Articles about Mobile App

As you’ll know by now, Microsoft today announced the launch of Office Mobile for Office 365, an iOS app which allows users to access, view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents -- provided you have an Office 365 subscription.

We took it for a spin and despite the limitations, were actually pleasantly surprised. There’s plenty of functionality in the app to explore. The app can view Office documents stored on SkyDrive, SkyDrive Pro, or SharePoint, for instance, as well as documents which arrive as email attachments. It syncs with your other Office 365 devices, too, so documents you’ve read elsewhere will appear on your phone’s Recent Documents panel, and when you open one it’ll resume at whatever point you left off.

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Thirty-third in a series. This has been another strong week for Microsoft's Windows Store as apps surged past the 60,000 app mark in the US store for the first time.

A total of  60,722 apps are listed in store at the time of writing, 2,711 more than last week. Free apps have increased by 2,129 to a total of 47,034 apps in the last seven days, while paid apps have seen a moderate growth by 582 apps to 13,688 in total.

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Seven months ago, when rumors burned hot, I explained why "Microsoft Office for Android and iOS is a Trojan Horse" -- that any mobile suite would be all about the cloud service. Sure enough, today Microsoft released the strangely named "Office Mobile for Office 365 Subscribers" to the App Store.

Office 365 is the productivity suite's future. Microsoft now claims to be a "devices and services" company. Smartphones are devices, Office 365 is a service and required for the iOS app. What more reasoning is needed? The Redmond, Wash.-based company provides more functionality than I predicted, but does so strictly in mobile context that doesn't diminish the PC product. That said, what Microsoft gives to iOS should be withheld from Android.

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The public beta of McAfee's newest mobile security app becomes available to download for Android devices today. Its leading feature is something called Smart Perimeter which addresses one of the key concerns of users, losing your device.

Smart Perimeter works by allowing devices to track each other and alert the user if they stray more than 30 feet apart. If a device goes outside the perimeter an alarm sounds and it's also locked so you have to enter a PIN to re-enable it.

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Canadian smartphone maker BlackBerry just rolled out a new version of its Facebook BB 10 app, bringing the latest iteration one step closer to its Android and iOS counterparts. This is the second major update in the past couple of months.

The new Facebook app for BlackBerry 10, now at version 10.2.0, focuses on design and functionality improvements. In the former department, the app sports a new "refined" look for the newsfeed, adding a couple visual tweaks. The most noteworthy enhancements, however, are related to photo management and tagging.

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Following Splashtop 2, a new remote control app is now available on Windows Phone 8. The popular TeamViewer just launched, allowing users of the tiled mobile operating system to access Linux, Mac and Windows computers while on the go.

TeamViewer is pretty easy to use, only requiring folks to type in a "partner ID" and passcode in order to remotely control a PC. The app offers essential functionality -- remote typing using a virtual keyboard, direct access to the CTRL + ALT + Del menu and the ability to move the cursor -- and keeps things secure by implementing 256-bit AES encoding and 1024-bit RSA key exchange.

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I can't remember the last time I printed a photo. Can you? The versatility of cloud services and the increasingly accommodating on-device storage changed the way folks enjoy and look at pictures, turning printing from a once-popular activity into a dying art. Today, more than ever, digital replaces physical.

But prints are not dead (yet), as cloud services like Kicksend look to modernize the way people get their memories onto paper. Kicksend, available first on iOS, Android and the web, just turned its eyes towards Windows 8 and Windows RT, also allowing users of the tiled operating system to share photos and order prints straight from its app.

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Finnish maker Nokia announced, on Monday, that its Lumia 925 Windows Phone 8 flagship is now officially available in Germany. The smartphone can be purchased from local mobile operators and retailers like Vodafone and Amazon, respectively, alongside carrier agreements or off-contract for EUR599.

