As the countdowns to Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 get smaller and smaller, those of us already using Windows 8 (release preview) are beginning to see some familiar titles appear in the Windows 8 store. The point to all of this is that Microsoft are all in for the strategy of unifying its desktop, tablet, and phone platforms with what was called the Metro user interface.

Like it or not, this is the future ahead for Microsoft users and is why Windows Phone 8 shares a common core with Windows 8. The hope, for Microsoft, is that the shared ecosystem for desktop and mobile devices will create a virtuous circle of application development.

Early signs of this have taken the form of several apps that will be familiar to Windows Phone 7 users. In games, we have Wordament and ARMED! available for Windows 8. While Wordament logs into your Xbox Live account and imports your 'frenemies', ARMED! doesn't appear to share any integration with the Windows Phone 7 version.

In applications, the obvious choice for any Office and Windows Phone user to install is OneNote MX. Admittedly, there is already OneNote available on the web through SkyDrive, but the app offers a better user experience and will of course synchronise with your Windows Phone device via Microsoft's cloud.

Metro versions of other Office applications aren't available yet, but a SkyDrive application is, which will launch office files in your desktop versions of Office.

Rowi has been a favourite Windows Phone Twitter client for quite some time and it also has a Windows 8 implementation. The design of the application features sidebar and large central area that shows one tweet at a time. When snapped to the side of the screen Rowi resembles its Windows Phone counter part. However, to act on any tweet you need to expand it from snapped mode to find toolbar buttons.

Also confirmed today is that our favourite Google Reader client, NextGen Reader, will be coming to Windows 8 soon too.