Chapter 1 1 AL Pre-Flight Checklist: What to Do Before You Get Your Windows Phone RI In This Chapter Creating and managing a Windows Live ID to have the best Windows Phone experience 33 Connecting your ID to the social networks and online services you use 33 Joining Zune Social 33 Connecting with Xbox Live 33 Picking the right phone TE D MA TE 33 GH Be fore you even set foot in a store and start thinking about which Windows Phone you want to buy, you need to do a bit of legwork.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Next, you need to understand which hardware features come with every Windows Phone, and which do not. By understanding what’s available, you can make more intelligent choices about the type of phone you’ll eventually buy. So bone up on the basics and then hit the stores better educated, and ready to get exactly the phone you want.
Windows Live ID: One Online ID to Rule Them All If you think about it, this is a sneaky way to achieve the original goal of Windows Live ID. That is, since the world didn’t come to Windows Live ID, Windows Live ID has instead come to the world. Using that single sign-on, you can simply access all those wonderful third-party services from Windows Live. All you need to do is create an account—though you may already have one—and then configure it to access other services.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone s n do w e Wi h t f n I o ie ld ID f his t Live f o igh t t he r e ad y is a lr ans e g a p s me t, t hi u o ad y f il led a l re o u ld c u o y c t ive an a D. have ive I o ws L d ou y n i e W sur ake m o d S te n ly i n re a l a ea te to cr n t. u acco n ew 33 Figure 1-1: Here, you can begin your new online life with Windows Live. Click the Sign Up button to continue. The Create Your Windows Live ID page will appear.
Windows Live ID: One Online ID to Rule Them All Figure 1-3: Windows Live will help you find a good ID. When you find an acceptable ID, the form will tell you that it’s available and you can proceed (see Figure 1-4). Figure 1-4: Once you find a name you like, you can move on. Already Have a Non-Microsoft E‑mail Account? If you already have an e‑mail account with a different company, you can turn that into a Windows Live ID as well.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Fill out the rest of the form, paying particular attention to the password, which should be complex if possible and rated “strong” by the form. (It will rate your password as you type.) According to Microsoft, a strong password contains 7–16 characters, does not include common words or names, and combines uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
Windows Live ID: One Online ID to Rule Them All Initial Windows Live ID Configuration On that initial Windows Live Home page, you should see a link titled Edit Your Profile. Click that, or, if it’s not present, click the Profile link in the upper right of the page. Either way, you’ll be brought to your Windows Live Profile page, where you can configure your new ID. This is shown in Figure 1-6. Figure 1-6: Windows Live Profile.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone 33 Limited: This is the default setting and the least restrictive option I think you should consider. Configured this way, only your friends—those people you’ve explicitly “friended” on Windows Live—can see what you’re doing via the service. But as with the Public setting, anyone can find you by searching on Windows Live and can view your profile.
Windows Live ID: One Online ID to Rule Them All From here, there are a wide range of options you can configure for your Windows Live ID. (Or not. Remember, it’s your choice.
Chapter 1 ho n e o ws P Wi nd ive ly s nat e wo rk o n li n wi t h y l n o ike n ts, l acco u ive, o ws L Wi nd d il, a n il l Gm a Yo u w c o o k. b e s c a o F t yn abl e e b om no t o n fr mat i r o ai l f m n i e‑ skto p oo k u a de O tl like t . n ho n e c li e o ws P d n i to W 33 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone While adding single contacts at a time is pretty straightforward, it’s also monotonous, so I want to focus on importing.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services N O TE Interestingly, these options can be used to import contacts from Outlook Express (Windows XP), Windows Contacts (Windows Vista), Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail as well, as shown in Figure 1-10. Note that in any of these cases, you will need to have exported your contacts into an acceptable format first.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone That’s where Windows Live comes in. Yes, some parts of Windows Live compete with some of these other services. Windows Live Photos is a direct competitor with Flickr, for example. But by making Windows Live open and extensible to other services, Microsoft has also made it possible for Windows Live users to utilize the service as a hub, of sorts, for their other services.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services If you find the list too intimidating—it gets bigger all the time as more partners come on board—then you can use the Categories list on the left to filter it down. For example, you can click Movies and TV to only see video services. Connecting an Online Service to Windows Live For most of these services, you need to be a member—that is, have a user account at that service—in order to connect it to Windows Live.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Figure 1-13: As soon as you connect to a service from Windows Live, content from that service appears in your Messenger social feed. NO TE Messenger social used to be called What’s New. I still think that was a better and more descriptive name. Microsoft renamed it to Messenger Social because this list is also available via Windows Live Messenger, the company’s IM application for Windows.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services Figure 1-14: Web browsers can display RSS feeds, which you can connect to Windows Live. The RSS URL, or address, can be found in the browser’s Address Bar. Select this text and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C works nicely). Then, paste it into the Blog URL on Windows Live’s Connect Blog RSS Feed to Windows Live page and click Connect. After a bit of churning, the web site’s feed will be added to your Messenger social feed as well.