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Change Log for Windows 8

Change Log for Windows Phone Now you can take WPDownUnder, Australia’s top Windows Phone dedicated site, with you where ever you go with the official app from Handiware. Whether you are an Aussie Developer, Windows Phone owner or Retailer – WPDownUnder is an essential site with helpful resources, analysis and information on all things Windows Phone Down Under. The app allows you to see the latest articles, comments, tweets and more on the go.

Key Features

• View and comment on the latest Articles
• Read comments from others on the latest Articles
• Get apps that are mentioned in Articles
• Search WPDownUnder
• See tweets from WPDownUnder
• Share Articles via Status Updates
• Info and Links to the Developed Down Under Campaign App (Windows Phone)
• Get notifications and tile updates when a new Article is published

Praise & Reviews

Looks really clean & great UI

]]> http://handiware.com.au/wpdownunder/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/wow-companion/ http://handiware.com.au/wow-companion/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:37:08 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1635

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Change Log for Windows Phone All the information you need about World of Warcraft in your pocket.

Key Features

• View Character Stats, Items, Reputation, Professions, Achievements, Pets, Mounts & Activity
• Realm Status
• View Guilds Stats, Roster, Achievements & News
• Add Realms, Characters & Guilds to favourites for fast access
• Helpful websites just a tap away
• EU, KR, TW & US Realms fully supported
• Blizzard News feed for your selected region
• Backup & restore app data using SkyDrive
• More exciting features coming in future updates

]]> http://handiware.com.au/wow-companion/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/world-clock-pro/ http://handiware.com.au/world-clock-pro/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:34:41 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1633

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Change Log for Windows Phone [FULLY FUNCTIONAL TRIAL WITH NO EXPIRY, JUST A COUPLE OF ADS]Not sure what time zone a particular point of Earth is in? Want to keep track of multiple time zones? Sick of having to type out city names until you find one that is included in a given app?If the answer to any of the above questions are “Yes” then World Clock Pro is for you. World Clock Pro allows you to specify your desired location on a map and it will get the time zone details for you and let you know what time and date it is in that time zone.

You can also pin a time zone to your start screen to get the time zones local time at a glance and World Clock Pro will update it in the background (roughly once every 30 minutes, providing battery power is above 20% and you have internet access).

]]> http://handiware.com.au/world-clock-pro/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/short-web/ http://handiware.com.au/short-web/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:32:59 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1631

Available On

Change Log for Windows 8

Change Log for Windows Phone Short Web is a fast & easy app which allows you to shorten a URL as well as expand a URL that has been shortened using bit.ly, goo.gl or is.gd. Statistics are also available for any URL shortened by goo.gl, with support for statistics from bit.ly coming soon.

Available Services

• Bit.ly – Shorten & Expand
• Goo.gl – Shorten, Expand & Statistics
• Is.gd – Shorten & Expand

]]> http://handiware.com.au/short-web/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/my-ikea-lists/ http://handiware.com.au/my-ikea-lists/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:30:36 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1627

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Change Log for Windows Phone Shopping at IKEA is pretty easy, walk around the show room and make a list of all the things you like. And that is great if you are there just to grab a couple of things that are easy to find, but what about when you are wanting to put a price list together for upgrading your bedroom/kitchen/lounge or any other room? All of a sudden you have a long unmanageable list (especially if you rely on the cards and pencil you get at the store).My IKEA Lists aims to make this a lot easier by allowing you to create multiple lists to which you can add and remove items. The app will also show you how many items are on your list(s) and how much the total cost is, that way you have an idea of when you can do that bathroom renovation. When it comes time to purchase the items on your list, My IKEA Lists allows you to sort your list of items by name or by Aisle which makes it a lot easier (and quicker) to get what you want and to the check outs.

