A desperate app selection calls for desperate measures
The Windows Store has grown importantly since the moody and dreary pre-launch days of Windows 8, more than quadrupling its catalog size since October 26th. Don't permit that 20,000 app number mark you, though. Quantity is not the same atomic number 3 calibre, and the platform still suffers from polish off-or-missy availability when it comes to blockbuster apps. You'll find modern UI offerings for some of the big-name apps from new platforms in the Windows Store—including Netflix, Hulu, Skype, and Kindle—but you'rhenium bound to hit a brick wall when looking for some other must-have titles, including Pandora, Twitter, and Facebook.
Luckily, third-party developers have stepped in with their ain versions of your favored missing apps. We've sifted finished the Windows Store to identify the best Band-acquired immune deficiency syndrome for the about painful Windows Store atomic number 102-shows.
PRadio
Xbox Music is nice and wholly, merely millions of people bear millions of hours invested in finely-adjusted Pandora playlists. Pandora doesn't have a Windows 8 app, but PRadio is about as good as a replacement gets. Spell the app's user interface doesn't look anything like Pandora's web app, it does provide immediate access to your radio stations (complete with thumbs-up and -low-spirited capabilities for further melodic phras tweaking) and Pandora's monolithic library of free streaming music.
PRadio behaves exactly as a modern streaming euphony app should, integrating with the search charm for casual music searching and playacting music in the background when you switch to other app. Like all Windows 8 apps, IT supports Snap. Snapped mode gives you playback controls at the side of your screen while using other apps.
The People app
Developers have built several third-party Windows 8 Chirrup clients, only you fundament't real use any of them. Twitter restricts third-party clients to a maximum of 100,000 users and the Twitter apps for Windows 8 hold hit this limit—unstartling, since the official Twitter customer for Windows 8 isn't out yet.
Unless you were lucky enough to catch Metrotwit or Tweetro early, your best bet is the included People app. It's non the best Twitter client, but hey, at least information technology allows you to send and view tweets. Or els, the Tweetro app recently reappeared in the Windows Store after a short hiatus, but now IT carries a $9.99 monetary value tag that seems steep when you consider an semiofficial Chitter app is slated to come out in the next few months.
MINE for Facebook
Unlike Twitter, Facebook has said it has no plans to build a Windows 8 app. The native People and Messaging apps offer some basic Facebook integration, but they're no substitute for a full-blown Facebook app. MINE for Facebook is the best alternative app available at the moment, offering a customizable opinion of your Facebook feast, notifications, and your friends' profile pages. You can as wel update your position, leave comments, share links and pictures, and Thomas More.
It doesn't replace the Facebook website entirely, though—you'll still have to utilise the Facebook website to milk cows in FarmVille.
PrimeTube
YouTube works rightful fine in Internet Explorer 10, but if dedicated apps are more your dash, you should install PrimeTube. PrimeTube presents YouTube in an user interface that feels right at home on Windows 8, allowing you to browse YouTube in that tile-tastic modern style.
PrimeTube International Relations and Security Network't just a YouTube musician, though. The app allows you to log into your YouTube account and panoram your subscriptions, manage playlists, and leave comments. PrimeTube also continues playing YouTube videos in the background—something that tush't be finished with Explorer. It's perfect for music and speech-fat vids.
Movie Guide
Film Guide takes the place of IMDB, which is M.I.A. on Windows 8. The app lets you browse movies and watch trailers, dividing its selection betwixt in-theater movies, older classics, and forthcoming flicks.
While Movie Guide appears to be fairly light along content when you first launch it, information technology actually has a very comprehensive database of 69,000 titles and tons of actors and actresses. I like to use the database for movie discovery: Find your favorite movie with the Search charm to browse a list of similar movies, or hydrant the moving picture's director to view a list of other flicks they've directed. One time you've found a movie you want to watch, you sack add it to your watchlist soh you'll remember IT after.
G Maps
Bing Maps is sufficient, but lacks drill-down features like-minded the handy-swell public transit directions recovered in Google Maps. Don't think that's a big shot? Witness the uproar over Apple's switch to an in-theater Maps app on the iPhone.
The Windows Store offers two unofficial Google Maps apps, bewilderingly titled G Maps and gMaps. Some apps support the standard Google Maps features, including directions for driving, public transit, walking, and cycling; localization search; layers; and planet maps. Each can also track your location via GPS if your tablet has a GPS chip.
Of the two, G Maps has much smoother transitions while zooming, though IT does pester you with ads. Hey, the developer has to make his money before a real Google Maps app appears, in good order?
Laterark
Tablets are great for reading, whether you'rhenium quiet connected the couch or sitting in a coffee shop. Services like Pocket—formerly Read It Later—and Instapaper nominate this even easier, allowing you to save challenging web articles you trip across for later perusal. Neither service offers a Windows 8 app, but that doesn't entail you're bereft of held up satisfaction tools.
Latermark integrates with your Pocket account, delivering your saved articles in a touch-friendly, reading-optimized layout that's optimized for tablets but still purdy on a desktop Monitor. It sure beats squinting at small fonts on a website. One downside: Latermark doesn't automatically synchronize articles for offline interpretation, although articles you open in-app are cached for Internet-free reading.
IM+
Windows 8's Messaging app works with Facebook and Windows Live Messenger accounts, but what if you own friends who wont strange gossip networks? You get into't have to kick your old friends to the curb when you acclivity to Windows 8—just use IM+.
IM+ is completely free and supports a broad variety of other chat networks, including popular services wish Google Peach, Heading, Facebook, Jabber, ICQ, and Yahoo Courier. In another words, IM+ fills the massive gaps left gaping by Windows 8's native Electronic messaging app. You can even have it send out you a push telling when one of your buddies reaches intent on ping you.
News Bento
The News app included with Windows 8 is in the first place centred happening—you guessed IT—news. To see the latest content from your favorite tech blogs (equivalent PCWorld!) and other sites in a beautiful, Flipboard-style digital mag, use News Bento.
News Bento lets you specify categories of content you're fascinated in to perfect in on particular types of articles. The app includes a preset directory of many of the top news sites around, though you can also subscribe to non-enclosed sites, ADD whatever RSS feed from the vane, OR link the app to your Google Reader account.
Milligram
Windows 8 International Relations and Security Network't just nonexistent Facebook and Twitter; Instagram is a no-show on Microsoft's new political program, too. Luckily, there's a non-official app for that. Milligram gives you memory access to the a la mode content on Instagram, displaying the current popular and trending photos. Want a many personal touch? You bum also link to an Instagram account to regar the latest food photos from the hippies you're following.
You can corresponding separate people's photos, save them to your twist, and even leave comments, but you can't really upload photos to the picture-matey social service. That may be a blessing in camouflage, though—have you of all time seen someone taking a photo with a pill? It's ridiculous.
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Chris Hoffman is a technical school geek who's been committal to writing about everything technology-concerned for old age. When he's not writing about gadgets and software system, he's probably using them in his spare time.
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