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Be sure to spend some time and connect to each of the services you already use. You can view and edit your connected services via the Connected Services page, which you can access by clicking the Manage Services link on the Services page. (Or navigate directly to profile.live.com/Services/?view=manage.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services Figure 1-16: You can comment on updates from other services directly from Windows Live. Figure 1-17: A small options icon appears when you mouse over individual updates. Figure 1-18: Click the icon and a small menu appears with more options.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Figure 1-19: Selectively remove users and Windows Live services updates from this page. TIP T here is a lot more going on with Windows Live, of course. And while it doesn’t have all that much to do with Windows Phone, I do recommend that you download and install Windows Live Essentials (get.live.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services Figure 1-20: Windows Live Messenger provides PC-based access to your Messenger social feed. The first is Microsoft Zune. If you haven’t heard of Zune, or simply have never tried it, you may be in for a very happy surprise. Zune is an elegant and powerful digital media platform that encompasses a number of interesting components.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone 33 Zune Marketplace: This is Microsoft’s online store for music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, and more. It’s available from the Zune PC software (on Windows-based PCs), on the Xbox 360 (more on this later in the chapter), and, yes, on your Windows Phone as well.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services Figure 1-21: Here, you connect your Windows Live ID to a Zune account. Think It Over I recommend not getting cute here. While many people create nonsensical Zune Tags, remember that this is the name you’ll use when you communicate with others. So rather than be known as Flatulent Fred or whatever, try to pick something that you won’t be embarrassed by later on.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Figure 1-22: And another classic Zune Tag is created. When you’re done creating the Zune account, you can download the Zune PC software, join Zune Pass, or discover some of the other interesting and unique features of the Zune platform, which I discuss in more detail in Chapters 6 and 16.
Using Windows Live ID to Access Your Social Networks and Other Services Xbox Live Parties, video chat, Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm access, and some other unique features. TIP Microsoft also has a related service called Games for Windows – LIVE. This awkwardly named service is essentially Xbox Live for Windows PCs, so it uses the exact same Windows Live ID that you use for Windows Live, Zune, Xbox Live, or Windows Phone. You can find out more at gamesforwindows.com/live.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone previous section for information on the rules for creating this Gamertag and my suggestions for not getting too immature about it. 33 Gamer Picture: Microsoft lets you use a small picture to graphically represent you to others online. There are a number of built-in pictures to choose from, and if you log on with the Xbox 360 console, there are more available (including some for purchase, believe it or not).
Picking a Phone Picking a Phone You may be surprised to discover that I consider properly configuring a Windows Live ID a far more important task than picking a phone. But it’s true: We live in an age of throwaway smart phones, and while you may choose to replace your phone every year or two, your Windows Live ID will stay with you for many years to come. So it’s important to get that right.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone carriers to sell Windows Phones—diversity is good in some cases—it has also fleshed out a rigid set of hardware specifications for this platform. So if a device maker or wireless carrier wishes to sell Windows Phone devices, they must conform to the specs.
Picking a Phone photos); volume up and down; and power/sleep (with brief and full press support for dimming the screen, waking up the device, and so on). The Back Button The Back button is particularly interesting and useful because it works in different ways throughout the phone.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone screen, each doing something different, and the device could accurately process that information and act accordingly. The Windows Phone screen supports gestures as well. Of course, I will explain the use of this screen fully throughout the book. 33 Onscreen resolution: Windows Phone supports two screen resolutions, 800 x 480 (WVGA) and 480 x 320 (HWVGA).
Picking a Phone 33 Proximity sensor: This sensor can detect how close other objects—such as your face or a table—are to the phone. So the phone can know when you’re making a phone call or when you’ve placed the device on a table. It can also know that it’s in a pocket and thus not respond to button taps.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone 33 Removable storage: Most non-iPhone smart phones (and virtually all popular Android-based phones) ship with some kind of memory card slot so that you can inexpensively expand the device’s internal storage (but not RAM). Today, these mini memory cards typically range from 2GB to 32GB of storage, but of course, technology improves as time marches on.
Picking a Phone 33 USB connection: While all Windows Phones will need to provide some way to charge the device, Microsoft does not specify the type of connection that will be used. The result is that different Windows Phones unfortunately will use different power/charge connections, most of which are some variation of USB. In conjunction with a compatible cable, you can charge your phone via a PC, or with a USB power adapter, via a standard wall receptacle.
Chapter 1 Pre-Flight Checklist:What to Do Before YouGet Your Windows Phone Summary If you’re as excited by Windows Phone as I am, you’re going to want to spend a bit of time preparing for your new phone before you rush out to the store and spend your money. There are two key things to do before buying a phone. First, you should establish a Windows Live ID and connect it with all of the online services to which you belong, providing a central hub for your connections and relationships.
