Tip o’ the Week #95 – the new Windows Phone lock screen

Posted on February 3, 2012 by ewand

One of the most immediately user-friendly aspects of Windows Phone 7.5, aka Mango, is also one that is not automatically enabled… Try this out, and I bet you’ll love it. Show to your friends who’ve upgraded: they’ll love it too.

Windows Phone supports having a PIN lock policy so that if you haven’t used your device for a period of time, you’ll need the PIN to wake it up again. Pretty much every phone that supports the Exchange ActiveSync protocol has something similar, and many companies will not allow any device to connect & sync email unless the policy is active and set up.

With Windows Phone 7, the lock policy also kicked in every time the screen went off, either by the user pressing the power button to switch it off, or because of a time-out. Not an amazing hardship to have to enter a 4-digit PIN, but it’s a slight annoyance.

Deliverance from the PIN

Mango introduces a number of new and useful capabilities to the Lock Screen – the principal one being that you can set a time-out before a password needs to be entered.

So, you can “lock” the screen with the power button and unlock it again with only a press of the button and a swipe upwards, rather than having to enter your PIN again – up to 15 minutes after the phone was locked. Really handy if you’re walking along the street and need to consult the Maps app again; a simple press and swipe and you’re straight back in.

To set, simply go into settings -> lock + wallpaper.

The first time-out is the one that automatically switches the screen off (and that would have PIN-locked the phone in WP7 too). The second time-out specifies how long a grace period you have before you need to unlock with a PIN.

Wallpaper

If you want to customise your phone’s wallpaper, there’s an option (just off the top of the screenshot above) to do so, or you can press and hold on any image, and it will let you set it to be the wallpaper – even pictures that people have emailed you (just open the pic from Outlook, press/hold, and bingo).

The new lock screen in Mango lets you show the Zune-supplied artist’s photo as your wallpaper whilst you’re listening to music. When you stop the track, it reverts back to whatever wallpaper you had before.

Tip o’ the Week #81 – I’m Late!

Posted on December 9, 2011 by ewand

We’ve all had that feeling when you just know you aren’t going to make it in time for your next meeting… You know, you’re in Building 1 and the meeting’s at the top of Building 5, or you’re stuck in traffic, or in another meeting that’s already running over and isn’t going to end any time soon..?

Obviously, it would be polite to tell people when you can’t make it to a meeting on time… but emailing everyone to say you’ll be late will just make you later still…

I’m Late! I’m Late!!

If you use Windows Phone 7, have a look in a calendar appointment which is a meeting (ie where there are invited attendees, rather than just an appointment you’ve put in your own calendar), and you’ll see a “late” option on the menu at the bottom of the screen…

…tap on that and it will create an email ready to be sent to everyone in the meeting (if you’re the organiser), and if you’re merely an attendee, you can choose if you want the whole meeting to know of your tardiness, or if you’d rather just send an email to the organiser directly.

UMm…

Everyone who uses Exchange 2010 with its Unified Messaging capability (where voice mail is handled by Exchange) can also dial in to collect voicemails, have the Exchange Server read out emails and calendar appointments etc. One of the options when in the calendar, is to say “I’ll be late” – whereupon the server will send an email on your behalf to everyone – useful if you can’t actually type at the time (maybe you’re in the car, or running along the corridor…)

From within Lync, it’s easy to get to your Voice Mail – click on the large telephone icon near the top of the main Lync window, and you can dial into or set up Voice Mail from there.

Try calling Voice Mail and saying “Calendar for today”, and the Exchange server will read out details of your current meeting, or others in the schedule. You can then tell it you’ll be late, and by how much, or even simply say “I’ll be 10 minutes late”.

To call from your mobile, try setting up a contact in Outlook to dial into your Unified Messaging mailbox – set the contact’s phone number (for Microsoft UK users) to: +44 118 909 nnnn x p12345678#, replacing “118 909 nnnn” with the phone number you’d use to dial in to your own Exchange UM, and “12345678” with the handy 8 digit (or whatever length) PIN that the Exchange server wants you to set.

