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Windows Store: Any Way to Figure out Who’s On First?

Windows Store: Any Way to Figure out Who’s On First?

The recent statistics Microsoft handed out about regarding the Windows Store made me think a bit. Microsoft noted that some apps on the store have had significant numbers of downloads. The fact that several “parts of Windows 8 and Windows RT” are only available as a download from the Windows Store innately twists what “some apps have had millions of downloads from the Windows Store” can mean. Some third parties have claimed to have statistics on this as well. In general,…

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Windows Store: Developers, don’t stuff the store with clones!

Windows Store: Developers, don’t stuff the store with clones!

Today while navigating the new Windows Store apps that arrived today, I ran across something that sort of broke my heart. I found dozens of copies of the same app from the same developer. Not identical, mind you. Subtle differences in how input boxes are laid out, as well as different names, colors, and application icons. Take a look at FlourMill here: and then Personal Recipe Book here: The developer, under the name LunaPlena, has submitted 118 apps in the last two…

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Why no news on winappupdate.com? I’ve been traveling!

Why no news on winappupdate.com? I’ve been traveling!

Apologies for the lack of updates recently. While the Windows Store has been growing by ~500 apps per day worldwide, only a fraction of these are truly stellar apps, and filtering out the wheat is still a manual process – something I can only do when time allows. Similarly, my rollup reports of the store are a relatively manual process that I hope to automate someday. That day is not today. Given a subtle jab that might seem to infer a…

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Windows Store: I’m holding out for a hero app

Windows Store: I’m holding out for a hero app

Last Thursday, my app counter went rather off the charts. Since the day before launch, the Windows Store has been adding 500 or so apps per day (with one exception). There aren’t a ton of stellar apps. I’m doing my best to document those that I do find on my Twitter feed, and I’m working on a better methodology. But for now, that’s where I put them. On Thursday and Friday in particular, I expected a bump in the number…

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Windows Store: The Turn

Windows Store: The Turn

The Prestige is one of my favorite movies. Every time I watch it, I notice a nuanced plot twist that I missed before. Since I started counting, the second most frequent question I get after, “how many apps are there?” is, “how are you doing this?” “Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.” Back in August,…

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Windows Store: Taking Inventory at Launch

Windows Store: Taking Inventory at Launch

The last 48 hours have been very significant for the Windows Store. More than the count – which is up significantly just in the last 2 days – apps from many mainstream news and entertainment sources have begun to arrive, and some new apps have shown up that take advantage of the WinRT platform on Windows 8 and Windows RT. I’ve posted quite a few updates in the last 2 days about what’s new and relevant on the store on…

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Windows Store: The (almost) Final Countdown

Windows Store: The (almost) Final Countdown

Quick post today, working to have a comprehensive rundown of Windows Store stats about mid-day Friday (pending any sort of explosion in either the number of apps or my system that counts them). But today, wanted to run through the basic set of numbers most people are interested in. Worldwide: As of today, there are 7,873 Windows Store apps available worldwide. Of these, 88% (6,964) are free – mirroring the percentages first seen much earlier this month. The number of…

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Windows Store: Top Markets

Windows Store: Top Markets

A reader earlier today asked if the overall growth of the global count of apps while US English stayed at a lower count generally meant that non-English markets were growing well. The answer is yes – in fact I pointed out that the locale with the second largest app count is the Chinese/China locale, at 3,456 – which interestingly has a much higher app count than any other Chinese markets (Chinese/Singapore: 3,104, Hong Kong: 3099, or Taiwan: 2953) – indicating that…

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Windows Store: Wednesday Number Time

Windows Store: Wednesday Number Time

Apologies for the brevity of today’s post – didn’t time my travel to Chicago well. This week has been a rather slow week, as I think next week may be as well. I’m anticipating things really picking up as we go in to the week of 10/22 and on after the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT. There should be well over 5,000 apps on launch day – perhaps more – depends on the bumps on the way. For…

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Windows Store: What’s interesting today?

Windows Store: What’s interesting today?

I thought for something different, I’d take a look through one day’s apps to see what showed up that actually looked interesting to me. Easier said than done, since I decided to do this with yesterday’s apps (356 new apps yesterday). As I noted last week, there are a lot of apps showing up that are simply Web portals. I’m not really considering those in this list. I wanted to try and highlight a few apps and games that looked…

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