Applications

Full House Poker and Hexic Rush receive minor updates, but we cheer them on anyway

Two Microsoft Game Studios titles recently received software updates – Full House Poker  and Hexic Rush . We’ve worked tirelessly from the moment they were updated to find out just what was changed, and it has finally paid off. Don’t say we never did anything for you!

The following issues were fixed in the Full House Poker version 1.1 update:

If listening to Zune music while playing the game, and you turned the game music volume all the way down (in the game settings), after exiting the game, you could no longer turn up the volume on your Zune music without rebooting the phone.  The game music slider no longer controls the Zune music volume as that’s what the phone volume buttons control.

If you tombstoned during a tournament at the right time, when you went to continue your game the blinds would reset to 5/10.  This was very frustrating in a high buy in game or late in a tournament where they should be much higher.

It’s great to have both of these issues fixed. However, Our own George Ponder has recently experienced a separate problem with his temporary save game (not the permanent one) disappearing, so we hope to see that tackled in the future.

Hexic Rush version 2.3 update:

The Hexic update was to fix a NoDo media playback change in XNA.

What’s that, you want more details? It’s pretty technical … Microsoft XNA developer Nick Gravelyn’s blog explains that post NoDo update, Windows Phone applications and games are no longer able to mute or alter the volume of the Zune media player, should audio files be presently active. Not a very exciting title update, but it’s nice to see that Microsoft hasn’t forgotten about Hexic Rush.

There you have it! You can get Full House Poker here and Hexic Rush here. Both games cost $2.99 and have free trials.

Group Sms Application

Here’s a handy application if you have the need to text or email groups from your Windows Phone. Group SMS allows you to create groups from your contacts to avoid having to send your messages out individually.

In a hurry and need some boiler plate messages or responses? Group SMS also allows you to create message templates to send pre-defined messages. The developer, Stefan Stumpfl, liked the Metro design of Windows Phone 7 and choose the panoramic hub design for Group SMS to make it easier to navigate around. Group SMS tried to adapt the Windows Phone concept of “get in, out and back to life”.

It’s our understanding from Stefan that future updates to Group SMS will support multiple languages (German, French, Italian, and Spanish) as well as synchronization with Google Groups and Windows Live Groups.

There is a free trial version available for Group SMS with the full version running $.99. You can download both here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.

Battery Meter for WP7 shows your percentage left

For those still rocking a dev unlocked Windows Phone (and who are paranoid about your battery), you may want to check out the cool little homebrew app ‘Battery Meter’.

It’s just a simple app (with a nice tile) that shows you how much battery life is left in percentage form. You launch it and there you are–no more mystery.

You can grab the app here

Windows Phone App Garage

Microsoft and local developers are putting on a road show of sorts. The Windows Phone App Garage is a free, full day event to help Windows Phone developers get up to speed quickly on Windows Phone development.

The typical day in the Windows Phone Garage starts out with an introduction to Windows Phone development that covers the fundamentals of Silverlight and XNA development. From there you learn about what’s new for Windows Phone developers which is followed by a Windows Phone application jumpstart. After the break for lunch, the remainder of the day is spent in an open lab where you can get hands on help in your app development.

Again, these are free workshops but space may be limited depending on the venue. There is a Windows Phone App Garage scheduled for Birmingham at the local Innovation Depot.  Being just a stone’s throw away, we’ll drop by to see what we can learn.

You can find out if a Windows Phone App Garage is in your area here.

Official Groupon app is now available for WP7

We first noticed that Groupon had an official app for Windows Phone 7 way back in February during the Mobile World Congress. And about 2 months later, it’s finally here:

Groupon features unbeatable deals each day on the best stuff to do in cities across the U.S. and Canada. With our Windows Phone 7 app you can buy deals, access your purchased Groupons, find the ones that are nearby, and redeem them electronically. Never print another Groupon!

Combined with SlickDeals and you have all your bargains covered. Our first impression is we really like the UI and design–very classy and Metro inspired. No sign of a Live Tile though in v1.0, just to be clear. You can grab the app right here, right now.