Microsoft buys used iPhones in latest attempt to get consumers to switch to Windows

September 28, 2013 10:41 AM ETComputerworld - Microsoft on Friday launched yet another trade-in program to convince consumers to switch to a Windows device, this time aimed at iPhone owners.

On its Microsoft Store website, Microsoft outlined the new deal: It will accept "gently used" iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 smartphones -- the 2011 and 2012 editions, respectively -- and pay a minimum of $200 for each. The Redmond, Wash. technology company will issue the funds as a gift card good for purchases at the Microsoft Store.

As in the iPad buyback program that debuted two weeks ago, customers must bring their used iPhones to a retail outlet in the U.S., Canada or Puerto Rico -- trade-ins are not supported online -- where a sales representative will evaluate the device and decide on the dollar amount. Microsoft has 77 stores in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

"Microsoft Store gift-card value ... is subject to Microsoft's discretion and manager approval," the website said. "All trade-ins are final. Cannot be redeemed for cash. Limit 1 per customer."

The gift cards that result from an iPhone trade-in can be used for anything Microsoft sells in its stores, including its Surface tablets and third-party PCs, but the deal is clearly intended to tempt Apple's current customers into switching to a Windows Phone like the Nokia Lumia 1020.

That may be a very tough pitch.

According to market research company ChangeWave, 70% of iPhone owners polled said they were "very satisfied" with their purchase, the top-ranked percentage in the survey, which also noted that the second-most satisfied customers were ones who had a Samsung smartphone: 54% of those people said they were "very satisfied" with their device.

Like the earlier iPad deal, Microsoft's iPhone buyback program isn't available online so it's impossible to tell what the company's salespeople will pay for an iPhone before getting in the car. Re-commerce vendors such as Gazelle and NextWorth, which do operate online, pay between $190 and $210 for a working 16GB iPhone 4S on AT&T's network, and between $290 and $304 for a 16GB AT&T iPhone 5. The lower prices for both devices were quoted by Gazelle, the higher prices by NextWorth.

Microsoft also has a broader buyback program in place that operates online, and that accepts a wide variety of rivals' devices, including the iPhone. That program produced trade-in quotes for the same 16GB AT&T iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 of $160 and $250, respectively, or between 16% and 24% less for the iPhone 4S, between 14% and 18% less for the iPhone 5, than Gazelle and NextWorth.

Not surprisingly, the new buyback program does not accept Microsoft's own Surface tablets as trade-ins; none of Microsoft's current deals do. That's triggered complaints by owners of the company's first-generation tablets, who last week urged Microsoft to offer cash for their Surface RT and Surface Pro devices so that they could trade up to the second-generation Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 when they go on sale Oct. 22.

Microsoft's iPhone buyback program expires Nov. 3. Apple has already launched new smartphones -- the flagship iPhone 5S and the lower-priced iPhone 5C -- but the former is in very short supply, with current orders slated to ship at an unspecified date next month.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@ix.netcom.com.

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IM+ (for Windows 8)

Pros Accepts all manner of messaging services, including Skype and Facebook. Group chat. File attachments. Notifications. Background operation.

Cons Some interface quirks. No voice or video chat. Bottom Line If you use a multiplicity of chat services—Facebook, Skype, AIM, and so on—IM+ offers a good way to bring them all together in a touch-friendly interface.

By Michael Muchmore

With clients for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Web, and even BlackBerry Playbook (!), software maker Shape claims that its IM+ is the most widely used instant messaging software in the world. Now you can add Windows 8 (and 8.1 and RT) to that list. Part of the app's success is that, in addition to so much platform support, it works with every IM protocol you've heard of—including Facebook messages, Skype, Gtalk, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Twitter—and several you probably haven't heard of, like mig33, Fetion, and Mamba.

So what do you look for in a messaging client? I already mentioned two of the biggies—wide service and platform support, but there are lots of trappings that can make IM more useful, productive, and enjoyable. Things like chat history saving, contact list sorting, photo and file exchanging. Voice, video, and group chat are further icing on the cake. IM+ offers some of these, with even more window dressing like custom backgrounds, sounds, and a plentiful selection of emoticons.

Setup
IM+ is available at the Windows Store in both a free and a $4.99 Pro edition. The latter simply removes all advertising, though what I saw in the free edition wasn't obtrusive, though some will prefer a pure IM experience. I tested on a desktop and a Microsoft Surface Pro. When you first run IM+, you're asked to allow it access to your personal data and to run in the background. If you say no to either, the app is pretty useless, so just go ahead and give it permission. A third permission bar asks if you want to "share data between devices" which is a convenience for people with PCs, tablets, and smart phones—most of us. I did have to enable the accounts when installing the app on another device, however.

Then you'll want to choose to set up an account from the 19 services offered, by clicking on their colorful tiles. I started with AOL Instant Messenger, an old standby when it comes to IM. Skype has long been a difficult nut for IM clients to crack, but IM+ had no trouble connecting me with my Skype chat contacts, as well as my Facebook, AIM, and Yahoo Messenger accounts (though I don't really use that last one much).

Interface
The IM+ for Windows 8 Interface is a bit odd, though I see that the reason for this is that the company wants to make it work well with touch. An example of this oddity is that from the main page, you can't see your IM services unless you swipe to the right. And at the bottom are "Show More" text links, which really just open a more standard-looking IM interface. The Settings panel should let you manage your messaging accounts, but it doesn't. And when you do get to the account page, you have to invoke the app bar (by right clicking or swiping from the top or bottom of a touch screen) to see the Add account + button—this should just always be showing on the accounts screen.

A couple of desirable IM options let the app "Show status on the lock screen" and "Pop up notifications" so that you can see an incoming message when you're doing something else on the tablet or PC. The app also does well when you're taking advantage of Windows 8's ability to display a split app screen. I've always liked running IM in a thin side window on Windows 7 and before; being able to have it available as a sidebar to your main activity makes a lot of sense, and I found that I could interact in IM+ this way with aplomb.

A couple more nice options are noteworthy: You can set the app to silent mode, which will be much appreciated by folks around you. A choice of background patterns and four font sizes allow for some customization of the interface. You cannot, however, sort contacts by history—meaning that the people you chat with most appear first.

Using IM+ on Windows 8
After a smidgeon of acclimation, the IM+ interface is a cinch, with the main pages showing tile areas for Chats, Contacts, and (after a swipe or mouse-wheel spin) accounts. The more standard "show more" view has a left panel that you can switch between showing lists of your contacts, current chats, and favorites. The large center area, as you'd expect, is where your conversations are displayed.

