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Tip o’ the Week #255 – Rating apps in the store

Posted on by ewand

The Store was a key innovation when Windows 8 launched, and continues to grow, both in terms of the number of apps published and the way popular and well-rated apps are surfaced. Earlier this year, Microsoft said there were over 150,000 apps in the Windows 8 store, though now the total reported is combined between the Windows 8 and Windows Phone stores. It’s said that Windows 10 will join the two stores together anyway, a process that’s underway already through the move to Universal Apps.

According to Microsoft By The Numbers, a neat external website that helps to show how large some bits of the company are (did you know that together, the Office for iPad apps have been downloaded 45 million times? Or that 40% of Azure revenue comes from startups and ISVs?), the total number of apps across both stores is 525,000. That’s rather a lot. Finding the good apps from the guff ones can be a challenge.

So, it’s more important than ever to make sure when you use an app you like, or one you don’t, that you rate it. Ratings and reviews will help other people choose your preferred app over some other one which isn’t as good, or has more annoying adverts, or nags you to buy the premium version all the time. In Windows 8.1, there are a few tricks to rating the apps you’ve used, and of sharing your favourite apps with others.

clip_image002Rate and review

As well as rating Windows 8 apps you use regularly, why not review those you feel work particularly well or particularly badly? Maybe the developer will read your review and improve or fix things that don’t work, or maybe people who are browsing will read your rave review and decide that’s the app for them.

Apps for Windows 8 let you Rate and review if you open the Charms menu (when you’re in the app, press WindowsKey+C or swipe from the right, or move your mouse to the top right or bottom right of the screen), then look under Settings.

clip_image004Taking this option fires up the Store app, and navigates directly to the review section where you can assign a 1-5 star rating and give some verbiage should you desire. If you’re going to slate an app that everyone else rates highly, or the opposite, then you really should explain why, so others can benefit from your wisdom or simply write your thoughts off as coming from a blithering idiot.

How many Amazon reviews have you read, that score a product 1 star because it took ages to arrive or the box was damaged on receipt? The case rests.

clip_image006If you want to rate apps without actually opening them, you can go into the Store app, select Account | My apps from the menu at the top, then select the appropriate filter from the drop-down boxes, then click or tap on each item to get to its Store page, which includes rating & reviews.

Sensibly, you can’t actually rate apps that you’ve never installed, but you can rate and review apps that you have only on another PC.

Sadly, there’s no way of showing your own ratings in a list – it would be handy to be able to see all the apps you’ve installed and how you rated each one – maybe there’s an app for that, or someone else will write it to share a way of doing so…

clip_image008Windows Phone ratings

Apps on Phone don’t have the same consistent mechanism to expose the ratings and review section of the Store (since they don’t have charms), though many apps will prompt you after a while of usage, to ask if you’d like to rate them.

From a PC, you can head over to the Windows Phone site and look at your purchase history, then rate from within there.

On the phone, visit the Store app to rate and review other apps you’ve used (again, you need to have actually installed them to be able to rate), and you’ll see on the same reviews tab that you can also Share the app, which sends a link via mail or numerous other messaging or social networking means.

 

Sharing on Windows 8.1clip_image009

Returning to Windows 8.1, if you want to share your favourite apps with friends, just go back into the Charms menu and you’ll see Share proudly offered – though its use will vary depending on what you’re doing with the app itself. If listening to Music (US only, sadly), you’ll share a link to whatever you’re playing. If you’re reading the News, selecting Share will send the headline and a link to the article you’re on.

To Share apps, follow the same steps as earlier to list your installed apps from within the Store, then open the details page for the app in question, but instead of rating or reviewing it, invoke the Share charm when at the same page.

If you don’t want to email links etc using the Mail client, perhaps preferring to embed the links into rambling missives from within Outlook, then check out the neat Clipboard app, which (using a “contract”) lets you Share something straight into the Windows Clipboard, ready to be pasted into another app of your choice.

