Sometimes the simplest app ideas are the best ones. Such is the case with Live Tile Countdown, which lets you pin a Live Tile to the start screen that counts down the days until a specified date. All you need to do is provide a date and title for the Live Tile. If the due date passes the Live Tile will start counting upwards.

Live Tile Countdown is ideal for counting down to a birthday, holiday, or other eagerly anticipated event. It may not be the most exciting functionality in the world, but it's a good example of how Live Tiles enables a different type of experience than the typical smartphone homescreen. 

The app does have some limitations imposed by platform APIs, but the app's developer, Vivitap, has implemented some well thought out tweaks to help minimise these, reflecting the maturity of this app. For example, the tiles will only update every 30 minutes, but you can can manually force an update by opening the app. In addition you also need to open the app at least every 14 days to make sure the app's background task remains active. To alert you to this a notification is displayed in the corner of the tiles as the 14 day limit approaches.

On Windows Phone 8 the app can use the small tile size, but it will not display the title of the countdown event, which can be confusing if you have multiple tiles pinned to the start screen.

Live Calendar Tile was last updated in the spring, but caught our attention with the upcoming festive season. Worth a download for the more impatient amongst our audience perhaps?

Windows Phone Store description:

Live Tiles that count down the number of days to go. Keep track of key dates like upcoming birthdays or vacation.

You just pick a date and a title for your tiles. And your tiles count down. Once an event is past the tile will display + and count up. So it is easy to see the number of days before or since an event.

Live Tile Countdown can be downloaded from the Windows Phone Store for free.