In addition to text chatting, IM+ lets you add from an amusing selection of emoticons, and attach files and on-the-spot shot photos or video messages. A permission bar appears telling you that the data will be uploaded to IM+'s servers, but no third parties will get access to the data. When I snapped a photo in a chat, my recipient had to launch a browser window to see it, rather than just having it inline in the chat.

To start a group chat, you simply hit the circled + button at top right in a chat. Unfortunately, you can only have groups within the same service—you can't mix AIM and Skype contacts, for example, though this is the way most IM clients work. You can always add more participants and see who's included via buttons. And you get all the same attachments and emoticon options as with one-on-one chat.

A couple of things you don't get are audio and video chatting, which IM+ clients on other platforms offer. But Shape notes that more features are in the works for the Windows 8 app, so perhaps we can hope for audio and video in a future release.

Getting the Message
For touch tablet users, IM+ fills a much needed void in the Windows 8 "Metro" and Windows 8 RT world, as a universal instant messaging client. Its abilities to run effectively in the background and in a side window add value for any Windows 8 user. Group chat and file attachments are other plusses that outweigh a somewhat quirky interface to earn IM+ for Windows 8 a "Good" PCMag rating of 3 bullets. For a more powerful communicator, check out Skype for Windows 8.

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Multifactor authentication available on Windows Azure cloud

September 27, 2013 06:34 AM ETIDG News Service - Microsoft has announced the general availability of multifactor authentication on its Windows Azure cloud platform.

Besides using a user name and password, users can authenticate through an application on their mobile device, automated voice call, and a text message with a passcode, Microsoft said Thursday.

Windows Azure multifactor authentication can be used for applications that require additional security, including on-premises VPNs and Web applications. Users have to run the multifactor authentication server on existing hardware or in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Users can synchronize with their Windows Server Active Directory for automated user set up.

The authentication can also be used for cloud applications like Windows Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM. Users have to enable multifactor authentication for Windows Azure AD identities "with the flip of a switch," and will be prompted to set up multifactor the next time they sign-in, Microsoft said. Users can also use the Azure SDK (software development kit) to build multifactor authentication phone call and text message authentication into their application's sign-in or transaction processes.

Competitor Amazon Web Services already offers multifactor authentication free to its users for use with their AWS account. Customers are however charged if they use a physical authentication device that will need to be purchased from Gemalto.

The Microsoft service on Azure is charged at two pricing options: US$2 per user per month for unlimited authentications or $2 for 10 authentications. A promotional offer cuts the price by half until Oct. 31.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Windows touchscreen laptops, Chromebooks save back-to-school

September 27, 2013 11:20 AM ETComputerworld - Touch-enabled Windows notebooks and Chrome OS-powered Chromebooks contributed to better-than-expected PC sales during the back-to-school period and may hint at a less dismal holiday-selling season than once thought, a retail analyst said today.

"The trajectory of the numbers means that the holidays should be more aligned with back-to-school than with the [gloomier] projections of earlier this year," said Stephen Baker of the NPD Group.

This wasn't a turn-around, Baker cautioned, not by a long shot, but things could have been much worse. "The point we would make is that the talk that no one wants PCs and that they're on a road to ruin is not what we see in the sales numbers," Baker said. "This is a mature market struggling to find its place in a changing industry, but it still has a pretty solid base."

Even so, the back-to-school stretch in the U.S. -- from June 30 to Sept. 7 -- saw PC sales down 2.5% compared to the same period in 2012. But the decline was slightly better than the 4% drop that NPD measured in the U.S. retail market during the first half of 2013.

Call Baker optimistically uneasy. "While these results are better than ... the first half of the year, any declines in the crucial back-to-school period leave reason to be concerned for the upcoming holiday season," he said.

There were some clear trends during back-to-school, however.

Windows notebooks equipped with touchscreens accounted for a quarter of all sales, an encouraging sign since Windows 8 -- the Microsoft operating system launched a year ago -- relies heavily on touch and has been largely panned on non-touch systems.

Microsoft executives have blamed the shortage of touch notebooks for Windows 8's lack of progress. If touch PCs had been more prevalent, they have argued, Windows 8 would have gotten out of the gate faster. And once touch was more widely available, the new operating system would power a rebound in PC sales.

While the jury is still out on that, more touch notebooks are coming on line and at lower prices. A third of all touchscreen notebooks sold during the back-to-school season were priced under $500, which drove down the ASP (average selling price) from $715 in the first half of 2013 to $646, said NPD.

"The rapid rollout of under $500 devices put touch much more aggressively in front of the key back-to-school consumer and created incremental demand," Baker said.

Windows notebooks accounted for a majority of sales during the back-to-school season in the U.S. (Data: NPD Group.)Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

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Microsoft's ambitions for Windows RT revealed: Phablets

If the words spoken at Microsoft's financial analyst meeting yesterday were any hint, Microsoft has finally figured out the target market for its beleagured Windows RT: phablets.

Originally the object of scorn -- not least of all for their clumsy name -- phablets are the halfway-house form factor between smartphone and tablet. They have also turned into a major draw for phone makers like Samsung, whose Galaxy Note line has sold more than 38 million devices.

Those are numbers Microsoft would love to have for its mobile devices, and Windows RT might prove to be the way to make that happen.

Microsoft has struggled for years, even decades, to become a presence in the mobile market, but has consistently lagged in that race. From Windows CE to Windows Phone 8, each version of Windows designed for mobile devices has shown intriguing ideas but troubled execution. Galen Gruman eyed Windows Phone 8 on the HTC 8X and Nokia Lumina 800, and while he admired the hardware, the software remained for him "a frustrating blend of simplistic and difficult, with occasional touches of brilliance that render the poor usability even more frustrating."

Would a full-blown version of Windows on an ARM-powered phablet-sized device be a step in the right direction then? It might be, and here's how that could work.

The Modern UI/Metro side of Windows 8 has consistently shown itself to be well-suited to touch devices with screens of various sizes. A phablet with a full-HD display running Metro apps (or whatever they're called now) would work reasonably well.

It's the desktop side that would be nearly unworkable in such a form factor, touch additions to the OS notwithstanding. Trying to run the desktop side of Windows 8 on a device like that brings to mind Sony's ultracramped Vaio UX series of supersmall notebooks, which were a scant 5.91 inches wide, sported a 4.5-inch 1,024-by-600 touchscreen, featured a calculator-style keyboard, and ran the x86 edition of Windows XP. Needless to say, they didn't fly off the shelves.