Tip o’ the Week #253 – Using Cortana in the Car

Posted on by ewand

clip_image001There are many cool things that Cortana can do, which make using Windows Phone 8.1 a pleasure. Try asking the following, if you have Cortana enabled:

  • “Find the best nearby restaurants”, then…
  • “Which are open now?” …
  • “Traffic to the 3rd one” …
  • “Drive there”

After each command, following commands will work in context with the results from the previous one – though it might take a bit of practice to figure out what you can say, and what is going to reliably be interpreted by Cortana. If you say something she doesn’t understand (maybe she’ll start playing some music or call some random number instead, mishearing “Drive” for “Play” or “Call”) then you’ll lose context and will need to start from the beginning.

One smart function, though, is when you want to use Cortana in your car. The specific UI will vary greatly depending on what car you have, but the important thing is that it may possible to use the car’s own functionality to get at Cortana’s smarts (which will be better than whatever is installed in the car, almost certainly).

Assuming you have Bluetooth handsfree functionality installed, you may have the option of pressing a steering-wheel button to interact with the phone – generally relying on the car systems to recognise names as you read them out, and searching a list of contacts either manually-entered or possibly sync’ed from your phone. Be careful not to faff about with your handset whilst driving – you may be breaking the law. Even in (some) parts of the US.

clip_image003If your car has the ability to see your phone’s directory or phone book, then you should see a contact show up in the list (when viewed in the car – it doesn’t actually appear as a contact on the phone itself), called Cortana.

You may be able to set favourites on your car so that when you press a button, it will dial a particular contact or number – or maybe your car’s Bluetooth setup has enough capability that it will be able to recognise a “call Cortana” voice command.

Even if the car has a less advanced system, it’s generally possible to have a short dial or some other kind of saved contact that’s manually added. If you create a contact in your car’s directory with the number 555-555-9876 and try to call it using the car’s UI, then you’ll see Cortana spring to life – in other words, the phone won’t actually dial that number, it will activate Cortana and will use the Bluetooth functionality in the car to be the mic and speakers for the phone. Don’t worry that it looks like a US phone number – it works on international handsets too.

If you type that number into your phone, then it will attempt to dial – but if you call that number using the car (either by adding a contact or just by entering the number) then you’ll see if the car wins Cortana’s favours or not

Tip o’ the Week #252 – Web browsing on WP8.1

Posted on by ewand

clip_image001Many of us will be familiar with using the web browser on our phones – unkindly, one might say that it’s partly due to the fact that Windows Phone users sometimes don’t have a choice, whereas iOS and Android devices might be redirected to install some native app rather than using a browser to view the content.

The upgrade to Windows Phone 8.1 may have slipped by without you noticing every single aspect of it, one such being the fact that the mobile browser used in Windows Phone is IE11. Not, it is said, just IE for the phone that happens to be the same number as the desktop version, but a richly-featured modern browser which shares a lot of functionality with its big brother.

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clip_image003Reading View is one particularly neat usability feature, which changes the way the browser displays pages (and is indicated as available by the same book icon as the Metro modern IE browser on Windows 8.1). Tap the little book and the content on the mobile browser goes full–screen and can also be set to show a particular size of font or background colour too – check the Advanced Settings (found by tapping the ellipsis on the bottom right, then settings and then the advanced settings button at the bottom).

Phone IE11 also gives you more control over privacy settings, so you can turn on the equivalent of the desktop InPrivate settings (like choosing whether sites can track you, put stuff on your device, use cookies etc etc). There’s no “new InPrivate tab” function though, it’s a setting that applies to all browser sessions. See here for more details on privacy settings.

Windows Phone 8.1 also promises to make your life easier by synchronising IE data between your phone and your PC – remembering URLs you’ve visited, usernames you’ve used and more.

However you use it, the browser in Windows Phone 8.1 is now fast, safe, really functional and is a mostly a joy to use. So not being forced to install some ghastly local app for every site you want to visit, maybe isn’t such a hardship after all.

Tip o’ the Week #251 – Toasting a new email message

Posted on by ewand

You got a new email – hurray! Back in the early days of using email, it was expected practice for your email program to play you a little fanfare, pop up a message box to tell you that you’ve got mail, put an envelope in your system tray etc.

