I realize the market in the Windows 8 Store is still small (10,000 apps or so) but there are some quality apps in there.
I’m digging through the selection and finding some nice surprises and a few disappointments.
Now, 10,000 apps, while small by the standards set by the Apple and Android markets, is still a lot of apps to go through. So I could use your help.
If you’ve found any apps that you’re willing to recommend, please leave them in the comments. All I need is the ap name, enough additional details to find it on the store (category, developer name, etc.), and a few words about why you find it useful.
Negative reviews are OK, too. If you’re disappointed by an app, let me know why.
App developers, you’re welcome to chime in. Just keep the sales pitch to a minimum.
To-Dos: Very basic, but useful way of remembering tasks.
ESPNcricinfo: You’d ignore it in the US, but the app from the definitive cricket portal.
Brilliant execution and design.
My favorite app is Medical Folder
Anyone recommend any apps for kids? Will be getting a Surface RT soon and wanted to know if there were some fun drawing or learning apps.
Shameless plug for my own apps
1. MSMVPs Blog Reader – blogs hosted on MSMVPS. COM
2. Barb’s Connected World – my own blog
Both are windows store apps and are free.
(Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but not in Microsoft Studios. This is my personal opinion and not representative of Microsoft, etc.)
Ed, I would recommend Adera (published by Microsoft Studios) as an interesting take on the hidden object puzzle category. There is one episode available for free (not sure if later ones will be free?) which takes about 3-4 hours to play through. So, it’s engaging, but not overly complex. It also goes quite well with the Surface RT as it supports the accelerometer, so you can tilt the Surface in order to move around. Didn’t see any lag at all when playing.
Recommended:
1) Boston Globe: Big Picture
2) Remote Desktop (Microsoft)
3) Tweetro
4) MetroTwit (although right now it has a compose tweet bug that needs to be resolved)
5) Wikipedia (official)
6) OneNote
7) Evernote
8) The NY Times
9) UrbanSpoon
10) Bleacher Report
11) Flight Aware
12) RedditHub
13) IM+
14) TuneIn Radio
15) MovieGuide
16) OneNote MX
A few I found recently are:
Bento News Reader
Big Picture
How Stuff Works
Tweetro is my favorite Twitter client.
The big names of course.
Netflix
Hulu
Kindle
MetroTwit
Soundtracker
Music Maker Jam
News Bento
Fruit Ninja
My current favorites are:
Metrotwit (everyone knows Metrotwit!)
News Bento, RSS reader
PushPod, podcast app
Encyclopedia Britannica, Books and Reference
Music, before today’s update this would be on the Naughty List, but with todays updates it’s fast, stable and a very good app
ReddHubb, reddit reader
YouTube+, 3rd party YouTube app
FlightAware, Travel
Fhotoroom, Photo Editing
Music Maker Jam, for creating music tracks. My kids love this one.
Skype
I got here through Tweetro, so that certainly counts. Skype’s and Netflix’s apps are very functional as well. Love the presentation of the USA Today app, fantastic.
Going to less-known apps, although not in very good shape at the moment, I’ve been talking to the devs of NotepadRT, and they’ve convinced me that the app has tons of promise. I’m keeping an eye on that one.
Another surprise is IRC Explorer. I was going through the current IRC apps (there are like five now?) and like many of the apps I’ve seen, they’re pretty damn ugly. But IRC Explorer, wow, that was a really nice surprise. It’s not glamorous or in your face. It just looks pleasant, and functions quite well.
Everyone probably knows about Forismatic, the quotes app. Such pretty animations, and the live tile is great too (although not sure why it’s blue considering the app is mostly black on white).
Characteristic is another one of those extremely single-purpose apps (just shows you properties for all the keys on your keyboard), but it does its job well, and with a nice presentation to boot.
TrimWord is my favorite Markdown editor so far, although that’s not saying much seeing as most of the Markdown editors aren’t very good. I don’t like their icon though.
NextGen Reader’s a very class RSS reader, and although I’m a laptop user I’m sure it’d do splendid on tablets.
I believe Reddit-To-Go is my favorite Reddit app so far, but I just normally use the Reddit site (and AlienBlue for iOS) for browsing anyway.
I personally don’t use many Metro apps, but I love perusing them because they give me ideas and inspiration for my own work. Plus seeing as I love the design aesthetic, it’s always nice to look at pretty things.
For a Google Reader app, I’ve settled on NGReader. Clean interface, very functional.
Kayak has a nice app.
Skype is good – and useful when you put in on one side of the screen and use another app while in a conversation.
I’ve tried to use IM+ as a front end to Google Talk but can’t get it to work right.
I also tried setting up Lync but you can’t customize the server config, so unless you are set up a specific way, it won’t work.
Happy there’s a LastPass app, but they need to work on interface – group are shown in what seems like random order.
Remote Desktop is fantastic – I can remote into my laptop running Outlook.
I’m alternating between Tweetro and MetroTwit.
Please, please, please can someone make a better mail app? The built-in one is slow and you can’t even flag messages.
love NextGen Reader, SmartGlass and Fresh Paint
Multimedia8
Evernote
MetroCommander
NextGen Reader
Microsoft Solitaire Collection
I Love Music
Art Text
LazyPaint
Fresh Paint
XBOX MUSIC
Read It Better
Clipboard
SmartGlass
Bing News and Bing Sport
Google Search
To-Do List
Perfect365 (really amazing)
Grapholite Diagrams
Joining Hands
Comic Boss
AskAll
Task Robot
AppPulz
FhotoRoom
Frametastic
Artefacts
NotepadRT
and that’s all for now
For anyone who uses several systems and browsers including Windows 8, I recommend Xmarks to keep favourites synchronized across them all. I was really pleased to see it in the store already.
MusicAMP
Skype
Fruit Ninja
My Explorer
Gleek
GMaps
I have NextGen Reader on my Wp7 phone and Win8 computers. It’s great in Win8, and I haven’t been to the Google Reader site since I got it.
tweetro
the big picture
metrovexed
flow
weatherbug
OneNote MX — great (needs a few more options)
Boston Globe’s Big Picture (especially compared to the website)
PuzzleTouch (nice demo of touch interface)
Inrix (real-time traffic)
TreeSize Touch
Obviously biased (I’m the author), but Memorylage is a great app for browsing your photos, as it replaces the standard grid of thumbnails with a dynamically generated, metro-styled collage. It was released on the 26th, and already has over 5,000 downloads with a 4 star rating (4.5 stars if you count just the US).
Memorylage Site (Has video demo)
I also wrote a blog post about the process of getting into the store, which has over 86,000 page views after being picked up by slashdot, reddit and hacker news.
The Missing Bit