Perhaps Microsoft's future plan for Windows RT is to ditch the desktop side entirely in that incarnation of the OS and leave it for the full-blown x86/x64 incarnation of Windows. That would put RT all the more in a position to be a successor to Windows Phone, which seems ill-fated to gain any traction.

If phablets are indeed Windows RT's future, Microsoft needs to be careful about which hardware partners to pick for a possible Windows RT phablet venture. The last thing Microsoft wants is to have devices like the feeble Acer Iconia W3 as flagships for the Windows RT sub-brand.

The obvious partner for such things is Nokia, and sure enough rumors of a Nokia-made, ARM-powered Windows RT tablet have surfaced by way of Paul Thurrott.

Another issue is applications, since desktop apps for conventional Windows must be recompiled for ARM to run in RT. That said, touch apps for Windows 8 are far easier to put on RT machines. If Microsoft exorcises the desktop entirely from RT, the problem might well solve itself.

Microsoft has long tried to make Windows a mobile item by stripping it down and then building it back up again. The irony of using Windows 8 RT as a mobile platform on phablet devices is that the company won't even have to build it back up again. It'll just have to take out the desktop -- the part that has long been most directly used to call it "Windows."

This story, "Microsoft's ambitions for Windows RT revealed: Phablets," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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The best laptops, convertibles, and Ultrabooks for Windows 8

Service Desk Comparative ReportGartner's recent magic quadrant for IT Service Support Management included no vendors as leaders or innovators. Learn why and how ITinvolve is delivering an innovative service desk solution that empowers IT staff through social collaboration and visualization to improve incident analysis and triage to speed incident resolution time.

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Reality for Windows developers: Users want Android, iOS apps

Windows application developers moving into the mobile realm must grasp the reality that the platforms users want are not necessarily Windows.

A report released today entitled "Entering the Brave New World of Mobile Apps" emphasizes both the demand Windows developers are facing for mobile software as well as the reality that the two platforms most in demand by their users are Google Android and Apple iOS, not Windows platforms, which rank third and fourth in the survey. The report was authored by Dimensional Research and sponsored by software development tools vendor Embarcadero Technologies. Participants included 1,337 persons involved in Windows desktop application development, either as developers, engineers, or development managers.

The survey found that 85 percent of respondents had requests for mobile applications, which involve mobile capabilities for existing applications, new applications altogether, or replacing existing mobile systems. Android was the most requested platform, with 83 percent getting requests for it, followed by iOS (67 percent); Windows Phone (33 percent), Windows RT (13 percent), and RIM BlackBerry (14 percent).

Credit: Dimensional Research

Windows developers having to build for iOS and Android face challenges, said researcher Diane Hagglund, a principal with Dimensional Research: "They have to do it. They're figuring it out. These are really smart guys, but it's making challenges for them." Developers must build new skills, she said.

Meanwhile, 92 percent of respondents reported having concerns about building mobile applications, including a need for new development skills, the high costs of developing for multiple platforms, and inadequate tooling. Eighty-five percent said native apps are best, and 74 percent found HTML5 and JavaScript-based development challenging due to issues like accessing device features and inadequate language capabilities. Ninety-five percent see value in common source code for desktop and mobile applications. Embarcadero is positioning its RAD Studio XE 5 tooling platform, being announced Wednesday, as a solution in this vein, supporting multiple mobile platforms including Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac OS.

This story, "Reality for Windows developers: Users want Android, iOS apps," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

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Small-screen Bay Trail-based Windows 8.1 tablet on tap for IDF

IDG News Service - Startup Aava Mobile will show a Windows 8.1 tablet with an 8.3-in., high-definition screen and Intel's upcoming Atom tablet processor code-named Bay Trail at the Intel Developer Forum next week.

The tablet's screen can display images at a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels, and the device will join a handful of Windows tablets with screen sizes under 10 inches. Toshiba announced the Encore 8-in. tablet with Windows 8.1 at IFA in Berlin this week, and Acer offers the $249 Iconia W3 tablet running Windows 8.

The Aava Mobile tablet doesn't have a name yet and won't be sold directly to consumers, said Piotr Frasunkiewicz, co-founder of the startup, based in Oulu, Finland.

Instead, the tablet will be built to order for vertical markets such as health care, education and services. Aava will also make the tablet for other device makers who can then sell it to consumers, Frasunkiewicz said.

Aava felt that 8.3 inches is the minimum screen size required to effectively display high-definition content, Frasunkiewicz said. The 8.3-in. tablet is also easy to hold, he said.

Aava did not provide an estimated price for the tablet, but Intel has said that Bay Trail consumer tablets with Windows 8.1 will start at around $350 to $400. Aava is estimating a battery life of 10 hours and has added features that could make the tablet appealing to enterprises.

The tablet has a swappable battery, found in only a few tablets like Hewlett-Packard's ElitePad 900, which can also be easily disassembled to add memory or storage. Aava Mobile will customize its tablet to meet specific enterprise or tablet-maker requirements, Frasunkiewicz said.

Other enterprise features include docking capabilities. The tablet can withstand a drop of up to 1 meter and has been tested to work in high- and low-temperature environments, Frasunkiewicz said.

Windows 8 adoption in tablets and PCs has been poor so far, but Frasunkiewicz said demand will pick up.

"In vertical markets, the legacy of Windows is a benefit," said Frasunkiewicz, adding that many companies want to upgrade to tablets that support existing software applications.

Aava will also make a 10.1-in. version of the Windows 8.1 tablet.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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Evernote (for Windows)

Pros Improved interface. Cleaner design and newly added customizable views. Great new shortcuts feature. Premium Evernote account well worth the money. Interoperates with dozens of other apps and services. OCR (text search in images) available in free accounts.

Cons Awkward controls for conflicting changes. Windows versions slower to roll out than Mac apps. Bottom Line Evernote, now in version 5, is the best Windows users have seen of this powerful note-taking app yet. A new design and updated features—largely features that Mac users have had for some time now—make the Evernote experience supremely worthwhile.

By Jill Duffy Skim any must-have-apps list, and you're likely to find Evernote. The note-making and organizing application has certainly won praise from smartphone users, productivity experts, and highly organized individuals. And let's not exclude those highly disorganized people, who love Evernote for its incredible search engine that helps them find exactly the right note without having to remember where they put them. If you're interested in getting organized, Evernote will knock your socks off.

A newly released version 5 of Evernote for Windows (free to $45 per year for a Premium account) catches up Windows users to the Mac crowd, who have had some of the new features included in version 5 since their platform got it last year. A flat and less cluttered design lighten the eyes from the emerald green in previous versions. And a few other notable improvements make the experience of using Evernote on a desktop that much more efficient.