In the last decade, nobody in most companies needed to know they got a new mail. We all get far too much of it, and yet most email programs notify you by default. Stop that, it’s silly.

The inspirational Prof Randy Pausch advised switching this off: he delivered a great talk on Time Management, and watching it is a better way of spending 90 minutes than pretty much any other productivity-enhancing measure. Children of the 1970s and 80s in the UK will remember Why Don’t You?, with its somewhat perverse advice to “switch off your television set”.

Well, stop reading this email now and go and watch Randy’s Time Management video (same link as above you click junkies).

Still here? If you’ve never heard of Randy, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2006 and sadly succumbed less than 2 years later. In the interim, he delivered “The Last Lecture”, an awesome (and we’re not talking Microsoftie, “hey, that was super-awesome!” kind of awesome, more the laughing-out-loud, tears-welling-up and rapt-attention kind) lecture on achieving his childhood dreams. Make time to watch The Last Lecture video if there’s only one video you watch this weekend.

Anyway, this tip reprises the topic of the very first tip of the week – but this time instead of switching off a pop-up in Outlook, it’s about disabling the “toast” that appears in the top right of the Windows 8 screen to tell you that you’ve got new mail.

In Outlook 2013, go into File | Options | Mail and look under the Message arrival section then un-check the Display a Desktop Alert option.

It’s possible to disable all “toast” notifications in Windows 8, but that’s something of a lumphammer to crack a pine nut. If you want to do it, see here… otherwise, it’s best to control things within individual applications. Within the same menu, you can selectively toggle each app’s notifications setting.

If you’ve configured the Windows 8.1 Mail app to connect to your company email, then you might have the weird experience of seeing an incoming toast from both Outlook (represented as the upper one in the screenshot above, with the fizzog of the sender as represented in the GAL) and within the Win8 Mail app, shown by the different toast below (and possibly a different picture, depending on how the sender is represented in your contacts).

To disable the toast from the Mail app, go into the app itseld and bring up the Charms (press WindowsKey+C or swipe from the right if you have a touchscreen, or put your mouse in the top right of the screen). Now select the Settings charm, then Accounts, then go into the account you have set up to your corporate emai (since you can set notifications differently per-account).

The “Show email notifications” dropdown allows you to select that you want to allow all email to notify you (bad) or perhaps only to show you mail from your Favourites, as defined in the People app.

Or, of course, to switch off altogether.

Tip o’ the Week #250 – Xbox One updates

Posted on by ewand

It’s been a busy few weeks and months for Xbox Oneclip_image002, as it approaches its first birthday. The console started shipping a little while back in a new, Kinect-less (dis-Kinected?) package (even if some thought that was a bad move), and there have been a few software updates to as well as numerous announcements from Microsoft and from app partners.

clip_image004The October update which rolled out in the middle of the month was quite a big change to how some of the fundamentals of the console work – like Snap, which got a whole lot more useful by being easier to manipulate.

Try saying, “Xbox Snap” (don’t try this on a Kinect-free setup or you’ll feel a bit silly) then say the name of the application you’d like to snap to the side (eg Music). You can say Xbox Switch to flick between the snapped application and the main app (the game, TV, video etc) and Xbox Unsnap when you’re all done and want to go back to full screen on the main app.

For more details on the October release, see Major Nelson’s post, here.

You can check you have the October update easily, as it adds a new clip_image006“Friends” section to the home screen.

There’s also been some coverage of what’s coming in November (deeper Twitter integration, so you can chat with friends whilst watching The Apprentice), amongst other things. See more here.

There’s also been the announcement of the release of the Xbox One Digital TV Tuner, due in select European countries any day now. The Tuner allows the Xbox to receive DVB-T signals (SD and HD, where available), integrates with the OneGuide functionality and delivers DVR-type functionality allowing you to pause live TV, watch TV on demand etc. There are also a bunch of updates to the SmartGlass software for mobile devices which will allow you to stream live TV off the Xbox tuner and watch on the device, even if the Xbox is being used for watching video on demand or playing games. See more here.