If you don’t know what your PIN is, never fear – you can reset it quickly from Outlook 2010, by going to the File menu and clicking…

Just make sure when you have to change the PIN, you remember to update the Outlook contact(s) that contain it, to reflect your new number. If you call the standard access number from another phone, you’ll need to tell it what your extension number is, but if you’ve got your mobile set up in the GAL properly, then it’s possible that Exchange can tell it’s your phone, so all you need to provide is your PIN. If you dial from Lync (as above), then you’ve already logged into the network so don’t even need a PIN. Clever, eh?

It’s worth setting up a couple of contacts to get you straight into UM – one with the number as above to take you to the spoken voice prompt, and one with the number +44 0118 909 nnnn x p12345678#001, which will automatically switch to using touch-tone numbers, and will drop you into playback of voice mail messages – handy if you know you have a new message to retrieve, especially so if you’re in a public space (where talking aloud to the server will have your tarred with the epithet “loony”) or other noisy environment, where you’d never be understood anyway.

Finally, if you like to update your voice mail message (saying you’re at WPC or MGX or Tech Ready, for example) then set up another contact with the number +44118909nnnn x p12345678#006212 – dialing that from your mobile phone will take you straight to the “record your message after the tone” prompt.

Tip o’ the Week #94 – Have you been Mango’d?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by ewand

This is another out-of-sequence-because-it’s-topical Tip… normal service will resume soon…

I’m glad so many people enjoyed last week’s tip on getting Windows Phone “Mango” and making your own ringtones for it. Yes, ringtone creation is something of a palaver, but brings a sense of satisfaction that refreshes the parts other fruits cannot reach.

As you use Mango (or Windows Phone 7.5 to give it the full handle), you’ll see lots of incremental improvements in the way things work – the threading of emails, the deeper integration of Windows Live & Facebook in messaging, adding LinkedIn & Twitter etc.
There are a few major areas that are worth exploring though.

Multi-tasking

One of the best under-the-covers features is the ability to jump between running (multi-tasking) applications. Want to copy a URL from Internet Explorer and paste it into an email…? Well, instead of going back to the Start Screen from one app to then start another, just press and hold the Back button on the bottom of your phone, and you’ll see the “App Switcher” – allowing you to swipe across and dive straight into another running application. ALT-TAB comes to your phone!

Apps that are written to take specific advantage of Mango’s multi-tasking can run in the background too… if you look in settings -> applications under background tasks, you’ll see a list of which apps are running in the background, and if you press advanced you’ll see which ones are able to.

The other buttons

It’s worth noting that the buttons on the bottom have changed their meaning somewhat – press and hold the Windows logo and you’ll get to give your phone spoken commands – not all new, but one nice addition is the ability to text someone by just talking to the phone… eg say “text <contact name>”, and then have hours of fun with freeform dictation, tarring with appropriate epithets in the hope that the phone will recognise what you say.

The magnifying glass/search button also changes its behaviour now, so it always takes you to the Bing app, rather than searching within an application. You’ll see a magnifier icon within apps, and tapping on that lets you find content in that application.

An example, and another really nice tweak in Mango, is the way it handles the App List (when you swipe right->left on the Start Screen) – if you have lots of apps installed, you can now jump straight to a grouping of apps by letter tile (like you can in Contacts, for example) or can search all your installed Apps, even extending the search to the Marketplace.

The Bing application is very cool now, too – it includes “Local Scout” search functionality that will show you what’s nearby (if you have the GPS function switched on), and will take you straight to the further improved Maps application to show you not only where your search result is, but can show you how to get there. Really very nice.

Internet Explorer

Finally, for this week, there’s the much-improved, hardware-accelerated, HTML5-supporting, mobile Internet Explorer 9. [In some tests, it’s waaaay faster than the iPhone 4 and Android].

As well as making it a lot faster, the development team redesigned the browser to make it even less intrusive to the web experience than before – see here for more information. One notable change is moving the address bar from the top to the bottom of the screen – simple usability feedback drove that change.

Incidentally, did you know that when you’re entering an address in the browser, if you press and hold the “.com” button, it will offer a few variants…?

Might just help you get your address there a little quicker…

Tip o’ the Week #93 – Ring the changes with Mango

Posted on November 4, 2011 by ewand

Windows Phone 7.5 – aka Mango – is here! (Find out what’s new).

I’m publishing this tip out of sequence as I think it is relatively topical and rather than wait until the end of January 2012 – when it would be scheduled to go – I figured it would be useful to share it now.

If your Windows Phone 7 hasn’t already prompted you to update, then it should do so soon. If you’re super-desperately-laser-focused-excited, you might want to follow the steps taken by some enterprising types who have figured out how to force the update to get downloaded.

One of the nice changes that’s been a while coming is the ability to set your own ringtones, so you can pick your phone out from everyone else’s when it starts to ring, after you’ve left it on your desk on the other side of the open-plan office. Choose an appropriate ditty like “The Birdy Song” or “Agadoo” to amuse your colleagues. Or maybe not.

Create your own Ringtones

There are a few rules to follow when making your own Ringtones. Firstly, the music/sound must be MP3 or WMA in format and not copy protected (eg not downloaded with a Zune pass), and it needs to be less than 40 seconds in length and less than 1Mb in size. Finally, it has to have the genre “Ringtone” set within the Zune software, then be synced to the phone.

All of this means it’s unlikely that your existing music will be suitable – you’re probably going to need to chop the sounds down in length so you can use them as a ringtone. You could use a variety of software to edit the waveform of a sound file, but a free and simple-to-use download called AVCWare Ringtone Maker* does the trick nicely. Just load up the sound file, mark the start & finish points you want and set the properties of the tune to make sure the clip is small in size (might as well make it mono, and you could probably lower the bitrate to 64). Click on the “Convert” button and in a few seconds you’ll have a neatly trimmed tune.

Save the sound file in one of your Music folders, and in the desktop Zune software, you should be able to locate the new file (probably without any of the artist information, but you can edit its title so you know it’s a Ringtone), and set the Genre to be “Ringtone” so when you sync it to the phone, it shows up in the correct place.

Save your changes, now right-click on the song and choose to sync it with your phone. Once that’s completed, go into the Settings on the phone, choose ringtones+sounds and the “Custom” tones should be at the very top of the list. If your new one doesn’t show, then either it doesn’t meet the requirements on size & format, or it hasn’t been tagged properly with the right Genre. The “Ringtone” Genre setting means that your custom ringtones don’t appear within the Music & Videos hub on the phone.

*NB: Internet Explorer identified the AVCWare setup file as potentially suspicious, but it appears to be clean.

Reading Microsoft Tag

Microsoft Tag has been covered in previous Tips o’ the Week, so it’s good to see the Tag reader (and QR Code scanner) being built into Mango rather than having to download it separately.

To read a tag, simply press the magnifying glass symbol on the front of the phone – this has now changed behaviour so instead of searching within an application, it always launches the Bing search app, which itself has received numerous tweaks. If you tap on the eye icon on the bottom of the Bing app, it will switch to scan mode.

Now, just point the phone at the Tag and if it is recognised then you should see the detail of the Tag appear on the screen – tap on that to action it (eg follow the URL or open the contact information etc). To create tags of your own, check out http://tag.microsoft.com

Tip o’ the Week #70 – Windows Phone 7 usage abroad

Posted on September 30, 2011 by ewand

If you’re planning on taking your Windows Phone to sunnier climes over the autumn/winter, this tip might help. One side-effect of going abroad is that the numbers you may have saved in your contacts, won’t be able to dial – 07802 etc won’t make any sense if you’re in the US….

One elegant solution to this problem would be to fix up all your contact numbers in Outlook, using a technique discussed way back in previous posts (here and here) to sort out the formatting of contacts’ phone numbers (the E.164 format – such as +44 118 etc – again, something I’ve dealt with before).

Now, Windows Phone 7 has some built-in intelligence to try to figure out what you’re attempting to dial when you’re overseas. It should be switched on by default – to check, go into Settings, then swipe right to applications and look under phone, and check International Assist is on.

Allen, being a fiduciarily responsible sort of chap, was concerned that he didn’t want to rack up lots of data charges whilst abroad, and so was keen to make sure data roaming was switched off. This is also the default setting: if you’d like to verify the fact, or if you’d like to switch roaming back on so you can use (at astronomical expense, mind) the phone’s data services whilst overseas, go into Settings, swipe down to mobile network and check to see if roam or don’t roam is set.

When you’re abroad, you might find that you can connect on free WiFi networks instead – go into Settings / WiFi and look for suitable networks. There are various apps which purport to tell you if you’re connecting via GSM/3G or WiFi, however if you switch off Data Connection and/or roaming from the mobile network settings, you can be certain you’re only using WiFi.

