Messages

126

General Software Discussion / Re: Are you going to wait for Windows 9?

« on: November 21, 2012, 02:50 PM »

Here's a nice little rebuttal to Nielsen's thoughts.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 20, 2012, 07:35 PM »

Funnily enough, now that Zune is out of the equation iTunes and that connector problem seems to be the only way to sync podcasts right now. (You can subscribe to them via the Marketplace on the phone, but there's no desktop connection and no way to add podcasts that aren't in the market place. . . )

-allen (November 20, 2012, 12:07 PM)

Do you think MS is going to insist on their closed ecosystem?  Or do you think people are going to start complaining a lot and they will open up the features?  I think the latter will happen, but I'm way out of the loop.  I'm more worried that MS has designed the OS in such a way that certain important functions won't even be accessible to developers that were accessible with previous windows versions.

-superboyac (November 20, 2012, 07:15 PM)

I am almost certain that it wasn't a purposeful move, they just didn't get it done before launch. Like every other complaint I have with Windows Phone 8, this is functionality that was previously accomplished using the Zune desktop application that they didn't account for when cutting Zune out of the picture.

It could be worse, though -- at least in the US I have access to podcasts in the store. The international community just can't listen to podcasts unless they do so using a third party application.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 20, 2012, 12:07 PM »

Funnily enough, now that Zune is out of the equation iTunes and that connector problem seems to be the only way to sync podcasts right now. (You can subscribe to them via the Marketplace on the phone, but there's no desktop connection and no way to add podcasts that aren't in the market place. . . )

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 20, 2012, 08:07 AM »

No man, that's way too manual. The "Windows Phone" Windows 8 app auto-syncs content when plugged in over usb. There is also a Desktop/Windows 7 program (You linked to it previously) that I presume can do the same.

-allen (November 19, 2012, 11:20 PM)

This one? http://www.windowsph...hone-app-for-desktop

Apparently there's a version that runs on a Mac ... But:

The Windows Phone app for desktop won't work on Windows RT

.
That's rather dumb.

-Stoic Joker (November 20, 2012, 06:43 AM)

The desktop app won't run on RT, none do. The Windows Phone app would work on RT and is what I use on Windows 8.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 11:20 PM »

No man, that's way too manual. The "Windows Phone" Windows 8 app auto-syncs content when plugged in over usb. There is also a Desktop/Windows 7 program (You linked to it previously) that I presume can do the same.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Thoughts on this sort of UI styling?

« on: November 19, 2012, 11:15 PM »

I like it as is. None of the UI dress ups detract from it's concisely stated purpose...which allows me to glance at it, like it, and properly understand its purpose in one shot.

-Stoic Joker (November 19, 2012, 06:49 AM)

What he said. I think it looks really nice.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 10:24 PM »

I hadn't noticed the "Uploads" section previously, so I hadn't stalked my photos. I just let it happen in the background. Now that I've got a video uploading I have an observation: the uploads section sucks, at least for big files. It doesn't have any sort of progress indicator. If there was a % on there somewhere, that would be great, otherwise the queue doesn't do an awful lot of good except to tell you that you have a queue.

Oh, it finished! It was a minute clip, about 200 megs, and it took 6 or 7 minutes to upload over wifi. No problems to report. Had I not been stalking the download dialog for the purpose of this test it would have been a better experience, quietly in the background. But at (at least) 6 minutes a pop, I can see how several videos would tie up your skydrive sync for a while. My takeaway is, I'm turning off video uploading. Should I make a video, I'll plug it in to my pc.

In general, I've been very disappointed in the Windows 8 sync app (coming from Zune, which I still think is the unsung best-ever media platform), but they did one thing right--that app will automatically drop everything in your skydrive folder if you have it installed so it ends up backed up on the cloud. (Apparently I had the foresight to set my skydrive photos as my default folder in my "Photos" collection)

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 09:45 PM »

Yes, for news and information based sites I always opt for the mobile version. Straight to the point, less crap -- and now that my data plan is tiny I appreciate them all the more. I bet your load times double if you've got a movie converting and uploading!