Nokia revealed that the Lumia 925 will be its first Windows Phone 8 device to receive Glance Screen. The app, initially available in beta trim, allows users to double tap on the screen in order to unlock the handset and can show the ringer mode, battery status and time on the display, when the smartphone is on standby.

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The BBC’s weather predictions tend to be reasonably accurate, and now you can check the corporation’s latest forecasts on a new app available for iOS and Android.

When you launch the app it detects your location and tells you what the weather is like where you are, providing details such as high and low temperatures, current conditions, humidity, visibility and wind speed.

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Thirty-second in a series. Windows Store has seen one of the largest growths in its history this week breaking the 3,000 apps mark for the first time this year. A total of 3,033 apps were released, raising the total app count of the US Windows Store to 58,011 apps.

44,905 of those apps are listed as free in the store, an increase of 2,413 apps this week alone. Paid apps increased by 616 apps this week to a total of 13,106.

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Ever since Windows 8 arrived I have struggled to fully embrace the Modern UI. The new user interface offers a polarizing experience -- it impresses me on a touchscreen but fails to get my attention on a run-of-the-mill display like my laptop features. For this reason, my forays into the new realm are mostly limited to reading and replying to emails, chatting with friends on Facebook and using Twitter. The Desktop continues to be my safe heaven, relying on it to carry out my daily routine.

Don't get me wrong, the Modern UI is not bad but it feels much more natural to use on a tablet -- touching tiles gives way to an intimate and enjoyable experience. But buying a new device which offers a touchscreen is not a particularly sound method of kindling a long-lasting relationship with the Modern UI. With the decline of the PC market, Microsoft is aware of this as it looks to revamp the new user interface in Windows 8.1 with new features aimed at "stealing" users away from the Desktop.

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Undoubtedly, Twitter deems Windows Phone 8 as a second-class citizen. The popular social network introduced filters for its Android and iOS apps nearly six months ago but only late-yesterday did the feature finally arrive on the tiled mobile operating system.

Similar to its Android and iOS counterparts, Twitter for Windows Phone 8 introduces eight filters -- Vignette, Warm, Cool, 1963, 1972, Golden Hour, Antique and Black & White -- which can be applied to new pictures or already existing ones from the Photos gallery. Adding filters is straightforward -- select the picture and either scroll to the right or hit the "filters" button to choose the desired effect.

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It's not often that I wish to find out what "Qorwagh" or "ghaH*" mean, but when curiosity strikes I can always power up Bing Translator on my Windows Phone. Sadly, Microsoft does not provide a similar app on Windows 8, leaving folks to look up the meaning of those Klingon words using a web browser. Until today, that is.

On Thursday, the software giant released its excellent Bing Translator on Windows 8 and, yes, I can assure you that Klingon is among the supported languages. The app is similar to its Windows Phone 8 counterpart in terms of functionality and includes options like camera translation and more mundane ones like text-to-speech.

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Finding the right keyboard for Android can turn into a lengthy mission. There are few stock keyboards that cut the mustard and timesaving, gesture-friendly alternatives such as Swype and SwiftKey have gained a massive following in recent months. Not wanting to feel left out, Google is making its own stock Android keyboard available in the Play store.

Despite being a stock keyboard, Google Keyboard is surprisingly good -- Nexus users should not be surprised at this as this is the keyboard they are used to working with. Unlike many native keyboards, this one goes above and beyond being a basic onscreen input device for typing letter by letter. Well above and beyond.

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Google has released Gmail for Android 4.5, a radical new version of its Google Mail client for Android smartphones. At the present time, the update is slowly making its way to users through the Google Play store, with the intention being all users will be able to update or install the latest version within the next few weeks.

We’ve managed to get hold of a sneaky copy, and can reveal it’s as radical an update as anticipated, with a revamped user interface and support for new features such as Gmail tabs and pull-to-refresh. As expected, these new features require a handset or tablet running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) or later -- those running earlier versions of Android get version 2.3.6, with minor bug fixes.

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