Przedstawiciel PLAY LUBLIN

Reading online articles, news stories, or blogs, often leaves us wanting to contribute to the discussion with the author and other readers. That’s where a good commenting system comes in handy, something that Disqus excels at providing. Now, you can take all those discussions with you when you’re away from your computer, thanks to the Disqus app – for Nokia Lumia smartphones.

Download Disqus

1. Press the Search button on your Nokia Lumia and then tap Vision
2. Scan the QR code
3. Tap on the link when it appears on the screen
4. Install the application from the Windows Phone Store

With over six years experience, Disqus knows a thing or two about keeping the conversations flowing by providing a system that just works and is so simple to use. So easy in fact, that over half a billion people use this commenting system (including us here at Conversations), and about 640,000 comments a day are sent through Disqus.

It’s a commenting system that spans a vast array of different sites, from cars, gardening, technology, plumbing, flower arranging, anything you can think of. You name it; Disqus is powering their comments.

Comments are a vital part to every site’s ecosystem. It allows brands, companies, and individual authors to communicate directly, and sometimes more personally, to their readers. This is something we all expect in today’s fast-paced, digital world.

Let’s not forget the commenters themselves. The comment section on any site is where people meet with other people with similar interests and often virtual friendships are formed.

The new Nokia Lumia 720

Curved glass, slim design and full of features.

Find out more.

The Disqus app helps to keep you in the conversation when you’re away from your desk, meaning those conversations don’t just simply expire, but continue.

Ryan Velentin, Community Support at Disqus tells us why a mobile version is so important:

“It’s part of a broader effort to bring Disqus closer to you, the user. The most exciting part about this is that each interaction is in a place that likely wouldn’t have happened before, such as on a bus or while waiting for a doctor’s appointment.”

The app consists of four panels. The first is your dashboard that gives you access to app settings, a notification section and your own profile that details all the comments you’ve left across the Disqus network, as well as who you’re following or who’s following you. There’s also a top communities tab that allows you to jump straight to your favourite sites and engage with other commenters.

The second panel – suitably called network – is where you can see the latest comments from the people that you follow, but this can be changed to show your most recent discussion by selecting the text at the top – a drop-down menu will appear.

Explore is the best place to go to find new discussions with an assortment of categories which can be broken-down further when you select one.

Then finally, we have the moderate panel. I suspect this is only available if your Disqus profile is one of a moderator, and that’s to say that you run a site that uses Disqus as its commenting system.

If you have this feature available, this is a really valuable tool for site admins. While you can’t currently edit comments, you can approve pending comments, or delete comments that may have slipped through the filter system.

During your commenting time, you’ll undoubtedly begin to recognise other commenters within that particular community, as regular commenters are usually quite keen to express their opinion. If you want to hear more about what person has to say, select their profile and then press follow. That person will then appear in your networks panel we discussed earlier.

You can also ‘upvote’ or ‘downvote’ individual comments from each comment. These votes are a way of silently agreeing with what that person is saying. Think of is as a nod, or a shake of the head.

If you want to share those comments to a wider audience, then go ahead and press the share icon. You can let your LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook friends know what you’re into, hopefully encouraging them to join in the conversation.

As with most Windows Phone apps, Disqus utilises the Live Tile feature. If you want to stay up-to-date with your Disqus networks and discussions, pin the app to the Start scree. Periodically, the Live Tile will inform you of the latest content from within your networks. If you’re only interested in one story, you can pin individual articles to the Start screen, too. The same can be said for the moderator section.

These pins help you reconnect with the discussion without manually checking, prompting for continual conversations.

The Disqus app is available to download now from Windows Phone Store – for free. It works on Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8 smartphones

Are you a Disqus user? Feel free to comment, via your newly downloaded Disqus app – or the usual way, below.

Tak dużo się ostatnio dzieje, że mamy małe zaległości z newsami na blogu. W otatni piątek o czym już pisałem, odbyła się IV Konferencja Sprzedaży PLAY. Przyjechało mnóstwo osób z całego kraju. Ja chciałem specjalnie pozdrowić koleżanki i kolegów z salonów w Opolu, Kłodzku i Bydgoszczy, którzy obok mnie siedzieli Konferencja sprzedaży to oczywiście [...]

