Tag: Windows Phone 8

Posted on

PowerPoint Progression with Windows Phone


This is a great, nifty invention that’s just come out of Microsoft Research.

I quite like wandering around…out in town, at work and in general. When I’m presenting, I can’t really do it though, as I need to be close to my machine to click “next”…well no more!

Office Remote turns your Windows Phone 8 device into a remote control for your Office 2013 presentation apps  (Word, Excel & PowerPoint). I’ve just downloaded the bits and tested this out with my upcoming Cloud presentation – it took about 2 mins to setup and works perfectly. You need:

It shows the elapsed presenting time, clear forward/backwards buttons and even shows your speaker notes on your phone!

office remote

I’ll definitely be using this when I present at Old Trafford on Thursday 🙂

Other use scenarios include:

  • PowerPoint: Large, easily accessible buttons on the phone enable you to start a presentation, advance slides forward or backward, view thumbnails and jump to a particular slide, access speaker cues while viewing the presentation time and the progress of slides, and deliver accurate, non-shaky direction with the on-screen laser pointer.
  • Excel: Simple gestures enable jumping not just between spreadsheets and graphs, but also among any named objects. Spreadsheets can be changed with a mere finger swipe, and navigation is available through rows or columns. In addition, you can use PivotTables or filters and change zoom levels, all with an Office Remote-equipped phone.
  • Word: Zoom control is available in this application, as well, and Word docs can be scrolled by screen or by line.

    •  

    You can see more about it here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/inside_microsoft_research/archive/2013/11/18/advance-your-presentation-with-your-phone.aspx

    Posted on

    Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 Device


    Windows Phone 8 is not far away and today we’ve seen sneak previews of 2 devices that will surely be revealed at Nokia’s event on September 5th, alongside Microsoft.

    Nokia Lumia 920

    image

    What will it include?

    • Wireless Charging
    • 32GB Storage
    • 1GB RAM
    • 1.5GHz Dual Core CPU
    • 4.5” HD Display
    • Front Facing Camera

    The Verge also report that the camera will be branded as “PureView” but will be 8MP rather than 41 as on the Nokia 808. Until my Lumia 800, I’ve never had a Nokia nor have I had any interest in Nokia if I’m honest, so I haven’t come across the PureView brand before. What I gather is that it’s a kick-ass camera and people are upset that this has just 8 megapixels yet is being branded as PureView. Nokia say there have been advancements in image stabilization & software that mean they can brand it as such which seems reasonable to me, we all know that megapixels aren’t everything 🙂

    This looks like it could well be my next phone…double the storage which will be great for my ever more eclectic music taste, a front facing camera for making use of the baked in Skype features and WIRELESS CHARGING – that is some Star Trek stuff right there!

    Here’s a picture of the wireless charging mat via @evleaks:

    image

    Posted on

    Microsoft Announce Windows Phone 8


    Just days after the Microsoft Surface tablet event, MS held another – this time to officially announce Windows Phone 8.

    There were a lot of announcements, a lot of news – some good, some bad, a lot of innovations and a lot of reasons to get a Windows Phone 8 device. I’ll try and cover them off as best I can here:

    New Start Screen

    The Start Screen with it’s Metro interface and Live Tiles is one of the key eye grabbers of Windows Phone and it’s being improved in Windows Phone 8 (and 7.8 but we’ll come to that later).

    First up is a new, third size for tiles giving us “small, medium & large” with the new “small” size enabling users to fit more on their home screen.

    Secondly, Microsoft are removing the blank strip down the right hand side of the screen (you know, with the side arrow at the top), giving users a fair bit more screen real estate to play with.

    image

    They’re also going to be expanding the number of colours available.

    NFC

    Near Field Communication (NFC) is going to be integrated right into WP8, enabling payments by waving your phone at things, the ability to store card details, store cards etc and more…essentially a combination of Google Wallet & Apple Passbook with extras on top. It will also enable each pairing with a range of accessories such as, and I only discovered these today, Nokia’s NFC enabled speakers…you just touch your phone to them and BOOM – connected. These are available for Nokia’s current range of NFC enabled Symbian devices so I can only assume WP8 will be invited to the party. Another feature will be the ability to “bump” phones and transfer contact details etc…cool and useful for trade shows, impromptu meetings etc…I’m sure I’d end up using it all the time.

    SD Support

    Proper SD support is coming to Windows Phone 8 devices. SD cards that can be used as true removable storage…transfer music, pictures, documents and also install apps!

    Windows 8 Core

    This is a huge one – MS are moving away from the former Windows CE core and instead implementing the same NT Kernel as the new Windows 8 desktop OS! This means that file system, media, drivers and a lot of the security will be the same across desktop & mobile; allowing many of the features mentioned above as well as games/apps that can move between the two. That last point will make for a great user experience as well as making things much easier and more attractive for developers – which is always a good thing!

    Another thing enabled by the move to the NT Kernel is multi-core processor support which will drive the next generation of WP mobile apps and games.

    Internet Explorer 10

    IE 10 will be on Windows Phone 8 bring the SmartScreen URL screening & phishing protection. That’s about all the news on that for now though…

    VOIP Integration

    VOIP is going to be “industry leading” when it comes to integration on WP8, with not just Skype but also Tango et al becoming “first class” app; giving them deep integration into things such as the People Hub and the dialler. The next crop of WP8 devices will surely (nearly) all come with front facing cameras – those 2 things combined could help to make video calling as ubiquitous as people have been predicting for years.

    Enterprise Features

    One of the (quite) valid criticisms levelled at WP 7/7.5 is its lack of Enterprise features; in some areas it was actually less feature rich than Windows Mobile 6.5. New business centric features WP8 will bring include:

    • On-Device Encryption
    • Device Management
    • Line Of Business (LOB) app support
    • Private market places for internal business app distribution
    • Side-Loading

    Now for the bad news…

    This ISN’T coming to existing Windows Phone devices. None of them. Not the Lumia 800. Not the Lumia 900. None of them.

    Yes, if you’ve just upgraded to a shiny new Lumia (or other WP device) that is a bit of a rage-inducing moment but hey, there’s always Mazuma and Envirofone Open-mouthed smile

    Microsoft have taken quite a brave step of angering some people to make wholesale changes that straight away move Windows Phone to the front of the mobile pack. Yes those recent adopters will be a bit annoyed but when their contracts come up for renewal again it seems likely that WP devices will be the best on market so they’ll be able to stick with it going forwards.

    One thing that IS coming to current handsets is the new, improved Start Screen under the Windows Phone 7.8 update. Although it doesn’t bring the new features it does make an already great mobile OS even more aesthetically pleasing.

    Website Powered by WordPress.com.