There are even tools which promise to do all the “yes, I accept your terms and conditions, yadda, yadda” stuff that you might have to complete in the browser after connecting to Starbucks etc WiFi, before you can use the rest of the internet. As they say, YMMV.

Tip o’ the Week #58 – Find your meeting, or your Windows Phone

Posted on August 19, 2011 by ewand

This week, a couple of smart tips concerning Windows Phone 7. Both revolve around finding something – in one case, how to find your phone if you’re not sure where you left it, and the other, how to remind yourself where you’re going.

Dude, where’s my phone…?
This tip uses the location services built in to Windows Phone 7 – services which you may want to switch off if you’re having battery life issues, but which can help you out by geotagging photos (so the GPS location of the photo you take is recorded in the photo, and it’s supported in Windows Live Photo Gallery too) or by finding where you are on the map.

· If you do want to switch off Location Services, go into settings | system and under location, switch off

To turn off geotagging by default, go into settings | applications (by swiping to the left), then under pictures and camera, switch off Include location (GPS)…
To use location services in maps, just go into the Maps app and press the crosshairs button (bottom, middle) to have the phone show where you currently are on the map. When in the map view, try using use the search button on the bottom right of the phone – enter a term like restaurants, pubs, vets, petrol etc… and the map will show you what’s nearby.

If you habitually leave your phone and don’t know where, there is a facility to find out where the phone was last seen, but you need to switch it on (it’s off by default), in settings | system and under find my phone.

To check where you left your phone, you’ll need to have already set up a Windows Live address on the phone (giving access to SkyDrive etc), and then visit http://windowsphone.live.com/ on your PC – under the “FIND MY PHONE” link, you can see your phone’s approximate location on a map, erase its contents if it’s hopelessly lost, lock the device so it can’t be used (and include a “please return to… “message on the home screen) or even make the phone ring, regardless of whether it’s on mute or not… so if it’s in a hidden pocket, you’ve got a chance of giving it a poke to make some noise.

If and when you find the phone, to stop the special ring-tone, just press the power button once (the same trick that you can use to silence any ringing phone, even when locked).

Where do you want to go today?

One reader started using a great trick for remembering where he’s going – by pinning the map location to the home screen. Start by searching for a location, address, facility etc in the Maps app, then press and hold on the flag to see a detailed view of that location offering “about” (including address details, phone numbers), possibly some restaurant reviews etc, and “nearby” (other places in the vicinity).

If you look to the bottom left of the screen, you’ll see a pin shape that lets you pin a tile to the home screen; tap on the tile to return to the “about” page, and tap on the map image in the about page to go straight to the map in the Bing Maps app.

Tap and hold on the map tile on the home screen to remove it when you’re done.

Nice. Really nice. For more map tips, check here.

Tip o’ the Week #57 – Using Microsoft Tag on Windows Phone

Posted on August 12, 2011 by ewand

The “Tag” initiative has been around for a little while, in beta guise initially, then general release. The idea is that anyone can generate a 2D “barcode” that can could be a link to a website for more information, could be contact information, some plain text or even a “dialer” that would redirect a mobile device to call your number. If you’re printing posters or any other ad material, it’s easy to include a tag, and it can be customised so it’s not such an eye-sore as other, similar tagging approaches.

The ideal consumption device for tags is a mobile phone with a camera, and the team behind this technology have been profligate with their support for phone platforms – send anyone to http://gettag.mobi and they can get software for Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Java, Symbian, Windows Mobile & Windows Phone 7 (also available from the Zune Marketplace on your PC if you’re using WP7).

To use a tag, just fire up the app, point your phone at the physical – or on-screen – instance of the tag, and within the app, “scan” it by taking a picture. It’s as simple as that. The phone will then take you to the website, call the number, display the text or give you the option of saving the contact details.

If you want to generate your own tags, it’s a piece of cake – head over to http://tag.microsoft.com and sign in with your Windows Live ID. You can then create tags and download in a variety of formats, and even track how often the tags you create have been opened.

For stories of how Microsoft Tag is being used – including a photo of a guy with a Tag tattoo on his head – check out the team’s blog. Here’s another example of tag customisation that blends in a bit more than the relatively ugly QR Codes that some ads contain.