What's New in Evernote 5 for Windows?
The visual change is probably the most obvious, with the Windows app now sporting a slightly more minimalistic and flat design. There's also now a very handy shortcut area on the left rail, where you can drag and drop your most frequently accessed notes, notebooks, tags, and search terms. The shortcuts section may be my favorite of the new features.

Another design change: You have more choice over your Evernote window layout, with options for list view, card view, and snippet view. Again, Mac users have had these choices since Evernote 5 for Mac came out late last year.

Other new features are pretty subtle, like new keyboard shortcuts for power users (Shift-Alt-N lets you jump to notebooks, for example).

Getting Into Evernote: The Basics
If you're unfamiliar with Evernote, here's a summary in a nutshell: Evernote lets you create electronic files, such as text files, images and photos, and audio memos (i.e., voice memos, but really any audio recording). Everything you create can be sorted and tagged in a number of ways, and everything is searchable, including the text that appears in an image. It's all saved to the cloud, which explains how you can access and edit all your files from a multitude of devices. There's an Evernote app for just about every platform, including an iPhone app, iPad app, Android app, as well as an Evernote Web app for accessing your notes when you don't have one of your own devices on hand.

The desktop version is a spacious application to finish up all those ideas you assembled (perhaps sloppily) on the go. If an idea strikes me while I'm away from my home or office, I'll quickly draft it in Evernote, not worrying too much about typos and disorganization. But back on a full-sized computer, with a comfortable keyboard and monitor, I usually want to further develop what I started, clean it up, and fill in missing ideas. The beauty of doing this all within your Evernote account is that it's saved centrally. The next time I'm remote and have an idea for something I want to change or add, I can access the latest version of my file from whatever device I happen to have—a smartphone, an iPad, or Web browser.

For more of my personal tips, see "Get Organized: 5 Tips for Evernote."

Evernote syncs the latest version of all your notes across all versions of the software. If you forget to download a file in advance, Evernote even gives you the option to work on the most recent stored version or work on a blank canvas and append the changes to the file later. You can also always see the activity that has taken place in your account, such as synchronizing successes and failures, changes to notes, and so on, in an activity tab in the app. You can also see changes to any note in question in a history area if you click the information button at the top of any note.

When syncing goes awry, as it sometimes does if you're working offline a lot from multiple devices, you'll see a "conflicting changes" message. You'll also see a new notebook for "conflicts" appear. Fixing the conflicting changes, however, requires your own effort. You have to manually compare the two notes and figure out what kind of copy-and-paste extravaganza will set the whole thing square again.

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Windows 8.1 won't rescue PC market this year, IDC says

The PC market will weaken even further this year and Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8.1 OS will be unable to reverse the drop in shipments, IDC said on Thursday.

Due in part to increased adoption of mobile devices globally and a drop in PC sales in China, shipments will shrink 9.7 percent in 2013, according to IDC, which previously had predicted a fall of 7.7 percent drop.

[ Also on InfoWorld: A first, jaundiced look at Windows 8.1 RTM. | Windows 8 left you blue? Then check out Windows Red, InfoWorld's plan to fix Microsoft's contested OS. | InfoWorld has your top picks: the best Windows 8 tablet laptops, convertibles, and Ultrabooks. | For a quick, smart take on the news you'll be talking about, check out InfoWorld TechBrief -- subscribe today. ]

Microsoft's Windows 8 has also been blamed by analysts as one of the reasons for the decline in the PC market. Windows 8.1, due to ship in mid-October, will address some user complaints, but PC shipments will also fall next year, and rebound with only single-digit growth in 2015, said Jay Chou, senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement.

With Windows 8, Microsoft has put a tablet-like touch user interface on PCs, which has baffled users buying non-touch PCs. Touch laptops remain expensive, and PC makers expect enterprises to upgrade laptops to the Windows 7 OS. The Windows 8 OS and high prices of PCs are reasons why people are looking at attractively priced tablets instead, Chou said.

Lower-priced laptops and convertible designs will ultimately help the PC market recover, IDC said.

"Advances in PC hardware, such as improvements in the power efficiency of x86 processors remain encouraging," Chou said.

The weak China market will be another major factor in PC shipments dropping, IDC said. PC makers like Lenovo have recorded PC shipment growth due to a strong China market in the previous quarters. IDC is forecasting PC shipments in China to fall by double digits this year, compounding an already weak consumer market in developed countries.

PC shipments dropped by 11.4 percent during the second quarter this year, totaling 75.6 million units, according to IDC. Component shortages also played a part in shipments dropping during the quarter.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's email address is agam_shah@idg.com.

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Windows 8.1 RTMs -- but developers won't get it until October

Service Desk Comparative ReportGartner's recent magic quadrant for IT Service Support Management included no vendors as leaders or innovators. Learn why and how ITinvolve is delivering an innovative service desk solution that empowers IT staff through social collaboration and visualization to improve incident analysis and triage to speed incident resolution time.

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Mention (for Windows)

Pros Searches the Internet for keywords and notifies you of mentions. Rich features. Includes social media sites in search results (or not if you exclude them). Sentiment feature lets you track negative, positive, neutral content. Available to try without providing a credit card.

Cons Can't adjust column widths. Terminology and navigation slightly confusing. Bottom Line The search-and-alert program Mention takes the concept of Google Alerts and blends it with social media monitoring tools, resulting in one rich package for businesses.

By Jill Duffy Negative user feedback about Google Alerts, one of the most popular search and notification services online, exploded earlier this year. A few months ago, Google Alerts users started reporting that the service was slow to find new instances of search terms online, or that it missed them entirely—and it hasn't improved. In my hunt for an alternative to Google Alerts, I landed on Mention (free to $64.99 per user per month for the Enterprise edition) and was impressed at how much more it does than Google Alerts.

Mention actively searches the Web and social media sites for key terms of your choosing, with advanced search criteria available, and in multiple languages. When a new mention of your key terms is found, you can use Mention to assign follow-up to that activity (if you're working in a collaborative environment), or track the sentiment by marking it positive, negative, or neutral. Mention is much richer than Google Alerts, and way better than the rudimentary SocialMention Web app. There's a lot to uncover in this wonderful program, whether you use it locally on your desktop, in a mobile app, or elsewhere.

Compatibility and Availability
Mention is available both online as a Web app at Mention.net, as well as locally on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and as a plug-in for Chrome. This review looks at the Windows version.

