Great Apps for Windows 8.1

Google Play Music allows you to keep up to 20,000 of your favorite songs in the cloud. outcoldplayer (former gMusicW) is an unofficial Windows 8 client for Google Play Music. Main features are: playing music in background, playlists management, 5 starts rating system for songs, Last.fm Scrobbling (enable it in application settings, "accounts" page), offline listening.

Tweetium is a phenomenal Twitter client, built beautifully as a universal app for both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone. It uses a card-style, modern design and even has built-in themes for your viewing pleasure.

If you're like me and got to dabble with Firefox's Windows 8 app mode when it was in beta, you were probably bummed when they ditched those efforts. They had made a great experience for Windows 8, but unfortunately didn't push it through the proper channels (Windows Store) and it got little use in a beta channel and they discontinued it.

However, I am pleased to say that UC Browser HD, which is in the Windows Store, is a great alternative browser. It has an address bar at the bottom, like IE, but also sports opened tabs across the top of the screen. It also has a Home tab with a customizable Speed Dial.

Highly recommend it, if you want to try an alternative to IE. And don't get me wrong, I like IE.

Wunderlist has done a sexy, yes sexy, job with developing their Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone apps. They're beautiful and functional. Highly recommend if you currently use Wunderlist or are in the market for a productivity app.

If you like keeping a journal, or are thinking of trying, you might wanna check out Writr. It's a journal app with a sleek design and great feature set. Such as bookmaking entries, tagging entries, and filtering your entries in a calendar view.

Side note of advice, I have often found keeping a business journal is incredibly helpful for reference, especially if you have a lot of open discussions with different clients.

The People app is insanely underrated. It is one of Microsoft's built-in apps when you first install Windows 8/8.1. It's part of their trinity of productivity apps: Mail, Calendar and People. All three apps are actually very good, but you seldom hear anyone mention the People app. So, let me give you a few reasons to look at People... the app, don't stare at strangers.

Features

• sync contacts from multiple email providers, social media and so on
• link duplicate contact info together (ex: link Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, and email accounts of same person to one contact)
• launch an email message, Skype call, Tweet or post Facebook post directly to a contact
• read and comment on Tweets and Facebook posts
• favorite certain contacts so they appear at the start of the app
• pin contacts to Start screen and receive live tile notifications of their social media posts
• and more...

I think I've made my point. It's a powerful app.

I've been a video editor since 2004, and in 2005 I came to the conclusion that I wanted to edit digital video on a touch screen. It is now 2014 and I can edit digital video on my phone. We've come a long way.

On Windows 8.1, the ArcSoft Showbiz app is a pretty solid video editor. It's not Adobe Première Pro, but it good for cutting some HD videos. Highly recommend you take it for a test spin, if you want an editor for your Windows 8.1 device.

Fair warning, in-app purchase for certain things (like HD export, as I recall). After test driving it, I coughed up my money like poison was gagging me. Haven't regretted the purchase.