• Series

Eightieth in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best Windows 8 apps and games that were published to Windows Store. Microsoft has released updates for several core apps for Windows 8 without mentioning what actually changed on the apps' profile page or the Windows Store page listing the application.

Apps that have received updates are Bing Health & Fitness, Weather, Bing Sports, Music, Video, Bing Travel, Bing News, and Bing Finance.

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Eighteenth in a series. New and updated releases this week include a Vine-style video sharing app with filters, an animated story creator from Adobe, new games set in the Warhammer 40k and Soulcalibur worlds, a social network for dog owners, a fitness app that promises to "lift your butt" and an endless runner that gives you the chance to watch your friends being trampled by bulls.

As always, if I miss an app that you think should definitely have been included, let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email.

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Seventy-nine in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best Windows apps and games that were published in the last seven days to Windows Store.

As always, we begin with an overview of important application updates.

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Seventeenth in a series. Microsoft updated its Office for iPad apps this week, adding some welcome new features, including the most requested of them all -- the ability to print documents. This is a feature that should really have been included from the start, but at least it’s in there now.

New releases this week include standalone apps for Google Docs and Sheets, the first in a series of new Star Wars themed story apps from Disney, a clever app that pulls high quality photos straight from your videos, a SpongeBob SquarePants version of Doodle Jump, and one of the best note taking apps I’ve ever used (and no, it’s not Microsoft OneNote -- although the iPhone version of that was also updated this week).

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Seventy-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's new Windows 8 apps overview. Several popular first-party and third-party apps were updated this week.

Microsoft's One Note application received an update that added support for additional languages, inking and rule line improvements, performance improvements, as well as an option to go to the location of the page from the recent notes view.

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Sixteenth in a series. Apple reported its second quarter results this week, and they beat analyst expectations with the iPhone doing especially well. Apple shipped 4.14 million Macs, 16.35 million iPads and 43.72 million iPhones during the quarter. iPhone sales grew by 16.8 percent while iPad sales declined by 15.9 percent. Although the iPad’s slump looks very bad in the quarter you have to remember Apple struggled to meet holiday demand the previous year, leading to an inflated number of shipments in the March 2013 quarter.

New and updated apps worthy of your attention this week include a Sonic racing game, a "ridiculous animal simulator", an activity tracker, a travel app for iPad, a world-time clock, and an alternative to Fruit Ninja with better graphics.

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Seventy-seventh in a series. The first universal app listed in Windows Store and Windows Phone Store is Microsoft's Halo: Spartan Assault.

Universal apps are available for Windows Phone and Windows 8, and need to only be purchased once to use them on all supported platforms.

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Fifteenth in a series. Featured apps this week include the latest installment in the excellent post-apocalyptic fitness app Zombies, Run!, a Heroes of Warcraft card game, a full iPhone video editor from Pinnacle, a piano tutor, a new MediaFire app for iPad, and a DJ mixing tool for iTunes and Spotify.

As always, if I miss an app that you think should definitely have been included, let me know in the comments below, or drop me an email.

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Seventy-six in a series. Microsoft released the feature pack update for Windows 8.1 this week which added several usability improvements for mouse and keyboard users.

Wayne covered the update and if you have not had the time yet to read about it, you may want to head over there to do so. One interesting aspect of it is that the update is mandatory for systems running Windows 8.1 as it is a requirement for all future updates of the operating system.

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Seventy-five in a series. Microsoft announced the Windows 8.1 Update officially at the BUILD 2014 developer conference two days ago. It will roll out on April 8, 2014 as part of patch Tuesday to all users of the Windows 8 operating system.

The update introduces improvements for keyboard and mouse users, including options to right-click on the Start Screen to manage tiles, a title bar for apps, and app icons on the Windows Taskbar.

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Thirteenth in a series. Apple has confirmed that its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), will be kicking off on Monday June 2, at San Francisco’s Moscone West. The five day event will give developers (and the press of course) the chance to "learn about the future of iOS and OS X". At last year’s conference Apple unveiled iOS 7, Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, a new MacBook Air lineup, iTunes Radio, iCloud Keychain, and much more.

In other news, Microsoft says its newly released Office apps have been downloaded 12 million times since launch.

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Seventy-four in a series. Several Windows 8 applications have received important updates this week that increase their functionality significantly.

The official Music application by Microsoft for instance filters out music automatically that you cannot play when you are not connected to the Internet.

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Twelfth in a series. Microsoft rolled out Office for iPad this week, and it's excellent. Like Apple iWork, it's not a single app but rather three individual apps for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (an updated OneNote is available too). You need an Office 365 subscription to get the most out of it, as without one you can only view documents.

Other featured apps this week include a modern remake of Little Big Adventure (a classic game from the nineties), a touch typing tutor, a drawing app for children, a sweeping and rather too addictive Game of Thrones RPG, a Captain America tie-in, and a group text messaging app.

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Seventy-three in a series. Mozilla announced that it had made the decision to cancel the Firefox for Metro development and put the project on hold to concentrate on other more promising projects instead.

The core reason given was the low active user rate of the app which never got higher than 1,000 active users at any one time.

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Eleventh in a series. Apple rolled out a cheaper 8GB version of its iPhone 5c this week (in selected territories) and also replaced the aging budget iPad 2 with the newer, 4th gen iPad with Retina Display. The replacement iPad, which is available everywhere, is priced the same as the iPad mini giving potential buyers an interesting purchasing dilemma.

Featured apps this week include one of the best looking games yet released for iOS, an app which claims to boost your fitness in just four minutes a day, one which will help you avoid people you don’t want to see, and a game which could help find a cure for cancer.

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