All the apps are free to download, but you'll need a Mention account to use them, which come in free and paid varieties (more on that below).

Basic Features
Like Google Alerts, Mention lets you set up alerts for key terms, and then the program actively scours the Internet day and night until it finds new mentions of those terms. When a new one is found, Mention lets you know. You can get pop-up alerts right on your screen, view them in the program itself, and receive notifications via email. The mobile apps have push notifications as well.

The advanced search features are thorough. You can add operators (AND, OR, and the like), include different languages, and include or exclude various kinds of websites. For example, you could search only the Web and social media sites, but not video sites. You can also block URLs, which is handy if you're aware of a high volume of Web content being published on your own sites for which you don't require notifications.

You can also turn on or off a "noise" filter, which will show you only highly relevant results of importance. I wish there were more documentation or even a few tips upfront about how the noise filter works, as I found it a little confusing. On Mention.net's FAQ page, I found more information: "When you trash a mention, our anti-noise technology will automatically trash the mentions that are related to the one you've trashed. To get more results, you should untrash the mentions that are relevant to your search." I like that this feature and technology exists, but I do wish I had known sooner how to use it properly.

In addition to monitoring instances of your key terms being talked about online, you can also directly hook up Twitter and Facebook accounts to Mention and monitor their activity in the same place. This section isn't as robust as, say, TweetDeck or HootSuite, which both has scheduling tools for sending posts at different times of day, and other social media-specific features.

An invaluable feature for teams using Mention in a business setting is tasks. If more than one person has access to a Mention account, they can assign one another tasks such as following up on online mentions. For example, if someone tweets at my Twitter account, I could assign a different team member to reply or privately message that user. Or if you spotted a mention online that did not look legitimate, you could assign someone from the licensing department to chase after the content creator.

More Features
Start exploring Mention, and you'll uncover some really rich features. Some are simple, like the ability to generate RSS feed URLs for your alerts, while others are much more complex and well suited for business environments. Statistics, for example, let you run reports of mentions and export that data for other uses. Mention also has some element of sentiment tracking, although a few "beta" flags let me know that these features are still in development. When a new mention comes into your account, the service might mark it as positive, negative, or neutral. And, in fact, you can mark the sentiment yourself if you prefer, likely with more accurate results.

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Windows 8 stains Ballmer's legacy

Computerworld - Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer survived the flop that was Windows Vista, but he wasn't able to do the same after the disappointment of Windows 8.

"Last year, Ballmer said Windows 8 would be his defining moment," said Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. "Now, this has caught up with him. Windows 8 is the primary reason why he's retiring, specifically Windows RT. There's been a lack of progress on Windows Phone, but the forcing function was clearly the write-down of the Surface RT."

From Moorhead's perspective, it was that write-down, a $900 million charge against earnings to account for excess inventory of the company's Surface RT tablet, that precipitated Ballmer's retirement, in large part because the overstock was a blatant indicator of the magnitude of his misjudgment about how customers would react to the newest Windows.

And Windows 8 may be the thing that people remember about Ballmer, said another analyst, whether that's fair or not.

"Any evaluation of Ballmer can't start in 2007 or 2008," argued David Cearley of Gartner Friday. "His legacy is the totality of Microsoft. But inevitably, a CEO is judged by what the company looked like when he left. [And] Microsoft has struggled to reinvent itself."

The problems Ballmer recently faced were greater than just the Surface tablet or the tile-based, touch-first Windows RT operating system that powers it. Windows 8's failure to spark a surge in PC sales also played a big part.

Ballmer weathered Windows Vista, the delayed follow-on to Windows XP that was widely derided as a mess. But it wasn't Windows 8's poor numbers, by some metrics even poorer than Vista's, that brought down Ballmer: It was his unrealistic predictions of its success that did him in.

Ballmer, known as an enthusiastic promoter of Microsoft and an overly-optimistic salesman by trade and inclination, was, to use a phrase he coined multiple times in his career, "all in" on Windows 8.

"I think with the addition of Windows 8, with these incredible new form factors that are tablets and PCs, I think we're going to see a lot of growth and vitality and explosion in the PC market," said Ballmer last October at the company's BUILD developers conference. "I guarantee you, this will be the best opportunity software developers will see as hundreds of millions of new machines go out with the potential of billions and billions of new applications being sold."

Ballmer made those predictions even though PC shipments had fallen year-over-year in the quarter before. They then continued to contract in the next four quarters and show no short-term sign of recovery. According to estimates by researchers at IDC and Gartner, PC shipments will decline in 2013 at more than double the rate of 2012.

The dismal results so far for Windows 8 and Windows RT -- together, they accounted for 5.4% of all operating systems used to go online in July -- have put a spotlight on Microsoft's inability to capitalize on the quick-growing tablet market, a fault Windows 8 was supposed to quickly correct.

"It's clear that the problems of Windows 8, Windows RT were not addressed in a short enough timeframe," said Moorhead, referring to Microsoft waiting until May to admit that the first iteration had been a miss and it would release the Windows 8.1 course correction this year. "The result was a PC market that didn't get back to Windows 7 levels."

Even the recast of Windows with Windows 8.1, while generally applauded by analysts, may be too little too late to repair the damage. Lenovo, the Chinese PC maker that last quarter was the world's largest, recently struck a deal with an American company, SweetLabs, to bundle the latter's Start button and Start menu replacements on all its computers, essentially a vote of no confidence in Windows 8.1's marketability without third-party tweaks.

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Microsoft updates Windows Phone App Studio after developer projects soar

Microsoft is updating the recently launched beta of Windows Phone App Studio to improve performance and scalability after the new app development tool crossed 55,000 active projects.

The hosted service was launched two weeks ago in a bid by Microsoft to increase the number of applications available on Windows Phone by allowing users to create apps without writing any code. The service lets users choose from a number of templates to get started, then add content such as images, videos, RSS, and Twitter feeds.

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So far, the response has been well above what Microsoft expected, according to a blog post on Monday. In the first 48 hours, Microsoft saw more than 20,000 people from all over the world starting more than 30,000 projects, and on Monday it crossed 55,000 active projects. To help manage demand, the company implemented a temporary access code system, it said.

Microsoft is also making some fundamental changes to improve App Studio's overall performance and the scalability of the system. There have been a few hiccups in the first two weeks of availability, according to Microsoft. The company is also adding new functionality; users can choose from new templates and there are connections to more external data sources, including Flickr, which users have been asking for.

The company didn't provide any details on when Windows Phone App Studio would become generally available.