Promocje doładowań cieszą się wielką popularnością wśród Was, dlatego bardzo chętnie je organizujemy Już od jutra, od północy obowiązywać będzie kolejna, tym razem trzydniowa promocja. Jakie benefity tym razem? Wartość jednorazowego doładowania Bonus 5-10 zł 60 MB 11-25 zł 60% wartości doładowania 26-50zł 600 SMS-ów 51 zł i więcej 600 minut do wszystkich sieci [...]

Tak dużo się ostatnio dzieje, że mamy małe zaległości z newsami na blogu. W otatni piątek o czym już pisałem, odbyła się IV Konferencja Sprzedaży PLAY. Przyjechało mnóstwo osób z całego kraju. Ja chciałem specjalnie pozdrowić koleżanki i kolegów z salonów w Opolu, Kłodzku i Bydgoszczy, którzy obok mnie siedzieli Konferencja sprzedaży to oczywiście [...]

Promocje doładowań cieszą się wielką popularnością wśród Was, dlatego bardzo chętnie je organizujemy Już od jutra, od północy obowiązywać będzie kolejna, tym razem trzydniowa promocja. Jakie benefity tym razem? Wartość jednorazowego doładowania Bonus 5-10 zł 60 MB 11-25 zł 60% wartości doładowania 26-50zł 600 SMS-ów 51 zł i więcej 600 minut do wszystkich sieci [...]

The Hollywood hills might echo to the strains of hip-hop, rap and indie rock, but don’t underestimate the Los Angeles electro scene: EDM, or electronic dance music, is right at home in Southern California.

Dancing to LA’s tunes

Massive dance festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival pull in more and more punters each year—EDC’s California event in 2010 drew 185,000 attendees! Underground and European techno is a big influence on the city’s EDM artists and audiences, and clubs like Avalon pack in up to 2000 electro fans at the weekends when local and German DJs alike pelt out savage techno. Call it hipster music or call it dance, it’s here to stay.  Tyrone Lebon’s documentary for Nokia Music, New American Noise: SFV Acid, features one up-and-coming electro artist, Zane Reynolds, and to give him context, we thought we’d take a look at a few more of LA’s hottest EDM artists.

Addicted to Droog

Techno crew Droog, a three-man collective, have been operating out of the City of Angels since 2006.In June 2012 alone, Andrei Osyka, Brett Griffin and Justin Sloe worked the house circuits in Ibiza, Barcelona, Berlin and California. They’ve played London’s Fabric and Mexico’s BPM, they run a successful record label called Circuit, and their rooftop raves at the Avalon and the Standard are sell-out shows. Plus they’re brainiacs: Osyka used to work in venture capital, and Griffin’s an experienced attorney! And while they weren’t born in LA, they’re determined to stay. In early 2012, Osyka told Magnetic Magazine, ‘Just about every interview we always try to bring up LA as a place that metaphysically and physically inspired us as the city that we love.’

Old School Cool

Vienna-born producer, remixer and label-owner John Tejada is another LA import—a techno-traditionalist who favours analog patch boards and keyboard synths over high-spec computers. As he said to LA Weekly’s Andy Hermann last year, ‘Do I want to play an instrument or do I want to play a mouse?’ Tejada’s been a favourite with EDM DJs for ages, but since the release of killer tracks like Orbiter and Torque and his contribution to Fabric 44, the FabricLive DJ mix series, he’s really on fire.

Fashion house

Taught to handle a turntable by house legend Donald Glaude, DJ Dan has become no less renowned than his former mentor: voted the number five DJ in the world by DJ Magazine in 2006, the artist otherwise known as Daniel Wherrett is a true LA superstar. Once a fashion major, DJ Dan’s certainly got style: his sound is funky techno, a disco, soul and house blend that drops beats to match those of any hip-hop master. Having helped launch LA as an EDM heaven in he 1990s, he’s gone onto launch his own label, InStereo, and work with mainstream artists like P. Diddy, Lady Gaga and Janet Jackson.

