Eglephone speakers

The amplification revolution kicked off with French cinema owners placing engineer Leon Gaumont‘s speakers behind the screen and carrying them back and forth as the action required. Dynamic! By 1919, Gaumont’s Eglephone speakers could amplify sound to a crowd of four thousand, equivalent to the capacity of London’s Brixton Academy. In the USA, a moving-coil loudspeaker known as the Magnavox was used by Woodrow Wilson in 1919 presidential address; rather than speak into a microphone, Wilson’s voice was picked up by two huge horns suspended over his head that routed his voice to the loudspeakers. The audience were able to hear him up to a mile away.

Between the World Wars, developments in audio speakers boomed, if you’ll excuse the pun: researchers like General Electric’s Rice and Kellog (sadly unaffiliated to the cereal empire) and Bell Laboratories Wente and Thuras hammered away at direct radiator and electrostatic speakers. All very technical, but by the mid-1930s, they’d come up with stereo sound. No point stopping there: in 1940, Walt Disney premiered Fantasound, a system that used three audio channels and 54 speakers, and by 1958, composer Edgar Varese was using 452 speakers in his Poeme Electronique. In the meantime, bookshelf speakers were being produced for the home market, and Victrola-style acoustic gramophones began to be replaced by tweeters and woofers.

From basic pocket radios to entire portable turntables with built-in speakers, the domestic market went mobile. In 1965, Philips released the first compact cassette tape, which used a low-fidelity monophonic speaker and retailed at about $325 in today’s money. The 1970s brought Dolby’s noise reduction technology and a new International Standard in noise reproduction. And today of course, we’ve got NFC and Bluetooth speakers, which can play music wirelessly from your  smartphones, while charging it.

We’ve sure come a long way since the days of the Wee Small Voice. But what does the future hold? Let us know your predictions in the comments below.

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