The Hilton HHonors app for Windows Phone has been updated and it now gives you the ability to select your room number right from within the app via an interactive map of the hotel property. It is the latest update in what is arguably one of the best hotel apps available for Windows Phone. The update is free and available now in the Windows Phone store.
One of the newer games in the Angry Birds franchise has hit Windows Phone and it is free. Angry Birds Stella for Windows Phone allows you to join Stella (the pink bird) and her comrades as she battles the bad princess and her piggies in over 120 levels of fun. Now if you know me, you know I have a serious Angry Birds addiction and Angry Birds Stella presents a whole new set of challenges even for seasoned players.
Angry Birds Stella for Windows Phone – Free (In-App Purchases) – Download Now
The popular music discovery app Shazam has made a return to Windows Phone and it is impressive. Shazam for Windows Phone has been released as version 4.0 and it is blazing fast at discovering music that is playing around you. The new app sports a completely revamped recognition engine and user experience that is specifically designed for Windows Phone 8.1
Today’s 12 Days of Deals promotion at Microsoft is another great, budget friendly offer. Today you can get an Xb0x 360 4GB console with 2 free games in store or 1 free game online for an incredible $149.99. These will go quick! That is $30 off the regular price of the Xbox 360 plus the $49.99 game value makes it a great deal.
Xbox 360 4GB Console with 1 Free Game ($49.99 value) – Microsoft Store
Like many of you, I use USB key drives all the time to move data around from device-to-device or to share data with a colleague. I also use Bit Locker to Go on those drives, especially if they are going to be out of my hands (think UPS or FedEx) to that colleague. As you may know, BitLocker is a file encryption system which allow you to protect your files by encrypting the drive those files reside on. That can be your entire hard disk in your PC, an external disk or a USB drive. So long as you have a Windows 7 or 8 Pro or Enterprise, it can be opened and read just like any other drive.
Paul Thurrott has an excellent overview of Bit Locker on WinSuperSite that I highly recommend reading.
Until today I just assumed that Windows 8.1 with Bing, the low cost version of Windows 8.1 for budget friendly tablets and laptops, could not deal with BitLocker encrypted drives. I figured out however that actually BitLocker and Windows 8.1 with Bing can indeed work together.
For the sake of this article I’m not going to distinguish between BitLocker and BitLocker to Go. The later is fundamentally the same thing as the former, only for portable drives like USB keys.