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According to a blog post by Gabe Aul, if you own a Lumia device you will likely have the next Windows 10 for Phone preview available on your device.  The news is certainly welcome to everyone who was disappointed by the limited number of devices the original preview was available for in January.  That seems to be resolved thanks to the partition stitching process that had to be resolved on many devices and within the next couple of weeks we should see a new build.

The OneDrive for Windows Phone app has seen another small update with the focus on the vague “bug fixes and performance improvements” category.  The update, version 4.9.0.0 for those keeping score at home, does not list any other updates or changes as part of the update.  I appreciate these types of updates are not super exciting but it is good to see developers, particularly Microsoft, continue to improve and tweak their apps.

If you have auto updates enabled on your Windows Phone then you have likely already had this update pushed to your phone.  If not, go to the Store, tap the Menu button (…) > Settings then scroll down to Check for Updates.  The update is tiny so it will only take a minute or so to install.

Yesterday, Amazon announced two new unlimited storage plans for the Amazon Cloud Drive to help it compete in the personal cloud storage market.  While the offerings are okay, for Windows and Windows Phone users, there is likely a better deal to be had with OneDrive, Microsoft’s own cloud storage solution.  The biggest problem for Windows Phone users is the lack of an app for Amazon Cloud Drive which can make uploading to these new unlimited services a challenge, especially on-the-go.

Throughout the lifecycle of the product we call Windows, the programs or applications we run on them gone through far more naming conventions.  When I started with Windows 3 back-in-the-day, we call them programs and really, up until Windows 7 that name pretty much stuck.  You would occasionally see “Application” but generally we call them “Programs”.  Enter in the iPhone, the App Store, the Google Play Store and yes, even the Windows Phone store and we have shrunk it all down to “Apps”.  But with Windows 8, we decided to throw in some confusion for the fun of it.  We have Modern Apps which run on the Start Screen in Windows 8.  Then we have the Desktop Apps which run in the desktop environment.  Don’t forget that we have Windows Phone apps because those are different than Windows apps – Modern or Desktop.  It seems that in Windowsland, App can mean a lot of different things.

Which is why I think Microsoft has hit it squarely by settling on Windows Apps for Windows 10.  It conveys the message that they have been promoting: One Windows for all devices.  But it does much more than that.  It avoids the confusion of what has become Universal apps today which to be honest, really aren’t that universal and clarifies to the consumer that this app works on everything simply because of its name.  While the verdict is still out on how successful Windows 10 will be, I think one of the master strokes for Redmond may be in this simple but powerful name for applications.