marketplace

Just like our London busses, you wait around for ages and then they all come at once. It seems that someone has flicked a switch somewhere and released a few updates today for Windows Phone.

Of particular note, Amazon Mobile on its way up to version 1.9.1 and picks up support for the oh-so close Windows Phone 8. It’s good to see some developers with early access readying their apps for the shiny new operating system which is only days away.

As Bruce Forsyth would say - higher or lower?

Bernardo Zamora has published an insightful blog post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog, which goes into detail on how developers should configure individual market pricing - if at all. It's an interesting part of marketing one's work. Building and submitting the app is one thing. Effectively pricing your app(s) is another.

It's another cryptic Microsoft error code...

Developers have been experiencing issues when submitting .XAP files to the Marketplace for approval. Whether it be new apps or updates for already-submitted content, developers are getting hit with an error code. Glenn Edwards, the brains and soul behind recently released MetroSpec, has also been having trouble getting his work published.

We last covered MetroSpec when it went live on the Marketplace a couple of days ago. The paid version got through, but the free, ad-supported baby brother is still being held back. It's an annoyance more than anything as the Windows Phone community love their trials and free versions of apps that seek their hard-earned cash - and rightly so. If developers can't publish all their work, then this could cost them valuable custom.

Windows Phone Marketplace is now the Windows Phone Store

We've heard rumblings that the Windows Phone website and Marketplace had been redesigned to give things a more friendlier approach. Microsoft has now made it official that they are rolling out these changes, globally, beginning with Australia and New Zealand.

The changes cover everything from how the Marketplace looks to a new name for our app store. For starters, say goodbye to the Windows Phone Marketplace and hello to the Windows Phone Store.  This will bring our store in line with the upcoming Windows 8 Store, the Windows Store.  You will also see the menu option on the Windowsphone.com website will shift from Marketplace to Apps+Games.

We're back again with more spam (or useless app deployment) rants, folks. Apologies in advance but it really tickles the annoyed spot when we come across developers who either believe it's perfectly fine to publish copyrighted content with other owned properties, or simply launch themselves on a crap-posting-spree.

The last time we touched on spam itself, we were following the work of Eric_Rulz, but don't worry if you missed our coverage and investigation as his account is still present as well as the apps he produced. This is a developer who was obviously on a path to cause trouble by building and releasing apps that hold little (if any) functionality that's useful for consumers. In fact, he has an app called Spam.

Unfortunately we've noticed some more extreme levels of spam, from a developer called Bhavana Khatri.

Back at the end of May, Microsoft surprisingly turned off the Windows Phone Marketplace from Zune Desktop. The “update� wasn’t software based but instead just altered a configuration file on the user’s computer, causing the Marketplace to be hidden.

We ended up using a simple hack (more of that below) to bring ours back but now a user in our forum (“rockstarzzz�) is claiming that they’ve received another feature-change notification…

Explained: A familiar error message for some Windows Phone users

Ever since WhatsApp was pulled and then re-released this past weekend, we have had a small deluge in complaints from users that they cannot install the update. Instead, they are greeted with the above error message, resulting in user frustration. What’s more, uninstalling the app, resetting the phone and dancing around in a circle did not fix the problem either.

We’ve been trying to figure out exactly why some users have the problem while others, including ourselves, do not. Just as interestingly, we wanted to know which apps were exhibiting the error.

Microsoft has now detailed the problem on the Windows Phone Blog and there’s good news and some bad news. The good news is they acknowledge that there is an issue and they even know what is causing it. As it turns out, there are some problems with certificates for new apps published in the Marketplace within the last week. 

Nokia Netherlands has confirmed with WhatsAppen, a dedicated WhatsApp website, that an update for the Windows Phone app is well on its way. This is to follow the mysterious disappearance of WhatsApp, which is now set to private and is unavailable to those who do not have it installed.

It was only a few days ago when we first covered the disappearance of WhatsApp from the Windows Phone Marketplace, and were later contacted by the WhatsApp team who denied reports suggesting this pull was due to security issues. Unfortunately, they were unable to inform us exactly why the app was set to private, but it shouldn't matter in the next 48 hours as that's when Nokia has stated the app will return with the update.

We'll fire up a quick announcement when the app is once again available on the Marketplace.

via: WhatsAppen; thanks, Dennis, for the tip!

You'll soon be purchasing apps from the Store

In the recent announcement of Microsoft launching the new Developer Center for the Windows Phone community, the company has also revealed a potential rebranding of the Windows Phone Marketplace. This is an expected move, which we'll rate as a strong possibility. The Windows 8 Store is present in the next version of Microsoft's desktop operating system, so to remain consistent it makes sense to bring in a new name.