]]> http://handiware.com.au/my-ikea-lists/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/music-alarm/ http://handiware.com.au/music-alarm/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:21:26 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1623

Available On

Change Log for Windows Phone Music Alarm gives you the ability to not only set an alarm to wake you up with a selection of your own music, but it also allows you set a sleep timer to stop the music you are listening to when going to sleep, all in the one app.

Key Features

• Select any music from your collection to be used as an alarm
• Set a timer to stop music that you are listening to

]]> http://handiware.com.au/music-alarm/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/mtiks-dashboard/ http://handiware.com.au/mtiks-dashboard/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:15:19 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1620

Available On

Change Log for Windows 8 View app usage analytics data for your mobile apps running Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Phone from mtiks.

Key Features:

• View session data from the last week
• View session data from the last month

Features Coming Soon:

• Search your app list to find the app you are looking for using the Search Charm
• Share App data with your colleagues to show off using the Share Charm

]]> http://handiware.com.au/mtiks-dashboard/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/lock-screen-album/ http://handiware.com.au/lock-screen-album/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:12:45 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1617

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Change Log for Windows Phone What to do when you have a folder full of images you want to use as the background of your Lock Screen, but don’t want to have to go through and choose?Load up Lock Screen Album and select the folder, the app will take care of the rest, including changing the background in the background when you are not looking.Lock Screen Album also allows you to set custom text to display on the lock screen too, just enter the text and select Lock Screen Album to be the Detailed Status provider and viola, custom text on your lock screen (and the Lock Screen Album tile).So go ahead and give it a try, it is FREE!

]]> http://handiware.com.au/lock-screen-album/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/info-share/ http://handiware.com.au/info-share/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:07:20 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1613

Available On

Change Log for Windows Phone

]]> http://handiware.com.au/info-share/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/handiware-hub/ http://handiware.com.au/handiware-hub/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:03:16 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1609

Available On

Change Log for Windows 8

Change Log for Windows Phone The one stop information hub for all things Handiware. Apps, News and the many ways you can contact us, all in one place.

]]> http://handiware.com.au/handiware-hub/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/eziwifi/ http://handiware.com.au/eziwifi/#comments Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:49:28 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1600

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Change Log for Windows Phone [FULLY FUNCTIONAL TRIAL WITH NO EXPIRY, JUST A COUPLE OF ADS]EziWiFi is not just another WiFi settings shortcut. With EziWiFi you can scan QR Codes which contain information about a Wireless Network and copy the security key/password to make connecting to WiFi easier.No longer will you need to remember a complicated string of characters when friends come over to visist.Simply scan the QR code, take note of the name (SSID) of the Wireless Network, copy the security key/password, tap WiFi Settings and then find the network with the same name and paste the password.EziWiFi also makes generating QR Codes easy and are compatible with most Android devices and some iPhone apps.

]]> http://handiware.com.au/eziwifi/feed/ 0 http://handiware.com.au/new-app-released-world-clock-pro-for-windows-phone/ http://handiware.com.au/new-app-released-world-clock-pro-for-windows-phone/#comments Sat, 16 Feb 2013 02:58:13 +0000 Garry Holden http://handiware.com.au/?p=1455

With the increasing use of social networking, email, blogs, podcasts on the internet it has become quiet common for us all to want or need to know what time it is in another part of the world (on in a different state). There are a lot of apps out there for keeping track of what the time is elsewhere in the world, but you almost always end up having to type in the name of a city to get the time zone information you are after. But what if the name of the city doesn’t appear in the app? Most people will either try to remember the name of other cities, usually bigger cities, that are nearby or look up the city on a map and work out what the nearest major city is.

Enter World Clock Pro, an app that allows you to instead use a map of the world to find time zone information for any point on land. Just move the map over the point you want the information for, tap a button and presto, you have the time and date of your selected location. No having to type in the name of a city that may not be covered. Best of all World Clock Pro allows you to save each time zone to a list to keep track of multiple locations, and if that is not quick enough for you, World Clock Pro also gives you the option to pin the time zone to your start screen and it will even update the time and date on the tile in the background (roughly every 30 minutes providing particular conditions are met on your device).

