July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Trying to steal a bit of attention away from Facebook’s big Home event, Microsoft has just announced a new program to get Windows Phone apps more attention called “Red Stripe Deals.”

Apple and Google both offer ways to see featured applications and games in their respective app stores, but they aren’t regularly pointing out which apps are for sale. (However, there are several third-party apps that show you what is for sale.)

Now, every Thursday, Microsoft will offer up a new collection of Windows Phone apps and games that are discounted.

“Each week the Store’s Red Stripe Deals Collection will feature three popular apps and games — typically one Xbox game, one indie game, and one top-rated app — for at least 50% off the original price,” Microsoft writer Michael Stroh wrote in a blog post.

The first apps and games available under the Red Stripe Deals banner are Runtastic PRO, Assassin’s Creed: Altairs Chronicles HD, and King Oddball. All of them cost $0.99 each.

Man pushing sale buttons via ra2studio/Shutterstock

Popular online radio service Pandora has launched a Windows Phone 8 app, with the added bonus of hearing no advertisements with songs through the end of the year.

Pandora offers its service across nearly every platform it can to reach the widest audience possible. The service has more than 150 million registered users in U.S., but it has struggled to make a profit. The biggest news coming from the Pandora camp as of late was the resignation of long-time CEO Joe Kennedy. This happened just as Apple is reportedly looking to stomp on Pandora’s turf with its own radio service.

But today Pandora’s focus in on the future, with the addition of Windows Phone 8 to its lineup. The company writes in a blog post:

For the last six months or so we’ve been working hard to bring Pandora to the Windows Phone 8 audience. Happy to announce the day has finally come.

While of course Pandora on Windows Phone 8 features the same listening experience you’ve come to expect from us, we really wanted to embrace the unique features of the Windows Phone 8 platform. For example, you can pin your favorite stations directly to the Start screen. Even cooler, the tiles are live and show you what’s currently playing without having to actually launch the app. If you have kids, we’ve also integrated into what Microsoft calls “Kid’s Corner” – just launch Pandora from that starting point and we’ll make sure that no explicit content plays during that session.

From a design perspective, we constantly strive to keep the Pandora user experience as easy and consistent as possible across an ever-increasing variety of platforms — computers, mobile phones, tablets, set-top boxes, cars, and more — all while taking into account the additional capabilities and design patterns of each individual platform. With its visually flat elements and unique panorama concept of navigation, designing for Windows Phone 8 while keeping our consistent Pandora aesthetic was an exciting challenge and we’re thrilled with the results.

The best part of the Pandora experience for most users, however, will be hearing no annoying ads while listening. Microsoft is actually footing the bill so Windows Phone 8 users don’t have to hear ads.

While the app isn’t available as of this writing, Pandora said the app will be available some time today in the Windows Phone Store.

Top photo via Pandora

Music streaming service Rhapsody has launched a sleek new app for Windows Phone 8 — just a week after competitor Spotfiy launched its app on the same platform.

Rhapsody is the oldest player in streaming music in U.S. and it has more than a million paid users in the U.S. But it has lost mind share to Spotify, which is raising copious amounts of money to build buzz and acquire customers all over the world. Still, Rhapsody keeps collecting new users and will soon launch in Europe. High-quality mobile experiences will also help.

Version 3.0 of Rhapsody for Windows Phone is specifically built with Windows Phone 8 in mind and has a lot of improvements for people looking to rock out with the service’s more than 16 million tracks.

Heres’s what you’ll get in the new version of Rhapsody for Windows Phone 8:

• Offline playback of downloaded tracks, albums, and playlists.
• Support for My Music, including the ability to add or remove tracks, albums, and artist—plus check out other people’s libraries.
• Add and remove stations from My Stations.
• Add and remove playlists from My Playlists.
• See your listening history.
• Improvements to audio playback, album art, and search.

Rhapsody doesn’t offer a free version of its product like Spotify, so it focuses its efforts on the experience of its paid subscribers. It costs either $10 or $15 per month depending on your needs, but most folks will be fine with the $10 plan.

Photo via Rhapsody

Good news, Windows Phone owners. Professional social network LinkedIn, in its quest to master mobile, has released another stunning mobile application — but this one is just for you.

The application, the company’s first official release for the platform, is a full-featured release that plays perfectly with the Windows Phone operating system, and even incorporates the unique Microsoft Metro style and design. (Check out our gallery of screenshots below.)

And, as a little bonus gift, LinkedIn said that the Windows Phone application offers users more functionality in the companies and jobs sections than it offers in its apps for iOS and Android.

“You can find and connect with millions of professionals worldwide, quickly access a real-time update stream with news and information from your professional connections, read timely news impacting your industry, keep up-to-date with your professional groups, search for jobs, and follow your favorite companies’ news,” LinkedIn’s mobile product manager Tomer Cohen said.

LinkedIn for Windows Phone is out now and works on devices running version 7.5 or higher of the operating system.

The professional social network now has more than 150 million members and is performing well on the public market. The company recently reported strong first quarter earnings of $188.5 million in revenue and $5 million in net income.

Here’s our slideshow of screenshots from the app:

Photo credit: coletivomambembe/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s Android Market has topped the 400,000 active application mark worldwide, reports app analytics firm Distimo.

The Android Market has grown at a rapid pace, even with fragmentation issues that continue to plague the OS. The Market surpassed the 200,000 and 300,000 app milestones in April and August last year. Distimo said new free and “freemium” applications are the key to the surging numbers in the Market, and now two-thirds of Android apps are free.

By comparison, Apple’s iOS App Store currently has more than 540,000 active applications, according to 148Apps.biz. Distimo points out that it took two more months for the Android Market to reach the 400,000 app milestone than it took Apple.

Just last week, Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS hit the 50,000 app milestone, which seems paltry in comparison to iOS and Android’s app battle. But Windows Phone 7 is younger than Android and iOS by a few years, so it hasn’t had as much time to grow.

In a final note on Android’s app numbers, Distimo said the Android OS now has nearly 100,000 publishers pushing out apps. Based on this number, each developer publishes 4.1 apps on average, while developers published nearly five apps on average a year ago. This means many more companies have sought to offer their apps on the Android platform, most likely as a second platform after iOS.