Weekend Reading: April 27th Edition–The Skype for Windows Phone App is Here, Wordament Comes to Marketplace & Don’t Miss the Beauty of Bing Desktop

And now it’s time for a little Weekend Reading…

In this edition, we’ve got stories on the new Skype for Windows Phone app, the winners of the U.S. Imagine Cup finals, Wordament coming to Marketplace, the new Bing Desktop and more.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is HERE! Skype for Windows Phone! Following the recent availability of the Skype for Windows Phone Beta app announced at Mobile World Congress, we’ve released an official version of the Skype for Windows Phone app, which is now available in the Windows Phone Marketplace. You can also get the app directly from your Windows Phone. Get more detail about this story on The Big Blog, and take a moment to watch the video below on how the Skype app works. Also, don’t miss this Big Blog post about Skype Video and Voice calling coming to PlayStation Vita.

College students build a tool to help feed the hungry. A team of students from Arizona State University aims to use Microsoft technology to get uneaten meals from restaurants and catered events to nearby families who would otherwise go hungry. Team FlashFood, with its solution, FlashFood, was the winning team in the prestigious software design category at Microsoft’s U.S. Imagine Cup finals on Monday. The team will advance to compete in the Imagine Cup 2012 Worldwide finals in Sydney, Australia July 6-10. For more detail, check out this feature story on the Microsoft News Center.

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Now in Marketplace: The Xbox LIVE version of Wordament. Here’s something everybody in my house has been waiting for: The Xbox LIVE version of Wordament. The wildly popular Windows Phone word game was reborn today in Marketplace with a new look and extra features. Download it now. For many people, one big draw of this new Wordament—still free, by the way—is the addition of Xbox achievements. But the game also features other nice upgrades. Read this Wednesday post on the Windows Phone Blog for the whole story. Also, be sure to check out this Tuesday Windows Phone Blog post about two changes in Marketplace and how they affect you. Below is a screenshot from Wordament.

Wordament for Windows Phone

An exciting few days for personal cloud storage – and SkyDrive. This week, we’ve seen a welcome update from Dropbox, a new chapter for SkyDrive and the long awaited emergence of Google Drive. We’re very encouraged by the response we’ve received this week, and it’s hard not to be pretty happy when we hear positive feedback on all of the improvements we’ve made and the value we provide versus other solutions. With this week’s events, it can be fun and useful to compare features across services. We’ve seen these charts across the Web, and of course we recently updated our own chart. Read this Wednesday post on the Inside Windows Live Blog for more detail.

Bing Desktop brings beauty and convenience to Windows 7. From the beginning, Bing has been a place for exploration. The Bing homepage images aspire to spark your curiosity, giving you something to talk about and connect with. Over the years, many of you have requested a simple way to enjoy these images as your Windows desktop background. With Tuesday’s release of Bing Desktop, we’re introducing an easy way to do just that. Head on over to the Bing Search Blog for the rest of the story.

Microsoft Security Intelligence Report warns of ongoing Conficker threat. On Wednesday, Microsoft released the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report volume 12 (.pdf file), which found that the Conficker worm was detected approximately 220 million times worldwide in the past two and a half years, making it one of the biggest ongoing threats to enterprises. The study also revealed the worm continues to spread because of weak or stolen passwords and vulnerabilities for which a security update exists. Get the rest of the story on the Microsoft News Center and Microsoft on the Issues.

Need help with Office? Try our new and improved search. The Office team wants you to be able to find a good answer when you search for help in whatever program you happen to be using. One way to do that is to show you search results in Help from other reputable websites, alongside our own articles and videos. Take a gander at this Wednesday post on The Office Blog for more.

That’s a wrap for this edition of Weekend Reading! Thanks for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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