Don’t Far Cry 3 for me, Skrillex

Finally, LA native Skrillex was, according to Forbes magazine, the second highest paid DJ in the world in 2012—and he’s still only in his mid-twenties. Otherwise known as Sonny Moore or Twipz, composer and producer Skrillex has already won three Grammys and been nominated by the BBC for their Sound of 2012 feature.  His work has been described as ‘brostep’ – a mashup of dubstep, hardcore and noise – and you can find it in the video game, Far Cry 3, and the revived animated TV show, Beavis and Butthead. He’s remixed the Black Eyed Peas and Bruno Mars, and he’s collaborated with Knife Party. Unstoppable!

Gameloft is one of the most prolific and well-loved games developers across the whole range of Nokia phones, from feature phones like the new Nokia 301, to our latest and greatest smartphones in the Lumia range.

We met with Gameloft’s Nicolas Pochez in Barcelona to find out the latest from the company.

It was good timing. Three of the company’s latest games, Asphalt 7, Real Football 2013 and The Amazing Spider-Man went live in the Windows Phone Store recently. The releases mark the first of 12 titles for Windows Phone 8 smartphones scheduled for release over the next few months.

“We aim to bring our top-selling games to the Windows Phone devices,” says Pochez. The 2013 line up will also include Ice Age Village and Dark Knight Rises.

“I’m looking forward to seeing the games on the new hardware,” Pochez continues, “early signs are that performance will be extremely good.”

Gameloft is also a prolific developer for Nokia’s Series 40 feature and smart phones with a strong presence on the Nokia Store. Here, once again, Asphalt is a key franchise for the company, though it finds that there’s a heavier proportion of casual games as opposed to arcade games.

On Nokia Asha, Gameloft has put a lot of innovation into revenue models, with successful experiments in ‘try & buy’ and ‘free-to-play’ models. “We’re one of the only publishers using a ‘freemium’ model on Asha,” says Pochez. “The success of that has helped us to fund further development in Java gaming when many of our competitors are ramping it down.

“So, for example, we have a game called ‘The Littlest Petshop’. It’s about – surprise, surprise – running a pet shop. Not to be stereotypical, but it’s especially popular with young girls.

“We offer the game for free, so how do we make money out of it as a business?

“You can buy your way through some of the more time-consuming aspects of the game with special tokens, bought with an in-app currency. Some people are time-poor and cash-rich, so this in-app buying progress suits them.

“The other way to make money is by offering ways to expand the game by offering in-app purchases. For example new animals or furniture for the shop.

“It’s meant that we need to adopt a new way of thinking about our games. They’re more like services we need to continue to feed and evolve, rather than final products we’re shipping out of the factory.”

Finally, Pochez reveals that Gameloft is working with Nokia to improve the gaming experience by tapping into the different capabilities available on the Nokia platform.

Gameloft won’t let us tell you any more about this just yet. But watch this space…

To coincide with the imminent return of Formula 1, our Asha App Spotlight this week shines upon the official BBC Top Gear News app.

While the TV show, and its three curmudgeonly presenters, are not to everyone’s tastes there is no doubt that it has a massive and devoted worldwide fanbase. One estimate suggests that 350 million people in 170 countries watch Top Gear every week!

What cannot be disputed is that the people behind Top Gear know, and love, their cars. As you would expect all this enthusiasm and expertise is fully reflected in this app.

BBC Top Gear News is split into three different sections:

• The latest motoring news
• Behind the scenes at the TV Show
• Car reviews

It’s very neatly laid out and the simple navigation means that you are never more than a couple of clicks away from one section to another.

In addition the app, provides links to their pages on Facebook, Twitter, their website and the Top Gear shop.

It’s a particularly good time to be using this app, as it’s the Geneva Motor Show this month. I can attest that the app was regularly updated with a constant trickle of latest news, feature-length articles and photos from this showpiece event.

If you’re a serious motorhead then you’ll also appreciate the reviews section. From scrolling through the list, it seems they concentrate rather more on supercars than your average family-friendly hatchbacks but it’s more entertaining that way, isn’t it?

World’s most popular factual show

I know plenty of people who don’t care about cars but who are still avid Top Gear fans.

