Screw the Emmys! The best gift bags of the past week came at Microsoft’s BUILD conference. The Redmond crew put their money where their mouths were and provided 5,000 developers with a tablet based off of the Samsung Series 7 Slate and packing a version of the Metro-tized Windows 8 Developer Preview. Theoretically, the gift was supposed to spur on app development for the upcoming operating system; instead, some not-so-gracious recipients have turned the tablets into quick cash on eBay.
Google Voice is one of the coolest cloud services we've ever seen. Get your account set up with a phone number in your area code of choice, and Google Voice will provide you with a number of convenient functions for free. Users of Android phones have had the best access to their Google Voice account through a native app, but Google somehow forgot that they make a tablet OS too—until now.
Android is one of the favorite mobile platforms for geeks and power users for a reason: it's much more customizable than the competition, and provides the tools to really make the device yours. Widget support is a customization feature that can provide a huge amount of functionality, and Widgets HD was designed specifically for the large screen of your Android Tablet.
For those of you who always dreamed about having your own cloud, Western Digital wants to make your dreams come true with its new WD 2go and WD 2go Pro mobile apps for its My Book Live personal cloud storage solution. The part about dreams is admittedly cheesy (and we're to blame for that one), but as far as the personal cloud goes, that's what Western Digital envisions as you remotely connect to your My Book Live drive from any computer or through your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or compatible Android device.
It doesn't matter which Android smartphone you're rocking in your pocket, so long as it's a modern build of Google's open source OS. If it is, you can stream Netflix on it. The latest version of Netflix for Android adds support for all Android 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3 (Gingerbread) devices rather than limiting support to select handsets.
AVG is going to have to rethink its mobile application strategy if it wants its security app reinstated in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Microsoft removed the security software vendor's app from the Marketplace after learning that it might be harvesting a bit too much information from users and sending data back to AVG's servers.
Every once in a while you will come across a game that is simple, yet has all the ingredients to be a completely addicting diversion. Such games are perfect for mobile platforms because they don’t require an unreasonable amount of horsepower, nor are the controls typically over the top or difficult to master.
Smart phones perform many roles in modern life, but political tool wasn’t at the top of our list. Fourth of July week is a great time to feature a politically driven app such as Congress by Sunlight Labs.
Many of the tools, features, and fundamental building blocks in Microsoft applications were originally developed by the dark wizards at Microsoft Research. From little things we take for granted like Windows Desktop Gadgets to the high end Microsoft Surface platform, Microsoft Research has their work spread through the entire Microsoft catalog of products. Windows Phone 7 has the fingerprints of Microsoft Research strewn throughout the OS, most notably showcased by the text prediction within the superb software keyboard.
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