By the way how is the video filming on it? How does it compare to other devices you've used? Nokia really hyped that camera, but I don't have a benchmark to compare it against really.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 09:21 PM »

It loaded instantly. Oh, I had the mobile version setting enabled (I only have 1G of data

The full version of the site... the progress bar was at half and the text visible maybe two seconds in, then the bar filled up and it took a few more seconds before it stopped loading. The whole process probably was 15 or 20 seconds, tops. By comparison, it wasn't much faster in Chrome on my desktop. Granted, this was over WiFi, but we're not comparing ISP's here

I clicked through for a while and any given story was fully readable within 2-4 seconds, there still was some loading time after that varying from 15 to 30 seconds but it's just that crap in the sidebar being pulled in by AJAX.

Switching to 4g (3 bars, I don't think LTE?) slowed it down a little bit but still faster that your 30-60 seconds. I still could read the article within 3-5 seconds.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 08:47 PM »

I've had the phone a week and have restarted it fewer times total than you did yesterday. I haven't made any videos but my photos upload silently in the background like they're supposed to.  I've had no connectivity issues and the browser seems fast enough. For the most part, everything just works. Is your WiFi and LTE connection generally good and stable for other devices? I'd say cause for concern. . . maybe a factory reset and a clean slate would rectify things or maybe you got a device with a defective radio or something.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 03:44 PM »

I haven't had any problem with the camera roll auto uploading. Under photos, I have skydrive set to best quality (needs Wi-Fi) for both and it has worked. I don't think there's any way to get the other folders to sync at this time (Though the backup settings seem to imply ALL photos should be backed up). Have you tried rebooting the phone?

I am quite sure Java and Flash are never going to happen. With WP7, I don't think it was possible to make a browser that didn't use IE at the core--I'm guessing it's the same way with WP8. Maybe you should stick with Android

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 19, 2012, 02:13 PM »

My "Camera Roll" automatically uploads but that's it. . . I'd have thought everything would.

138

Living Room / Re: Patent on Turning Pages

« on: November 17, 2012, 09:22 PM »

Not Telling An Idea . . . that's brilliant! I just filed the patent, you lose cheapskate.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 17, 2012, 09:26 AM »

Check out 627.am and WPCentral -- both apps are superbly designed. 627 could be an alarm + weather app replacement if not for the fact that the api it uses for weather data is about 10 degrees off (at least for my location) ruling it out for me. Still, it's nice to look at.

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Living Room / Re: First Time With Win 8

« on: November 16, 2012, 08:36 AM »

Allen's an alien?  I should have guessed he got 'taken over' once he got rid of (most of the) beard.

-mwb1100 (November 15, 2012, 06:26 PM)

We need a "like" button or something like that around here . . . instead, I'll just settle for this stupid post and an emoticon. 

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 16, 2012, 07:44 AM »

I hadn't realized you could drag stuff directly to the device either, I assumed you couldn't as was the case with every other zune/post-zune device they made. While trying to find out if the Desktop WP app was better than the metro one, I found this handy reference.

I haven't transferred anything over yet as I've been trying to give the Xbox Music experience a go. I let it scan and match my library on one pc and magically most of my music is available to stream on my phone and laptop. The music player needs a little work before it's up to the standard Zune set for seemless use/navigation but otherwise I'm pretty pleased with the setup. Granted, at some point I'll need to figure out the most convenient way to actually put music on the device rather than stream it.

As for jumping to conclusions... we're all trying to feel our way through. Windows Phone does things differently. Even coming from Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8 is its own thing.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 06:06 PM »

If you're talking about music, photos, documents, etc., just plug it in -- unlike WP7 you can mount it and copy files back and forth.  The filesystem doesn't give full access to the phone's internals, if that's what you're after, but it is an easy way to move things around.

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Living Room / Re: First Time With Win 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 04:58 PM »

makeuseof won't let me use a mailinator address... drats!