The availability of more apps is key for Windows Phone's continued growth, according to Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. Sales of Windows Phones to end-users increased to 7.4 million during the second quarter, which was enough to surpass sales of BlackBerry for the first time. But the OS still only has a 3.3 percent market share, according to Gartner.

"While Microsoft has managed to increase share and volume in the quarter, Microsoft should continue to focus on growing interest from app developers to help grow its appeal among users," Gupta said.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

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Dell drops $299 Windows RT tablet, cheapest offer now $479

Shoppers who tried to buy a Windows RT tablet at Dell's website Friday morning would have seen one listed for $299. By the end of the day the cheapest tablet came bundled with a keyboard for $479.

Dell made several changes to the RT offers on its website. By Friday evening it had eliminated all the options for a standalone tablet and now only sells the product, called the XPS 10, bundled with a keyboard.

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In some ways it bucks a recent trend. Dell has been lowering prices for its Windows RT tablet since May, after the company admitted it was selling poorly. When it was introduced last October, the XPS 10 was priced at $499, and it had dropped to $299 in May.

Dell is apparently trying to up-sell customers to breathe a bit of life into its XPS 10 business after poor sales, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates

Selling the tablet bundled with a keyboard suggests Dell views it as a device for creating content rather than just consuming it, perhaps because Windows RT is designed to provide some "laptop-like" capabilities, Kay said.

"It seems like the direction they are going in. It's a better idea if it's a bundle," he said.

Earlier Friday, a tablet with 32GB of storage priced at $299 was listed as "out of stock." IDG News Service inquired about the product to see if it was still on sale, and shortly afterward, the listing disappeared from the site. Later in the day, a standalone XPS 10 with 64GB of storage also disappeared.

Dell never replied to requests for comment about the changes.

The only models listed on the site by late Friday came bundled with keyboards. And, somewhat confusingly, the bundles with the 32GB and 64GB tablets were listed for the same price -- $479. That's apparently because the 64GB device comes with a steeper discount offer.

There's also an LTE version of the 64GB XPS 10 listed on the site, priced at $579 with a keyboard.

Apart from the storage and connectivity, the other tablet features are the same. They all have a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and a 10.1-inch screen that displays images at 1366 x 768 resolution. Windows RT is Microsoft's version of Windows 8 for ARM processors like the Snapdragon.

Keyboards are expensive as an accessory and can be more profitable for Dell than the tablet itself, and Dell could use all the financial help it can get right now, Kay said. On Thursday, it reported quarterly profits that were down 72 percent.

Bundling the tablets and keyboards together could also be Dell's way of clearing out its XPS 10 tablets and accessories, he said, though it was unclear if that was Dell's goal.

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Dell drops $299 Windows RT tablet; cheapest deal is now $479

IDG News Service - Shoppers who tried to buy a Windows RT tablet at Dell's website Friday morning would have seen one listed for $299. By the end of the day the cheapest tablet came bundled with a keyboard for $479.

Dell made several changes to the RT offers on its website. By Friday evening it had eliminated all the options for a standalone tablet and now only sells the product, called the XPS 10, bundled with a keyboard.

In some ways it bucks a recent trend. Dell has been lowering prices for its Windows RT tablet since May, after the company admitted it was selling poorly. When it was introduced last October, the XPS 10 was priced at $499, and it had dropped to $299 in May.

Dell is apparently trying to up-sell customers to breathe a bit of life into its XPS 10 business after poor sales, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates

Selling the tablet bundled with a keyboard suggests Dell views it as a device for creating content rather than just consuming it, perhaps because Windows RT is designed to provide some "laptop-like" capabilities, Kay said.

"It seems like the direction they are going in. It's a better idea if it's a bundle," he said.

Earlier Friday, a tablet with 32GB of storage priced at $299 was listed as "out of stock." IDG News Service inquired about the product to see if it was still on sale, and shortly afterward, the listing disappeared from the site. Later in the day, a standalone XPS 10 with 64GB of storage also disappeared.

Dell never replied to requests for comment about the changes.

The only models listed on the site by late Friday came bundled with keyboards. And, somewhat confusingly, the bundles with the 32GB and 64GB tablets were listed for the same price -- $479. That's apparently because the 64GB device comes with a steeper discount offer.

There's also an LTE version of the 64GB XPS 10 listed on the site, priced at $579 with a keyboard.

Apart from the storage and connectivity, the other tablet features are the same. They all have a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and a 10.1-inch screen that displays images at 1366 x 768 resolution. Windows RT is Microsoft's version of Windows 8 for ARM processors like the Snapdragon.

Keyboards are expensive as an accessory and can be more profitable for Dell than the tablet itself, and Dell could use all the financial help it can get right now, Kay said. On Thursday, it reported quarterly profits that were down 72 percent.

Reprinted with permission from IDG.net. Story copyright 2012 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

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XP Z: Microsoft scares Windows XP users straight with undead bug warning

Computerworld - Microsoft yesterday warned Windows XP customers that they face never-patched, never-dead "zero-day" vulnerabilities if they don't dump the 12-year-old operating system before its April 2014 retirement deadline.

Call them the "walking dead" of vulnerabilities. Call it XP Z -- "Z" for zombies.

The warning -- just the latest in a two-year campaign to denigrate XP and convince users to leave it behind -- was similar to one given earlier this week by a long-time SANS security trainer, who predicted that hackers would save their vulnerabilities until after XP's retirement, then unleash them on unprotected PCs.

"The very first month [after April 2014] that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse-engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares those vulnerabilities," said Tim Rains, a director in Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, in a Thursday blog.

"If [XP shares the vulnerabilities], attackers will attempt to develop exploit code that can take advantage of those vulnerabilities on Windows XP. Since a security update will never become available for Windows XP to address these vulnerabilities, Windows XP will essentially have a 'zero day' vulnerability forever," Rains said.

Reverse-engineering of patches is a common practice by both security researchers and cyber criminals.

Once a patch is released -- say for Windows 7 in May 2014 -- hackers can do a code comparison between the updated and non-updated versions to locate the changes. With the changes in hand, astute researchers can figure out where the vulnerability was. Finally, they can use that information to poke around Windows XP to see if it, too, has buggy code similar to the non-patched Windows 7.

As Rains pointed out -- and history has shown -- it's certain that a number of the flaws fixed in the future in Windows Vista, Windows 7, even Windows 8, will also exist in Windows XP, if only because Microsoft has dragged copious amounts of legacy code, some pre-dating XP, into its newer OSes.

