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Windows Phone 8 gets Pandora Radio, Cut the Rope, Urbanspoon and more (update: full list)
Microsoft knows that Windows Phone 8 is only as successful as its apps. To that end, it's blowing the doors open in terms of major app support. It's not only promising a Windows Phone version of Pandora Radio for early 2013, it's offering ad-free listening for the first year. How's that for strong out-of-the-box content? On top of this, Microsoft is vowing a slew of new apps and games that had previously only been available in the Android or iOS camps, including Asphalt 7, Cut the Rope, Temple Run, Urbanspoon and Where's My Water. By the time the expansion is done, Microsoft hopes to have 46 out of the 50 most popular apps onboard, making any platform switch that much gentler. Instagram is a notable omission -- still, it's a big leap in terms of equality. Update: If you need even more detail, Microsoft has posted a wider list of new apps as part of its official Windows Phone 8 launch post. If that's not enough, you can catch a video overview of the platform after the break. For more, check out our Windows Phone 8 event liveblog!
Apps for Valentine's Day
Image: Shutterstock Today's smartphones are, by their nature, quite versatile. It's impossible to guide every lover on Valentine's Day to the app for their particular needs, because despite the requisite "flowers, chocolate, *something*" expectations, we all do it differently. I tried to round up a few apps that might appeal to just about anyone who participates in tomorrow's festivities. Happy Valentine's Day, if that's your thing! Going out to eat If you're trying to get a reservation, one of the fastest ways to check and make a reservation is with OpenTable (hopefully your area's restaurants are on-board with their system). If you're out and looking for somewhere to eat, I still use one of the first big breakout apps from the App Store, UrbanSpoon. Of course, you can always ask Siri, but if you don't have a 4S, try Yelp. Going out to find someone to love Personally I've had a great experience with OKCupid, probably the least skeevy of the online dating sites and its app is quite excellent. There's also Skout, which I haven't tried, but it has good reviews and features a location-based singles finder in the app. There are also most specific love-finding apps like Grindr for the gay community and Cupidtino for fans of Apple stuff. Buying a gift Don't know what to buy your sweetheart? Apps like El Gifto, and Thoughtful (not yet available in app form) will help you answer that question by asking a few background questions first. You can use Red Laser to comparison shop (you hopeless romantic, you) or Giftiki to pool your money with friends -- the gift that says "I love you enough to beg our friends for money." Setting the mood Yeah we've all heard of Pandora by now, but lately I'm digging the DJ-powered Slacker Radio for less repetition and a wider set of music. Slacker also has several romance-themed stations set up, like this one called Love Songs. If you subscribe to Rdio or Spotify, you can build your own playlist for all-night romance without commercial interruption. My personal preference is Rdio, but it'll be fun to see all the romantic songs being played in Spotify on the night of V-Day thanks to Spotify's in-your-face social mechanisms. Having fun Spending a night at home? Try Scene It? Romance Movies for some lighthearted fun -- although it could be embarrassing if you never watch romance movies. If you want to reminisce about the times you had together and snapped with Instagram, check out Lovestagram, which will bring up all the pics of you and your loved one taken using the social photo service. iKamasutra is the App Store-approved Kama Sutra for the iPhone. You could just as easily buy the real deal in ebook form, but the app provides easy navigation to all your favorite, um, love pretzels. Got any other apps you recommend for Valentine's Day? If you need to call a florist, I'd suggest Google or Siri -- and that you do it fast.
NYT on restaurant reservation apps
There's a great piece in the New York Times today about the growing practice of using mobile apps to find and review restaurants. The way it works is simple for customers. Just pull out your phone (or your iPad), launch the app and find what's nearby. Initially, OpenTable was the only app that could be used to make reservations. Now UrbanSpoon offers them as well, and customers are taking advantage. They're testing the idea in LA and Seattle, with 50 and 100 restaurants participating, respectively. Once you've eaten you can post a review. These are sorted by date, so those paying attention can see if a given place is on a slide or an upswing. Even without these apps, I'll use my iPhone to search "coffee" or "hamburgers" with the Maps app to find a place in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Taking it that extra step -- placing a reservation -- is, as Spock would say, logical.
Urbanspoon shaking right along
Urbanspoon is one of the earliest "locator" apps that I put on my iPhone. It offered up a pretty unique (at the time -- this was, of course, before "shake to undo") "shake to find" feature that solved the problem of a big group asking, "Where should we eat tonight?" Apparently it's still doing pretty well -- the app has just reached the milestone of half a billion shakes. Additionally, the website that the app was based on has been acquired by Citysearch, and the app has been installed more than 9 million times. That's pretty impressive. It's also a great example of how the iPhone's unique interface can really drive attention to a bigger brand. Unfortunately, there's no information from Urbanspoon yet about what's coming in the future. This is exactly the kind of app (location-based information) that might not survive the jump onto the new iPad platform, so it'll be interesting to hear what they're planning to do going forward. However, as long as people are hungry, there will always be room for a food-finding app. It's good to see that Urbanspoon is still kicking.
THQ Wireless' Brad Pitser talks to TUAW about iPhone development
I'm here at E3 in Los Angeles all this week (come say hi at the Joystiq meetup tonight if you're in town!). Yesterday, I got to sit down with Brad Pitser, the Director of Global Production for THQ Wireless, a company that makes games for mobile platforms like the iPhone. Pitser has helped oversee two iPhone games so far: De Blob (now on the App Store) and Star Wars' Force Unleashed (coming out later this year -- Joystiq has my impressions of both). He said that developing for the iPhone so far has been "a dream." They've partnered with Apple to publish on the iPhone and iPod touch as much as they can. "Apple was interested in our brands," Pitser said, "and we were interested in their platform."One concern he does have about the App Store so far is the pricing -- "everyone thinks $9.99 is too much," he told me. THQ released De Blob at the $6.99 price point. He says THQ has a lot of licensing fees and costs to pay for every game they make, and when those games compete with software that sells for 99 cents, they don't necessarily have a money-making proposition. But at the same time, he'd rather let the market figure things out -- the App Store has a lot of settling down to do, and Pitser is sure that companies will find their place in the price plan soon enough.I asked him what he thought of what he'd seen in the software that wasn't his, and he said he really enjoyed the iPint visual gag, the UrbanSpoon restaurant finder, and Aurora Feint (all very nice choices). It's great to have a bigger company like THQ interested in getting some good licenses on the iPhone, and hopefully we'll see more come out of Pitser and the division he oversees.