There’s even been some talk over what will and won’t be in the Xbox One’s December update, too.

3rd party apps have been coming thick and fast for the Xbox One, depending on where you live – there’s Vine as well as a bunch of Major League sports apps and VH1, all recently released in the US, MyVideo & Watchever (in Germany), Ludo (France) and many others. To see the apps list in your region (other than looking on the console), check here.

Tip o’ the Week #249 – Sync your Desktop

Posted on by ewand

clip_image001This week’s tip comes as a direct result of a conversation had over a glass of wine and a plate of food, with Content & Code’s supremo, Tim Wallis.

Most of us who’ve been using PCs for years will have picked up or held onto habits that are probably not ideal, at least not as the designers of the latest software might have in mind – but as the customer is always right, if we want to be backward, then the system should accommodate that, right?

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Windows users of old: at which point did you finally accept the default, and stop disabling the Hide extensions for known file types setting in Windows Explorer? Let hidden files stay that way? Or do you still switch these options on?
Are you holding on too tight?

And do you still think of directories or have you embraced folders? Do you still want a D: drive to put all your data on?

Well, many of us will habitually drop stuff onto the Windows desktop because it’s generally easy to find (press WindowsKey-D and, tada!, there it is) – though it’s always possible to go over the top.

If you want to drag an attachment from Outlook and upload it to a SharePoint site, for example – you’ll need to copy the file to somewhere on your PC and then upload from there. And the desktop can be just the simplest way to do that (press WindowsKey and left or right arrow key to snap Outlook to the side, potentially exposing the desktop beneath… a perfect target for dragging & dropping files onto).

Syncety Sync

What Tim was musing over, however, was the scenario when you have multiple PCs and you drop a document (or folder full of them) onto the desktop – wouldn’t it be nice if OneDrive could replicate the desktop onto the other machine(s)? Windows 8 makes it easy to roam lots of settings (the Start menu layout, the desktop backdrop etc) between machines, but it doesn’t sync the actual contents of the desktop out of the box.

Worry not: it’s possible. Firstly, you need the OneDrive software on every PC (it’s installed by default on Windows 8.1, including Surface RT), then you’ll re-point the Desktop to a location that OneDrive can sync.

To set up sync, for the purposes of just backing up one PC or for sharing the same desktop content with several:

  • clip_image004Find the OneDrive logo in the Windows System Tray Notification Area
    (NB: if you have OneDrive for Business installed, you’ll want to make sure you pick the white consumer OneDrive icon, rather than the blue business one…)
  • clip_image006Right-click the icon, then open the OneDrive folder using Explorer, right-click in the resulting window and create a folder where you want the Desktop contents to be. It might help to copy the location of that folder to the clipboard, for use shortly…
  • Hold the SHIFT key, and then right-click on your new folder– and use the phenomenally handy Copy as path option that only appears when you hold down SHIFT.
  • clip_image007Now, in the same Explorer window, scroll down in the folder list to see the This PC section and right-click on Desktop, then Properties, then look to the Location tab.
  • Now click the Move button, paste the contents of the clipboard (the path to the folder you created in OneDrive) into the dialog that pops up, Select Folder then confirm that you’d like to move the contents of the desktop across.

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Now, any folders or files you drop on the desktop will synchronise to other PCs if you repeat the same process as above. If you have lots of folders full of stuff, you’ll need to wait a little, while OneDrive syncs them for you. Right-click on the OneDrive icon in your system tray again, and click Sync if you’d like to see the status.

Tip o’ the Week #248 – Sense the WiFi

Posted on by ewand

clip_image002Sense the network: Use the Force.

One of the cool new features in Windows Phone 8.1 is “WiFi Sense” –  it’s enabled by default and, in a nutshell, is used to let other people access WiFi networks you already know about, without them having to type in the network password. It also lets you connect to known open networks or secured ones shared by your friends.

