- Feb 19, 2001
- 20,155
- 23
- 81
I think it's time for this forum of geeks to rise up and smack down the MS bull. The original Windows Phone challenge by Ben the Windows guy at CES was pretty cool. He gave the people tasks and they were allowed to practice and what not, but the crap they do at the MS stores now are just BS. Pure BS. Anyone wanna help brainstorm how to beat this?
Here are the tasks:
(1) Pocket-to-Picture-to-Post,
- This I would need help. I still just snap a photo with android camera and hit Share and select FB for example. That then loads FB and you then post. Very slow overall. Especially with the number of apps I have, that list is huge and I have to scroll to find Facebook or Twitter. Google+, Dropbox, Box, Gmail, etc are all the list. It's kinda bloated. It'd probably be good to downsize your pictures to minimze any processing work your phone even has to do...
Further research shows this might be viable: http://tasker.wikidot.com/automatically-take-and-email-your-photo
Edit: I tried this later and unless you resize your photos, my SGS2 takes 2mb photos. There's a solid delay for upload (issue if they throttle you), and theres a delay between the time your email is transformed into a Facebook post. The whole thing takes almost a minute. It'd be faster to do it manually through the gallery as it sends a lower res compressed photo.
Edit 2: That way is stupid. Just install Tweetdeck, install the widget to your homescreen, there's a photo button. Turn off AF on your camera, and set it to lowest resolution. The snap will be almost instantaneous, hit ok, and it takes you to the share screen with a yfrog link already. Just hit ok. Done.
(2) Real-Time Information with Live Tiles,
(3) Using the People Hub to Stay in Touch with the People You Care About Most,
- Probably the hardest one to beat. WP7 opens People or Social or whatever that crap is and you're done. It loads their best friensd and all the stuff about them. I'm sure they wouldn't count my Android Pro Widgets that acts like the HTC People widget which lists my favorites in a tiled icon format as auto winning.
(4) Updating Your Status Across Multiple Social Networks
- Android Pro Widgets should have this covered pretty well. If you have the widget on desktop and hit the Post button, you can select both FB and Twitter. Would be more challenging if they made you do other stupid networks like Linked In or whatever Ben made them do at CES.
They only make people do Facebook at my store because it's enough work to get people to install Facebook. I don't think they would bother with twitter also.
Tweetdeck is another fast way to post.
(5) Local Scout ("Challenge").
They had some people look up movie times at a local theater. Saw the WP guy use Flixster, so I just downloaded it, added a few local theaters in the favorites. I think this one is interesting because if you use a high memory device (say like my SGS2), then it could stay in cache in the background giving you a nice advantage. I'm almost certain the WP guys have Flixster pinned to their live tiles which means you need all the help you can get.
Other possible ways are to bookmark movie showtime searches on the browser. Should be faster to load the browser than these bloatware apps.
Here are the tasks:
(1) Pocket-to-Picture-to-Post,
- This I would need help. I still just snap a photo with android camera and hit Share and select FB for example. That then loads FB and you then post. Very slow overall. Especially with the number of apps I have, that list is huge and I have to scroll to find Facebook or Twitter. Google+, Dropbox, Box, Gmail, etc are all the list. It's kinda bloated. It'd probably be good to downsize your pictures to minimze any processing work your phone even has to do...
Further research shows this might be viable: http://tasker.wikidot.com/automatically-take-and-email-your-photo
Edit: I tried this later and unless you resize your photos, my SGS2 takes 2mb photos. There's a solid delay for upload (issue if they throttle you), and theres a delay between the time your email is transformed into a Facebook post. The whole thing takes almost a minute. It'd be faster to do it manually through the gallery as it sends a lower res compressed photo.
Edit 2: That way is stupid. Just install Tweetdeck, install the widget to your homescreen, there's a photo button. Turn off AF on your camera, and set it to lowest resolution. The snap will be almost instantaneous, hit ok, and it takes you to the share screen with a yfrog link already. Just hit ok. Done.
(2) Real-Time Information with Live Tiles,
(3) Using the People Hub to Stay in Touch with the People You Care About Most,
- Probably the hardest one to beat. WP7 opens People or Social or whatever that crap is and you're done. It loads their best friensd and all the stuff about them. I'm sure they wouldn't count my Android Pro Widgets that acts like the HTC People widget which lists my favorites in a tiled icon format as auto winning.
(4) Updating Your Status Across Multiple Social Networks
- Android Pro Widgets should have this covered pretty well. If you have the widget on desktop and hit the Post button, you can select both FB and Twitter. Would be more challenging if they made you do other stupid networks like Linked In or whatever Ben made them do at CES.
They only make people do Facebook at my store because it's enough work to get people to install Facebook. I don't think they would bother with twitter also.
Tweetdeck is another fast way to post.
(5) Local Scout ("Challenge").
They had some people look up movie times at a local theater. Saw the WP guy use Flixster, so I just downloaded it, added a few local theaters in the favorites. I think this one is interesting because if you use a high memory device (say like my SGS2), then it could stay in cache in the background giving you a nice advantage. I'm almost certain the WP guys have Flixster pinned to their live tiles which means you need all the help you can get.
Other possible ways are to bookmark movie showtime searches on the browser. Should be faster to load the browser than these bloatware apps.
Last edited: