TamsPPC – the Windows Phone Blog

Microsoft’s Kinect sensor is extraordinarily popular – after all, its depth measuring features are highly useful and not available in similarly-priced packages.

Microsoft has now updated the Kinect SDK. In addition to various performance improvements and new tools including a face tracking SDK, the sensor can now also track sitting individuals:

Seated Skeletal Tracking is now available. This tracks a 10-joint head/shoulders/arms skeleton, ignoring the leg and hip joints. It is not restricted to seated positions; it also tracks head/shoulders/arms when a person is standing. This makes it possible to create applications that are optimized for seated scenarios (such as office work with productivity software or interacting with 3D data) or standing scenarios in which the lower body isn’t visible to the sensor (such as interacting with a kiosk or when navigating through MRI data in an operating room).

Find out more at the URL below:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/05/21/kinect-for-windows-runtime-and-sdk-version-1-5-released.aspx

P.S: All those of you interested in the details behind the Kinect for Windows-only Near Mode feature can find out more about that at this URL:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/01/20/near-mode-what-it-is-and-isn-t.aspx

When it comes to advertising on the Windows Phone 7 platform, Microsoft’s adCenter is a pretty popular and simple-to-use option. However, a few small changes are now incoming.

First of all, it looks as if a prepaid option will soon become available for advertisers:

This is just a quick heads up that your Microsoft Advertising adCenter Terms and Conditions have been updated with the goal of enhancing our service to provide greater payment flexibility. An adCenter prepay option will be available –no word, yet, on exactly when but pilots will begin in some of the smaller markets this summer. . When prepay payment is available in your billing country, the updated Terms and Conditions will apply. So, its business as usual until that option becomes available in your billing country. Check back here from time to time on updates related to this new feature.

In addition to that, the advertising system will soon be renamed:

Also, while we have you here, you may have noticed our new look both here on the blog, over on the Microsoft Advertising site and in all of our customer communications as we move from Microsoft Advertising to Bing.

Find out more at the URL below:
http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/en/small-business/adcenter/b/advertiser/archive/2012/05/10/microsoft-adcenter-terms-and-conditions-2012-update.aspx

When it comes to Windows Phone 7, networking never was too much of a priority item in the OS’ses design – developers had to wait until Mango came in order to get some kind of Socket support.

At osnews.com, the network stack has now been criticised for three interesting issues:

The first one is actually the most annoying one. Windows Phone 7′s policy is to turn off wifi after the device has been sleeping for 30 seconds. After pressing the lock button, wifi is turned off after 30 seconds. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that it takes WP7 really, really long to reconnect after waking from sleep.

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The second issue is also quite annoying. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the applications, or with the networking stack itself, but pulling data from the web is often painfully slow, and often will just fail entirely – no matter the wifi network or 3G connection.

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Third – what’s up with live tiles taking ages to update? Do they have some sort of update policy we’re not privy to?

Do you see similar issues on your WP7?

When it comes to press releases in the mobile space, the trigger events tend to be pretty clear: release, update and one million downloads. However, it can also make perfect sense to tie in with real-world events.

A company called BuddyCalc has now sent out the following release, mocking a recent US Government scandal:

Hookergate is obviously not an ‘event’ we would necessarily want to link to our Apple iPhone/iPad app ‘BuddyCalc’, but in this case it could have been a smart move to use BuddyCalc PRO in order to avoid any discussions afterwards over who paid what and who owes whom how much! BuddyCalc PRO handles cost sharing events, keeps track of expenses and makes dividing up costs between your friends easy. You can even allocate cost items to individuals if you do not want to share these specific expenses.

Brussels, Belgium – BuddyCalc PRO, released in January 2012 and last updated on 21 March, handles cost sharing events, keeps track of expenses and makes complex calculations among friends a thing of the past. Its little sister App, BuddyCalc Free with a 5 star rating in the App Store, can be used for simple cost-sharing calculations among friends and handles one event at the time.

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Even though such a release is unlikely to ever run on a mobile computing news site, it has a realistic potential to be picked up by larger news media.

So, why not take a stab next time?