If you connect to a network and put in a password, and you’ve allowed WiFi Sense to do so, then your contacts of a given type (who also have WP8.1), will be able to connect to that same WiFi network without needing to know the password. The actual passcode itself is not shared with the contact directly, but it is sent to their phone in a hashed way that means it can be presented to the network for access, without their phone even knowing what the password is. If you’ve only just shared your home network, it could take a couple of days for it to percolate through the WiFi Sense system and show up on your friends’ phones, so take it easy and give it some time.

clip_image004In practice, this means that if you set a password on your home WiFi, your pals who have WP8.1 will be able to use your home network without clip_image006needing your password (or, in fact, your permission – they’re your friends, after all…). If you live in an apartment block in the city, you might want to be careful about this as you could well have neighbours you know leeching on your broadband, but if you live in a more rural location then perhaps you can trust that the only people within range of your network will be those that you invite onto your property.

The benefit of having WiFi Sense turned on is that your phone will automatically connect to known networks, and use them instead of racking up bandwidth charges on your phone bill (especially handy when travelleing).

The service not only lets you connect to networks enabled by your friends, but open networks are shared by everyone with WiFi Sense switched on (via a crowdsourcing arrangement), and are connected to automatically, accepting T&Cs, providing details like your name & phone number etc. As it happens, the phone comes with a usefully vague set of default information (check it out by going into WiFi settings / WiFi Sense / edit info).

WiFi Sense is available in most countries – for more details or to see more info on how it works, check out the WiFi Sense FAQ.

Tip o’ the Week #247 – Block the adverts in IE

Posted on by ewand

clip_image001Adverts. The economy of much of the web is dependent on them, as evidenced by where Google makes its money. Of course, other advertising services are available.

Sometimes, you’ll get ads targeted at you, offering things you didn’t know you wanted. The day that happens, make sure you buy a lottery ticket.

clip_image002Sometimes you’ll get ads targeted that you definitely don’t want, or that the advertisers wouldn’t want to juxtapose with the adjacent content or other ads. Of course, this doesn’t just happen in online ads –  print gets it wrong sometimes, and you can’t always trust that poster displays will have the sensitivity the advertisers might have wanted.

Even with sophisticated targeting algorithms, it’s all too easy to see ads placed all over  your favourite sites, that compete against or even conflict with the content, show you ads for stuff you’ve already bought or browsed at another site and decided not to buy.

There are plenty of funny websites out there, showing photos of real-life advertising that has backfired (many too close to the bone to feature here, so beware…)  – for a 5 minute laugh on a Friday, check out here or here.

 

If you’ve had enough of ads in your browser, Tip o’ the Week reader Nick Lines has the following advice…

…..

Advertising on the web: it's the way a lot of content providers get their revenue and many argue it makes the internet go round, but sometimes it's obstructive, offensive, misleading or just pushes your buttons the wrong way.  If it gets to the point that you're avoiding using a site, no-one's winning. 

clip_image004If you've used other browsers – yes, incredibly, there are alternatives out there – then there's a good chance you may have experimented with ad blockers to eradicate the worst offenders from your favourite sites.   My personal browser of choice used to be Firefox with Adblock plus configured, with IE used at work.  The main reason for not using IE all the time was the lack of an effective ad blocker.  I tried Adblock plus, which has an Internet Explorer version: it didn't work well for me, causing issues with some sites not loading, and frequent hangs or crashes.  I was hopeful for Ghostery, however they've pulled their IE version temporarily and it hasn't returned.

At this point, I'd resigned to be haunted by ads but when Taboola started appearing on more and more sites, I redoubled my efforts to find a solution. Taboola provides “click-bait” articles often with sensationalist titles, that show up on content websites – “Other readers also like…” type sections, with tantalising excerpts to encourage you to click. The resulting page is generally covered in ads, and Taboola share their ad revenue with the site that provided the link in the first place. Here’s what Auntie Beeb had to say about them.

clip_image006Hands up everyone who knew Internet Explorer has an ad blocker built in?  Oh, that many?  Keep your hands up if you knew it works brilliantly?  Ah, so it's not just me who didn't know about this…  It's in the "Tracking protection" functionality.  Obviously.