That's one of the reasons why when Microsoft patches a bug in Windows 8, it often also patches the same vulnerability in older editions.

Of the three security updates that applied to Windows XP in the collection Microsoft shipped on Tuesday, for example, two also applied to Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. According to statistics Rains cited, over the last year the same percentage of XP vulnerabilities would have been game for reverse-engineering: Of the 45 security bulletins that applied to XP between July 2012 and July 2013, 30 affected Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Rains also ran down XP's security prowess, saying that its primary defense, DEP, for Data Execution Prevention, has become less effective as hackers have learned how to bypass it. (Windows XP lacks another defensive technology, ASLR (address space layout randomization, that is enabled by default on Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.)

That's been part of Microsoft's get-off-XP strategy, to disparage its most successful operating system.

In June 2011, a Microsoft manager claimed it was "time to move on" from XP, while even earlier that year an executive on the Internet Explorer team belittled XP as the "lowest common denominator" when he explained why the OS wouldn't run the then-new IE9.

The truth is, XP isn't going anywhere. According to projections based on data from metrics firm Net Applications, XP will be powering about one-third of the world's Windows PCs after its April 2014 retirement. In the U.S., the forecast predicts that XP will still drive one-in-10 Windows systems that month.

Those numbers have prompted some to suspect that Microsoft will renege on its promise to end support for XP on April 8, 2014, and continue to patch the OS. But Rains gave no hint that that's part of the plan.

Also due for retirement next April is Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), the browser that launched in August 2001. In July, IE6 was used by 6% of those who went online, or nearly 11% of those who ran one edition or another of Internet Explorer.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at  @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed . His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.

See more by Gregg Keizer on Computerworld.com.

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MLB At Bat 13 (for Windows Phone)

Pros Listen to live radio broadcasts of games. See live MLB scores. Watch video highlights.

Cons No Gameday view. No news articles. No stats. Bottom Line The Windows Phone version of MLB's At Bat 13 app lacks some features found on other platforms, but heck, it's free.

By Michael Muchmore

One of the go-to apps I missed when moving from an iPhone to a Windows Phone was MLB's At Bat. I probably place too much importance on the results of my local practitioners of the U.S. national pastime, but, if I can't get the latest scores, I'm not a happy camper. Being able to listen to the play-by-play radio coverage, watch highlight videos, and see current standings are big plusses, and the recently released MLB At Bat 13 app for Windows Phone lets me do all of that.

The icing on the cake? It's free. That compares well with the 10 bucks I shelled out for the iPhone version, but there's a catch: You don't get all of the iPhone version's features—sadly the case with so many popular apps making their debuts on Microsoft's new (and thriving) mobile platform.

Setup
Getting MLB At Bat 13 for your Windows Phone is a simple matter of visiting the Windows Phone Store. For this review, I installed the app on a spiffy new Nokia Lumia 928. I didn't need to sign into an MLB.com account to start using the app, though a Settings option lets you sign in. As with the Bing Sports app, At Bat lets you select your favorite teams, so they'll appear at the top of your home page.

Interface
At Bat 13 sports the characteristic (formerly known as Metro) design of a well-programmed Windows Phone app: You swipe side to side to move between functions, in this case Scoreboard, Video Clips, Teams, and More. The font isn't in the standard Segoe typeface most commonly seen on the mobile apps, but rather a more old-timey, baseball-y custom one. In all, the interface is as clear as you could want. As with the Bing app, you can pin a team's page of the app to your home screen.

Using and Features
First, let me quickly note the major missing features: You don't get the live Gameday view that you get on the iOS app and on the MLB website; and you don't get box scores, news, and stats. Those are awfully key features, but some of them—news, stats, are available on the MLB mobile website, and indeed, you get a lot of the missing stuff in the competing ESPN ScoreCenter Windows Phone app.

Now let's talk about what you do get: a full scoreboard, live game status, play-by-play audio from the team's local radio stations, highlight videos, and standings. You also get a live video under the right circumstances. In the following paragraphs I'll go deeper on each of these features.

The scoreboard does everything you'd expect it to do, showing not only the current score, but also the diamond indicating runners on base, and dots for balls, strikes, and outs. At first, I was a little disappointed in this feature, since it seemed to only show games for the current day, but I then discovered that pulling the list down loads the previous day's scores, and pulling up when you're at the end of the game list loads future matchups. If you get lost in the past or future, you can tap the Today button, or choose a date on a calendar accessible from another button.

Tapping on any game entry opens the line score, with the current pitcher-batter matchup indicated below. That's not much, compared with the Gameday view you get everywhere else; ESPN's ScoreCenter app offers a nice alternative to Gameday, if that's the most important thing to you. I also don't think it would be too much to ask to have a box score choice on this page, as is available on every other platform's At Bat app.

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SplashID Safe 7.0 for Windows

Pros Manages passwords and personal data. Local-only, Wi-Fi-sync, and cloud-sync options. Optional swipe-style login. Can add reminder to entries. Can attach file to entries. Will autofill Web logins. Stores many kinds of data. Inclues IE plug-in.

Cons No automatic password capture. Limited import ability. Supports Internet Explorer only. Quirky password generator can create unusable non-ASCII passwords. All item types use fourteen data fields whether needed or not. Bottom Line With the SplashID Safe 7.0 for Windows password manager you can choose local-only storage, sync with other devices over your own Wi-Fi, or sync all devices through the SplashID Cloud. However, those familiar with fully-automatic password managers will find SplashID's limited automation disappointing.

By Neil J. Rubenking

A strictly local password manager that stores all your encrypted data nowhere but on your PC is very secure—as long as nobody steals the PC. But a password manager that can sync across multiple devices or that allows Web-based access is definitely more convenient. With SplashID Safe 7.0 for Windows, you can take your choice of strictly local storage or two kinds of cross-device syncing. However, those who are accustomed to fully automatic password management may be disappointed in the product's feature set. While SplashID does manage passwords, its overall nature is more like a database of general information.

If you just want to use SplashID on one computer, you can get a lifetime license for $9.99, which is quite a deal. A version that syncs devices strictly on your local network costs $29.99, once again a one-time cost. Syncing to the SplashID Cloud is the most flexible option, and it includes a Web interface for easy access. With this option you subscribe for $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year.

RoboForm offers a somewhat similar choice. You can install RoboForm Desktop 7 and keep your data on a single PC, or choose RoboForm Everywhere 7 and sync between multiple devices.