World Clock Pro is a paid app which costs $0.99(AUD) and has a free trial that does not expire but instead shows ads. You can pick it up from the Windows Phone store here and you can see more information on the World Clock Pro page here.

There is an increasing amount of apps in the Windows Phone Store which allow users to pin a “shortcut” to their start screen to allow quick access to WiFi settings on their device. But to do this their app must launch first before opening the settings page for WiFi. So we set out to make an app that not only allows easy launching of the WiFi settings but adds some functionality to the idea that users will find useful.

The majority of us connect to at least one wireless network, and most even share their home WiFi with friends and family when they visit. If you have a really long security passphrase/password on your network this can be annoying no matter how many taps it takes to get to the WiFi settings, so how do you make it eaiser? QR Codes. Android devices (and some iPhone apps) are able to read specially generated QR Codes to automatically connect to the wireless network the information is for, with Windows Phone there is no ability to automatically connect, but we do have the ability to launch the settings page. EziWiFi allows you to scan these QR Codes, display the information on screen so you can copy the passphrase/password, launch the WiFi settings page, select the network and paste the security passphrase/password when prompted. To generate these QR Codes, you can use either the EziWiFi app or the ZXing tool from Google.

To make accessing the QR Codes for wireless networks you have scanned or created, you can pin them to your start screen. Once pinned the tiles are live and will flip every now and then to display the QR code on the back of the tile. EziWif, although being a Windows Phone 7 app, does support wide tiles on devices running Windows Phone 7.8 and Windows Phone 8 so that you can arrange your start screen your way.

EziWiFi is a paid app which costs $0.99(AUD) and has a free trial that does not expire but instead shows ads. You can pick it up from the Windows Phone store here and you can see more information on the EziWiFi page here.

Over the weekend some WPDownUnder readers will have noticed an update for the WPDownUnder Windows 8 app was available. This update brings with it a major re-design of the user interface of the app, some new features and several bug fixes. The update may or may not have also magically fixed the lack of articles being posted on WPDownUnder (Note: Sheeds has been very busy with the festive season, working and being a family man. He also welcomes community members to do guest posts).

This update as mentioned brings a major re-design of the user interface to make the app easier to use for devices with or without a touch screen. When viewing an article it now scrolls from left to right with the comments being at the end of the article, where you can of course still post and read comments.

Among the new features of the app you will find that the app now has a wide tile by default (swipe/right click on the tile and select ‘lager’ to enable this if you have already installed the app), tweets from the WPDownUnder account are now displayed in the app and tapping or clicking on them will display the tweet in you default browser. Viewing larger versions of images can now also be done in-app by double tapping/clicking on the image, allowing for a more seamless experience. Finally, the ability to view a list of Windows Phone apps mentioned in an article can be viewed with QR codes to quickly get the apps onto your phone.

As with any update this one addresses several bugs, the main one in this update being around you tube videos being displayed in articles. Embedded YouTube videos should now all be fixed and displaying in articles and can be viewed by double clicking/tapping on the video thumbnail which will open the YouTube page for that video in your default browser.

Of course there is still more in the pipeline for both the Windows 8 and Windows Phone versions of the WPDownUnder app, but the Windows Phone app is due for a update next and one new feature will be Windows Phone 7.8 & 8 tile support. So keep an eye out for this upcoming update, check out the full change log for this update here and get the update (or the app if you don’t have it already) here.

It is hard to believe that the last post on our blog was on the 30th of September when we announced our latest app on Windows 8, mtiks Dashboard. Since then we have been quietly working hard in the background on improving our existing apps, moving to a new host for our web site, some new apps to be launched this year and some other stuff that we can’t talk about yet. Of all the work we have been doing we have got two updates to existing apps and one (technically) new app that we released last month, and we thought it was about time we detailed them here.

