Thurrott Daily: December 11

Good morning. It’s going to be a long day.

12/11/2015 1:12:50 PM

Get 10 of the top albums of 2015 in the Windows Store for free

For a limited time only, Microsoft is offering 10 of the top albums of 2015 in the Windows Store for free.

We’re making 10 of the top albums from 2015 available in the Windows Store, for free for our Windows 10 fans as a gift from us for the holidays, and to say thank you for the support! The eclectic group of albums we’re presenting includes the newest albums from Selena Gomez, Ellie Goulding, and Breaking Benjamin.

Yahoo Mail App Adds Gmail Integration

Because why not, I guess. PC Magazine reports:

Yahoo has added the ability to connect your Gmail and Google Apps account to Yahoo Mail.

“All the features you need and love in Yahoo Mail – powerful search, smart contacts, rich compose features and Yahoo Account Key for password-free sign-in – are now available with Gmail,” said Shiv Shankar, a Yahoo Senior Product Manager. “You can now search across your entire history of emails, from day one, for all connected mailboxes! (Not just your most recent emails, which is how it’s done in many apps today).”

Sounds like a nice migration strategy. For Gmail.

12/11/2015 5:43:28 AM

Reminder: PC focus group

As you may recall, I am conducting a focus group study on behalf of a company in the personal computing industry, and that study is happening today and tomorrow. It’s a full day event—9 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days—and we’re pretty full, so I’ll be a bit distracted today. I’ll try to pump out a few posts as possible, however. And will update this one as I can as well. –Paul

There will be an Xbox Two. Or whatever.

In an interview with The Verge, Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that the Xbox One will not be the software giant’s final video game console, despite speculation.

“I fully expect that you’ll see another console from us […] Our best customers are Xbox console customers, and I want to keep those people engaged both on the Xbox One and anything we might do in the future. I’m 100 percent committed to that.”

“I don’t want to dilute what the Xbox console customer feels,” says Spencer. “I want to expand what we’re able to do for more customers.”

Xbox One Wireless Adapter now works with Windows 7 and 8.1 too

Speaking of Xbox, Larry Hryb tweeted this week that a driver update allows the Xbox One Wireless adapter to work with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 now. (It was originally Windows 10 only.)

In addition to Windows 10, starting today Xbox Wireless Adapter now supports Windows 7 & 8.1

Chromecast Audio Takes On Sonos with Multi-Room Support

When I first looked at Chromecast Audio in October I speculated at the possibility of using the devices around the home in a cheap alternative to Sonos. Now it’s happening.

Multi-room lets you group Chromecast Audio devices together so you can listen to the same song on multiple speakers.

Setup is simple. Connect and setup a Chromecast Audio device for each of your speakers, then use the latest Chromecast app to create a group. You can cast to the group the exact same way you would cast to a single Chromecast device. Since anyone with a phone can easily cast without pairing, you can sync your home speakers together and invite your friends to be the DJ.

Kobo e-book app is now available for Windows 10

Kobo has updated its e-book reader for Windows 10.

E-book app Kobo is now ready for Windows 10, which means its adaptive layout looks great on any Windows device for easy reading wherever you are. Kobo’s library of more than 4 million e-book titles includes kids’ and comic books, and some titles are free. Most are low-cost.

It’s easy to drag and drop titles, highlight passages and keep your latest book handy on a Live Tile. Upcoming features include annotation, note-taking and Cortana integration.

Install Kobo for free from the Windows Store.

Help create Microsoft’s next casual game

This is a nice idea: The Microsoft Casual Games team is letting fans vote for which game they’ll make next.

For the first time in history, Microsoft Casual Games is collaborating with our fans on product and development choices. We’re not just allowing the community to read about what’s going on, but we are actually involving the community to vote on which games we should make next and provide feedback on how to improve the overall game features.

In support of this new community-focused approach, the Microsoft Casual Games team has created a website where players can vote on the next game to be created by the Microsoft Casual Games team, read about the development of the existing Microsoft Casual games, share opinions about current and upcoming features and join the Microsoft Casual Games Inner Circle program.