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To enable, try going into Tools | Safety | Turn on Tracking Protection to turn on the feature. 

This will then display the Manage add-ons dialog  – select Tracking Protection then Get a Tracking Protection List online…  IE will load a site to give you a list of providers, though there have been reports of the URL being incorrect. Open this site to add Tracking Protection Lists if you don’t see the list of TPLs right away.

clip_image010I've found EasyList and Privacy Choice do the job, and Privacy Choice was the one that removed Taboola from my favourite sites. 

Ad blocking can be a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a walnut, however many of the list providers are actively working with advertisers to validate and provide a way for decent ads to still be shown.  Getting in contact with the websites admin might work: as an example, Pistonheads has had a prolonged user backlash against Taboola (though it’s still in use at time of writing…)

…..

clip_image012Thanks to Nick for such a neat trick – let’s put it to the test. First, let’s look at a nice article online. Plenty of ads all over… and at the bottom, the “You May Like” section shows …

Adding the TPLs as described above (ensuring they’re “Enabled”), hitting refresh in the browser… and You May Like has gone, along with all the ads on the side of the page.

Just like that!

IoT at Future Decoded, Excel Docklands, London–12th November

Posted on by ewand

Future DecodedThere's a 3-day conference called "Future Decoded" running at the Excel centre in London's Docklands, with the Technical Day on 12th Nov having keynote speakers such as Prof Brian Cox, Sir Nigel Shadbolt (founder of the Open Data Institute) and Michael Taylor, the IT Director of Lotus F1.

There's an IoT track in the afternoon which includes sessions from a couple of Microsoft luminaries as well as from Dr Colin Birchenall, the Chief Architect for Future City Glasgow (a £24 million Demonstrator programme funded by Innovate UK) to showcase smart city principles and technologies at scale.

Tickets to attend are free; more details and the registration link are at http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/about/future-decoded-techday/agenda

Tip o’ the Week #246 – The least-used key on your keyboard

Posted on by ewand

clip_image002The computer keyboard will probably be with us for many years to come – it’s just such an efficient way (once you get used to it) of text entry, that it’s hard to imagine it’ll be replaced entirely with gestures or by speech.

There are some pretty obscure keys on the standard PC keyboard though – many of which date to the very earliest implementations of the IBM PC. What does Scroll Lock do, for example, other than annoy Excel users who think they’re moving the cursor around inside the sheet, only to find the whole thing is scrolling up and down?

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The Pause key (often doubled up with Break, which dates back to the days of the telegraph) has one interesting modern side effect – press WindowsKey + Pause, and your machine will jump straight to the “System Properties” page – a handy way of checking the config of a machine you’re using.

These kinds of tips were once redolent of the doyen of desk-side PC support, where every second spared in visiting a user was time better spent in the pub. All of this is of course lost now, what with the risk in desktop sharing via Lync or Remote Desktop software.

The AltGr key normally found to the right of the space bar has a few odd functions that are not often needed, from a way of setting formatting in Office to a means of entering accented characters. Try AltGr+e for example to chuck an é into a name, and keep people with extravagant names happy that you’ve bothered to spell them correctly. There are other ways of doing the same thing, too – Office apps all have a means of using “dead keys”, eg CTRL+ ‘ followed by an appropriate letter would render an acute accent, or the CTRL+ ` (generally found on the key below Escape) will render the next letter with a  grave. CTRL + Caret (^), Colon (:) or Tilde (~) will accent the following letter with the appropriate accent. See here for more international Office fun.

Finally, there’s the strange “menu” key, sometimes referred to a “application” or “right click” – usually found to the right of AltGr. It’s generally used as the equivalent of right-clicking a clip_image006mouse, though can be followed up with other keys to quickly perform functions that might otherwise need a few clicks or menu commands.

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One example – if you are looking to paste some text in a document or email, you can quickly press the menu button then follow with T if you only want to paste the text only (ie plain text, not the formatting) or M if you want to merge formatting.

In a Metro Modern application, the menu/application/right-click key also has the same effect as swiping up from the bottom of the screen (or pressing WindowsKey + Z).