You can develop an app using your best code with a great design, but that does not make it the best app. Without listening to the feedback from users/consumers the app will only ever be the best app to the developer. So of course one of the key things we do for all our apps is listen to feedback from the people who are using our apps everyday, both positive and negative feedback. Positive feedback lets you know what you are doing right and negative lets you know what you are doing wrong.

While the official WPDownUnder app has been receiving outstanding reviews and ratings in both the Windows and Windows Phone stores, our Music Alarm and WoW – Companion apps have been getting lower ratings than we had hoped and the reviews had all sorts of negative feedback about the apps, so we did what any good developer would do, we updated them with improvements based on user feedback.

Music Alarm

With Music Alarm the majority of the feedback we had was around the confusion over why the app wasn’t triggering alarms at the right time and that the user interface was confusing. After engaging several users we found that the feedback about the alarm not going off was actually due to people getting out of the app and turning their phone off. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do about that as it is a limitation of the operating system, apps can only start music playing when they are running either in the foreground or under the lock screen.

So we took a different approach, while we were improving the user interface to make it less confusing, we made a few changes to make it a bit more obvious that the alarm wouldn’t sound unless the app was running. We added a message when the user tries to press the back button to leave the app warning them that the alarm wont sound, we added more specific text warning about it at the bottom of the main page and we added the ability for the app to show what power source the phone was using.

The main change is this update was almost a complete over haul of the user interface to make it easier to follow. Now when setting an alarm (or a sleep timer) it is broken into steps. First select the alarm time, then the music to be played as the alarm, and finally select other options like repeat and shuffle. While it is set out in steps, we ensured that none of the steps were disabled to ensure the user could skip steps (such as the time if they were using the default time).

We also had some feedback about the app displaying ads, but we need to have some money coming in to help fund new projects (and our weekly beer o’clock) so we decided to go down another path. We created a paid version of the app which costs $0.99AUD which removes all ads from the app. The paid version also has a trial available which has no restrictions except that it shows ads. The paid version will also get updates a week before the free and trial version.

We are currently working on another update to Music Alarm which will address some feedback we have received since this new version was released, notably an issue with vibration and some UI fixes.

You can get the free version here, the paid version (with trial) here and you can see the full list of changes here.

WoW – Companion

WoW – Companion was the first app we released on Windows Phone back in October 2011 and we continued to update it over the last year and a half whenever Blizzard made changes to their API. Unfortunately Blizzard tend to update their API with little to no warning to the developers who use it and the first we know about it is the app crashing and an influx of emails from users who are unhappy with not being able to use the app. So we started working on an update that would at least allow Blizzard to change their API in their usual manner without making the app crash. However while working on this update Blizzard did a major update to their API in preparation for the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Mists Of Pandaria. So we re-wrote the entire app keeping only some code from the original and while doing so we collated all the feedback we had received and ensured that as much of it as possible was addressed.

Along with ensuring the app didn’t crash each time Blizzard updated their API features, we also simplified the home page to make it easier to use and more informative, we improved the UI to further take on the metro style, we added new features such as mounts and pets lists for Characters and we updated the realms status screen to show more than just the status of the server.

We are still in the process of developing the next update to the app that will improve the Character search and favourites system and allow users to easily report any issues searching for or adding characters to their favourites.

You can get WoW – Companion from the Windows Phone store here and you can see the full list of changes here.

Updates Currently In Development

We are still working on updates to the apps below based on feedback we are receiving daily, so look out for these in the coming weeks.

• mtiks Dashboard
• WPDownUnder
• Short Web

More Still To Come

We have a lot more still to come in the next few weeks. So to stay on top of things, download the Handiware Hub app from the Windows Store here and the Windows Phone Store here, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and don’t forget to sign up for our Beta Program for early access to some new apps and updates coming soon.

For those developers who use mtiks to analyse and track usage of their mobile apps on the major platforms (Android, Blackberry, iOS and of course Windows Phone), we have today released mtiks Dashboard which allows the user to access and view a lot of the data currently available from the mtiks service.