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 04:39 PM »

With WP7, the updates had to go through the carrier. Not unlike Android, they were slow, painful, few and far between. My understanding is that with WP8 they're coming straight from MS, so they can keep the updates rolling. I sure hope that's the case--considering WP8 needs some update love, sooner the better.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Tips for Windows 8 (got any?)

« on: November 15, 2012, 03:44 PM »

Lockergnome has a pretty good cheat sheet that covers both new keyboard shortcuts and those that have been around for a while.

My personal favorite new one is win+. and win+shift+. (That's win period). Some of the new "modern" apps are pretty cool when pinned to the side of your desktop. I most often use it for Music, mail or twitter depending on what I'm doing.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 09:49 AM »

I had the same questions.  Why is MS rushing to make any release?  Who is making the schedule?  Just make it right!  If you need to meet a date, just spend another few thousand and get a few more people.

-superboyac (November 15, 2012, 09:36 AM)

I think they wanted to push the many screens idea, keeping win 8, win rt and win phone 8 all in a close time frame. Why they weren't able to get everything right in time, I don't know, but I think they were probably right with the timing.  And it's all got to hit the shelves for the holidays, otherwise everybody will get their new iphone or android and so much for WP8.

There are some shortcomings, for sure, but the big pieces are all there. I love the 920 and I really want the WP platform to succeed. . . my beloved WebOS is dead and I don't like Android or iOS.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 09:43 AM »

It does feel like a transitional period.  I'll be very interested in developments with file transferring between the phone and pc.  That WP7 wifi sync described above sounds great, I hope they bring it back.  Or I hope someone else will make a 3rd party app for stuff like that.  Am I crazy in believing that Windows is interested in giving developers a flexible platform to program in?  Or are they limiting what you can and can't program?  For example, apple won't let you do any programs that mess with the alarm clock features.  Is Nokia/MS going to be like that also, where developers won't be allowed to touch certain low level OS features, like stuff in the control panel, wifi settings, file/folder exploring, etc.?

-superboyac (November 15, 2012, 09:28 AM)

Sorry, pal -- you're thinking of Android. Microsoft is going the way of a tightly controlled ecosystem. I believe that WP8 gives developers access to a lot of things that were restricted in WP7 but it's still a matter of you having access to MS provided API's, not total system access. If you want an open platform, Motorola+Android.

I believe MS does give the vendors (HTC, Nokia) a great deal more access. One example that comes to mind from WP7 was the camera flash -- I don't know about 8, but on 7 only the camera had the ability to control the flash led. HTC phones came with a "flashlight" app that would turn on the camera flash and keep it on. Non htc phones couldn't do that.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 09:19 AM »

Out of curiosity, does the Win8 phone have a desktop app similar to iTunes that allows you to do minor admin type things to it, or does everything need to be done on the device itself?

-40hz (November 15, 2012, 09:02 AM)

Sync is one place they really dropped the ball moving from Windows 7/Windows Phone 7 to 8. The way WP7 synchronized with Zune was excellent and could be set to automatically do so over WiFi when charging and idle. The Windows 8 RT style app for Windows Phone is a joke. You can use it to push music to your device and download photos but it requires a USB connection . . . backwards progress. I'm guessing the app superboyac linked to is just a normal desktop version of the same halfbaked sync features but I'll install it and see.

Microsoft has mentioned on more than one occasion that they ran out of time with the release, so hopefully what we're seeing isn't a vision of the future but an awkward transitional period.

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 15, 2012, 12:27 AM »

I'm not aware of any phone updates, but if there are/were it'd be under settings -> phone update. Nokia updated a bunch of their apps today (open the market, should be an "update" option on the bottom to update updated apps).

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Living Room / Re: Well, I got it: Nokia Lumia 920, Windows 8

« on: November 14, 2012, 01:18 PM »

I don't know a wasp from a yellow jacket from a hornet, so thanks for clearing it up! They've been invading my house for about 3 weeks now. One managed to sting me, I've killed a couple dozen...