This phenomenon is often attributed to the on-screen chemistry of the presenters and the high production values of the films. When you’re watching a race between a fighter plane and a sports car, you know that no expense has been spared.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I think the real strength of this app is the behind the scenes at Top Gear articles. Here’s a flavour of some of the latest content in this section:

• Producer Andy Wilman on their latest ‘Africa’ special
• Feature on actor James McAvoy during his Top Gear Lap
• Updates from Top Gear USA
• A special preview of upcoming shows

These all serve to underline why Top Gear is so popular – it’s a big club for people who love cars, and taking you behind the scenes makes you feel like a member.

If I had one gripe about this app, then it would be that it doesn’t include any video content.

That aside, if you like cars and you like Top Gear, then you’ll want to install this on your Nokia Asha device straight away.

When it comes to choosing a new smartphone how many of you check the technical specifications first? A sizeable majority, I guess.

Often, this can be fairly easy to understand stuff like the size of the screen or how much memory there is for you to store your music and photos. When you delve a little deeper though, some of this information starts to get a little more esoteric.

Sure, I’m glad that my Nokia Lumia 820 has an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and several other sensors lurking within but do I really understand how they work or what they do?

I suppose part of the magic is that we, by and large, don’t need to know about such things to get the most out of our smartphones.

However, a little knowledge can go a long way and an app in the Windows Phone Store called Sensor Emitter (free) provides a really useful starting point if you want to learn about some of the sensors in your Nokia Lumia. 

In recent months we’ve looked at being a developer, teaching coding and how you might want to start creating some apps for yourself.

To fully unlock the potential of a Nokia Lumia smartphone and if you’re a developer, then you’ll certainly need to have a grasp of the handset’s sensors.

Here’s a brief outline of some of the common sensors that are found in smartphones today: 

• Accelerometer – Measures movement and orientation of your device. When you are looking at a photo and you turn your Lumia from portrait to landscape, and the image follows this movement to fill up the screen, this is the sensor at work.

• Compass – Most of us will be familiar with the compass from our schooldays. Obviously, it’s an essential tool for location services.

• Gyroscope – Measures the angular rotation of the device on three different axes. It is most useful when used in conjunction with other sensors, such as the accelerometer, to provide more accurate results.

• Proximity – You know how your Lumia seems to magically turn its screen off when you put it to your ear for phone calls, and then turn itself on again, when you bring it away from your ear to end the call, or use the touchscreen? That’s the proximity sensor at work.

• Ambient Light– This can monitor the light levels in your environment and adjust your screen accordingly. In a dark room, you won’t need your display to be so bright for you to see it. By adjusting the screen display brightness you can save battery life considerably.

The Sensor Emitter app

Sensor Emitter doesn’t just provide technical explanations of what each sensor does but also shows you live measurements.

The developer, Philip Daubmeier, suggests how each sensor can be used to maximise its potential. For example, different sensors are much more useful when they work together.

The app couldn’t be easier to use. There’s a main screen that shows you an overview of each sensor – then just tap on each one to get more detailed information. 

If you’re feeling really confident then you can even connect your Lumia to a computer. Then from your PC you can use this app to monitor live sensor data and create computer applications that uses your smartphone’s sensors.

Sensor Emitter isn’t for everyone but if you’re at all interested in developing apps or are just curious about how sensors work in smartphones then it’s certainly worth investigating.

It’s time for another #NokiaLumiaChallenge to kick-off! For this one, the winner will receive a Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Wireless Charging Plate. Second place prize will be in the form of an awesome Nokia Purity Pro Wireless Stereo Headset by Monster. Excited? I don’t blame you!

The challenge is very simple and is inspired by the cool ‘create a mix’ feature on Nokia Music. Within Nokia Music you can create your own mix consisting of three different artists. And what we want to see from you are some crazy mix suggestions!

Snoop Dogg > Red Hot Chilli Peppers > Lady Gaga #NokiaLumiaChallenge

To enter, think of three artists whose music and style really clash with each other, then Tweet your crazy mix using the #NokiaLumiaChallenge hashtag.

You don’t need to own a Lumia to participate in this challenge, all you need to do is tweet your crazy mix with the hashtag.

The competition will end at midnight GMT on Tuesday 26^th March. You may enter as many times as you like, so don’t stop after your first mix has been submitted! As ever, please read our terms and conditions before entering.