Microsoft Windows store is live along with the release of Windows 8 consumer preview. Windows store offers a central place for Windows applications, these applications are designed to run on all devices including laptops, desktops, and tablets. This is a good for the developers to create applications for the platform instead of developing one for each device.. Earlier there is nothing like this and Windows developers used to offer applications on their sites and depended on download sites for their app distribution.
With this new Windows store users can find all the applications at one place and developers also get a place to showcase their apps. This model is pioneered by Apple and Android. Microsoft will take cut of the app sales from the developer of the app.
As we installed Windows 8 already its time to download some apps and see what they offer. There are already several apps in Windows store which we can download at the moment, and we can expect a lot of apps in the store in near future.
Bing Team announced launch of three apps to the Windows Store, Finance, Weather and Maps.
The Windows 8 Consumer Preview, ready for download, previews 3 Bing-powered apps: Finance, Weather, and Maps. Each Bing app was designed for touch devices and offers mouse and keyboard functionality. A key focus for us at Bing is helping people get things done more quickly and these visually organized, intuitive and dynamic apps do just that.
Bing Finance app gives information on Markets, News, Watchlists, Mortgage, top movers. Stocks can be added to the watchlist to follow your portfolio. The app features nice graphics for the charts it shows, but gives only line chart which is not very useful for traders.
Weather app will give updates on Weather.
With Maps app you can access Bing Maps from the app. You can look for directions, see traffic conditions and more with few swipes or clicks.
For accessing these apps, from the start screen go to App store and install. Both Weather app and Maps are not available for my country, so I couldn’t access at all. While I could access the Finance app it doesn’t have useful information for me.
[…] to find information on the map, explore venues and transit information. Bing recently released a Metro app for Bing Maps on Windows 8 platform. Pushpins are the common elements overlaid on Maps, these are revamped now […]