Currently you can view all your apps, a summary of the latest usage data of each app, and a list of all the sessions data over the last week and month. In a future update we will be adding the ability to chose the date ranges for the week and month reporting, and we will also be adding statistics based on the last week and month to give the user a better idea on the usage of their apps.

mtiks Dashboard is available in the Windows Store here and costs $1.49 (AUD) and there is a 15 day trial which allows full use of the app for that time. You can download the app here see more information about the app here.

Short Web, an app to help shorten links on Windows Phone is now available on Windows 8. Users can shorten links using the bit.ly, goo.gl and is.gd services which are among the top used URL Shortening services online today. If you have a URL that has already been shortened using one of these services then you will also be able to retrieve the original link using Short Web. Users can also shorten links from other apps by using the Share charm and then selecting Short Web.

We have big plans for Short Web and what has been released in this initial version is just a taste, so make sure you download it, and let us know what you would like to see included in the next version. You can see more information on the app here.

We have been continuing our work on bringing our current Windows Phone apps to Windows 8 and the latest app to be available is Handiware Hub. The Windows 8 version of the app is just a simple app which allows you to view the latest news directly from the Handiware home page, however in future we have plans to not only bring more features across from the Windows Phone version, but to introduce new features not currently available in the Windows Phone app.

We have also released an update to Handiware Hub on Windows Phone which now has the app retrieving all the news from our new site as we start to decommission the old WordPress blog we have been running for over a year now. Over the next few weeks we will be changing the original WordPress blog to consist of only a landing page directing visitors here, so be sure to update Handiware Hub on your Windows Phone if you have it installed, and if you don’t have it installed, why don’t you?

We will also be launching two more apps for Windows 8 over the next few days, but for the time being, you can get Handiware Hub for Windows 8 here and Handiware Hub for Windows Phone here.

A couple of days ago we released an update for WPDownUnder on Windows 8, and today the update is now also available in Marketplace for Windows Phone. The update for Windows Phone brings many of the same bug fixes that were in the Windows 8 update and also brings a few of its own.

As with the update for the Windows 8 app, this update also brings with it the improved support for displaying images and videos in the Articles. But it also has a few other changes in it as well.

With TechEd just around the corner WPDownUnder has launched an additional Twitter account which will be used by Roving Reporters to tweet updates on what is happening at TechEd, so we have added these tweets into the twitter feed shown in the app so that you can catch all the news in one place. In addition to this when sharing articles, the hastags #WPDU and #wp7au will now be added to the end of the text so that others on Twitter can follow the conversation.

We have also been listening to your feedback and have included a fix which now clears the number of unread articles on the app tile when navigating to the app after receiving a toast notification for a new article. We have also fixed an issue which caused text being entered into a new comment to be cut off after reaching a certain amount of characters (thanks for your in depth bug report schlubadub!).

And we are not finished yet, we still have plenty of updates and features planned which we think you will like. So be sure to follow us on twitter then keep an eye out here and on WPDownUnder for future updates.

The complete list of changes can be found in the Change Log here.

We have released an update to the WPDownUnder app for Windows 8. This update brings several fixes to the app and especially to the way the app handles images and videos embed in the Articles. Based on feedback from a few of our Beta Program participants, we also made it easier to distinguish the main app screens from the App Bar when it is shown by making it a light grey.

These fixes, and more, are also coming to the Windows Phone version of the app with update currently going through certification. We will reveal more once it is available.

While this update only contains fixes to make the app easier to use and Articles easier to read, we still have big plans for future updates which will be coming to both the Windows Phone and Windows 8 versions of the app. Future updates will cover a broad range of feedback we have received on both versions, updated layout, new features and a few surprises.

So be sure to follow us on twitter then keep an eye out here and on WPDownUnder for future updates.

The complete list of changes can be found in the Change Log here.