Getting Started
SplashID offers a free 30-day trial, so you can experience the full cloud-sync features before you choose which type of account you want. New in version 7, you can choose to log in with an Android-style swipe pattern rather than a password. Note that if you don't select a swipe-style login during initial installation, the only way to switch over is to figure out which numbers correspond to the pattern you want and enter those numbers as your password.

Therein lies a problem. A swipe-style login is precisely equivalent to an all-numeric password, and SplashID itself rates such passwords as weak. As always, I recommend that you work up a strong password, something complex but designed in a way that you can remember it.

Item Types
Item types include clothing sizes, credit cards, vehicles, prescriptions, and more. Regardless of which item type you're entering, you get the same dialog box with the same 14 data fields. Those needed for the specific type will be labeled with field names, while unused ones are just numbered, for example, "Field 9." Advanced users can dig into settings and suppress display of any fields that they never use.

Intuitive Password also stores a wide variety of data types, but its display is much slicker. For each item type it can store as many fields as it needs in a scrolling display.

Each item type comes with a default icon, but you can fine-tune item appearance by choosing from a set of more than 350 icons, or add an icon of your own.

Besides having an item type, each entry can be associated with a category. The default categories are Business and Personal, but you can add more. You can also create your own item types, naming the fields and optionally setting sensitive fields so data is masked.

You can also attach a file up to 1MB in size to any record. Since records are stored in encrypted format, this can be a simple way to protect sensitive data (as long as it isn't too large). The Files item type is specifically designed for this purpose.

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Tube Pro (for Windows Phone)

Pros Windows Phone style interface with tiles and swiping. Upload videos. Save videos for offline viewing.

Cons Map feature didn't work. Ads. Video recording dicey, with no privacy choice on upload. Bottom Line A decent YouTube experience comes to Windows Phone, with the extra perks of upload and download capabilities.

By Michael Muchmore

There's been a lot of high-profile squabbling between tech giants Google and Microsoft lately over the Windows Phone YouTube app. To me, there are a couple of good reasons to keep calm and carry on in the midst of all this: First, you can do nearly everything YouTube on a Windows Phone's Internet Explorer browser by simply navigating to YouTube.com—view top popular videos, comment, rate videos, see your subscriptions, and more. In fact, there's a little third-party YouTube app that does nothing but redirect to the video-sharing mobile website; it's a top free download with 5-star rave reviews in the Windows Phone store!

So what can you not do in the mobile YouTube site on a Windows Phone? You can't upload videos. But this too is not an inextricable hardship: You can still upload videos by emailing them to your YouTube upload email address from the mobile shown on your YouTube account page. And plenty of Windows Phone video apps let you upload to YouTube. I'd originally intended to review the excellent YouTube HD app, but that suffered the same unfortunate fate as the official YouTube app, with the search advertising behemoth blocking even the playing of videos. Luckily, a very similar app, TubePro, does it all, too (so shhhh! Don't tell Google).

Using YouTube HD
After downloading TubePro from the Windows Phone store to my Nokia Lumia 928, I wasn't required to create an account or sign into my YouTube account, but it's much more functional if you do sign in. When I did sign in, the Google sign-in page had me approve a "This app would like to Manage your YouTube account, similar to a Facebook or Twitter app authorization. The app does show ads on some pages, but you can buy the $1.29 SuperTube, which is just an ad-free version of TubePro.

Unlike a lot of YouTube apps in the Windows Store, this one uses a real Windows Phone-style interface, with the expected tile and swiping navigation between app pages. Many of the other apps simply use Google's mobile video site. TubePro's gray tiles with large red icons let you navigate among Hot videos, your Subscriptions, your Favorites, and more.

Swiping to the right from the home screen shows you Top Rated videos broken down into subcategories. Another right swipe takes you to your subscriptions, and at the bottom is a search button in the form of a magnifying glass. One cool-seeming option was Map Tube, which shows a map with options for view count, and time ranges, but I didn't see any data on the map.

Watching a Video
Once you've tapped on a particular video either on Hot, Top, or from your subscriptions, you'll see its Details page with a large thumbnail of the video's poster image, with the thumbs up and down icons, view count, user name, and description. Below the thumbnail, you get choices for LQ (low quality), HQ, and HD. But next to this is the really verboten item: Download. Buttons on the bottom let you add the video to your Watch Later list, favorite it, subscribe to its creator, and share it through email or social networks, or SMS—all the stuff you can do on YouTube itself.

Right-swiping form the video details page moves through pages for Related videos, Author's videos, and Comments. During playback, you can change the aspect ratio (from 16:9 to 4:3 and back), fullscreen, or skip ahead an back. There's also a scrubber that lets you jump ahead and back anywhere in the video you want and you can pinch on the screen to lower the volume or unpinch to raise it.

Uploading Video Shot on Your Windows Phone to YouTube
As I mentioned in the intro, uploading your own mobile videos is one of the only things you can't do simply by opening YouTube.com in Internet Explorer. TubePro makes both uploading from your camera roll and from video you shoot on the spot possible. Tap the "Recorded" tile on the home screen, and you'll see two icons at the bottom: a movie camera and and upload button.

Hitting the movie camera starts the camera view, with the same icon for starting recording. This was a little hit-or-miss with me; sometimes the screen just turned black for a while before the recording started. I wish I could start recording by tapping the screen, as I could in the default camera app. Speaking of that default app, I'd like to see a TubePro upload option added to that, as Vyclone and other apps do.

Once the timer started and I was filming, I could hit the Pause button, which let me directly upload the video to YouTube after entering a title for it. I would have like to have been able to choose the privacy level: My test upload was public.

After recording some video clips, the Recorded page is populated with a list of them, but oddly this doesn't show thumbnails, just a date.

Downloading
One thing that Google made Microsoft take out of its official YouTube app was the ability to download videos from the site. For now, anyway, this Tube Pro app doesn't suffer from that restriction. Just tap the Download link on any video's Details page, and you'll be taken to a black Downloading page with a progress bar showing percent downloaded. You can pause the download, and a setting lets you enable background downloading. Once the video's in your phone's storage, you can head to your My Download page from its home screen tile and watch it at your leisure, without the need for a data connection. 

Which Tube Is For You?
If you just what to watch the top YouTube videos or those you've subscribe to, the sites' mobile Web version is all you need. Tube Pro adds the useful abilities to upload videos right from your phone and to download videos for later viewing. It also offers a more Windows-Phone-characteristic interface than the mobile Web site. Despite a few minor drawbacks like finicky video recording and not-too-obtrusive ads, I can recommend Tube Pro as a decent YouTube experience for Windows Phone users—at least until the almighty Google decides to cut it off, too.

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