For the record, calling this application "Board Game Clock" and not "Chess Clock" was a smart move. I would suspect that 99.999% of Windows Phone users would have no need for a clock to play chess - but there are far more people who need a timer to keep an eye on two different things, even if they don't know it yet.
The internet has a lot of news out there, and while there are many single sources of news that have created their own applications for Windows Phone (let's point out our reviews of The Guardian and Sky News apps). News360 is different - it's an aggregator, looking at the headlines, stories and popularity, all over the web, and serves them up in this Windows Phone application.
My first impressions of Monster's headphone style weren't good, with some outlandish cyan over-ear cans shown off by the Monster CEO at last year's Nokia World. Happily, the reviewed in-ear equivalents are a hundred times less garish, especially since they're black. There's plenty of photos and comment below, but in short the audio quality is superlative - depending on the playback device. Balancing this, device compatibility is distinctly spotty and the price is.... rather high. Review added to Dec 2012.
Power hungry smartphones are always looking for a recharge. So a car charger is going to be high on the priority for a lot of people. But which one should you get? One option is Nokia's DC-20 unit, which initially draws the eye with its twin USB charging ports. And while USB car chargers are never going to generate much excitement, the Nokia DC-20 is a diamond amongst the rough competition.
Of the two approaches to instrument tuning using phones, Accurate Tuner Pro takes the more technical by far. Never mind generating tones and tuning by 'ear' (the other approach, which this app does too if you pony up for the full version), here we have a chromatic (sampling) tuner on steroids, able to tune just about any instrument in any tuning, in any temperament, in any transposition. Impressive. But is it over the top?
There's a certain delight in going far too fast, even in a simple smartphone game. Descent (no, not that one) brings you that 'past the red line' experience to Windows Phone, asking you to zoom through a never ending tunnel peppered with obstacles, fuel, and power-ups. Stripped down to the basics, this is an impressive little graphical tour de force for Windows Phone. And it's fun as well.
Every smartphone platform has its star applications, the big names that everyone looks for. On the music side of Windows Phone, you'd have to put Spotify on that A-list, and there's a strong argument for Last.FM to be included (if Pandora ever makes it, it can go straight in as well). But many times it's in the B-list that you find the applications that people take to their hearts and defend with a passion. That's where you'll find 8tracks.
If you're looking for accuracy, realistic car physics, and a relationship between the driver, car, and road... you won't find it in the Need for Speed series of games. You will find lots of arcade action, glorious graphics, and a cinematical flair in the presentation of this arcade franchise. That heady mix has driven Need for Speed to success over multiple gaming platforms. And now Xbox Live brings the Cops 'n' Robbers styled Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
Where there's a camera, there'll be someone wanting to try and take 'time lapse' videos with it, of course. The idea is to take a photo of a scene every few seconds, and then play back the photos as frames in a video at a more traditional frame rate, thereby speeding up the action by a factor of a hundred. Or a thousand. Yes, just like on the TV, except you can do it with your humble smartphone and Timelapse Pro.
It's fair to say that Reddit has made itself part of the fabric of the Internet for many people. The user driven site (which is barely a "social network" but honestly all the better for it) allows people to post links to stories and pages around the site, discuss the stories, and vote them up or down depending on what they think of them. And now Baconit will bring all those links to your Windows Phone... and more.
