Updated with some corrections Recently, Microsoft made available for download, the Consumer Preview of its upcoming operating system,Windows 8, which, besides bringing tablet optimization also introduces a native app store. Microsoft decided to extend its Metro design philosophy from its Windows Phone OS to Windows 8, so the new apps also follow the same design guidelines. Interestingly, on the day of the release, there were a number of Indian apps available for download in the Store. We observed that the apps were mainly developed for demonstrating the Metro UI and lacked extended features such as social sharing, and value adds like weather widgets. We might see new features over time, and after Microsoft releases the final version. Here's a brief round-up: - iStream - Video aggregation company A2Media, which had launched an online portal, iStream, offering live TV streams, video clips and movies, has extended it to Windows 8, through a native app. The company says that it will add hundreds of new videos every day to its library of News Bulletins, TV Shows & Movies in five Indian languages. The company claims that iStream app on Windows 8 registered 5,000 downloads in 4 days of its launch. The app is built in accordance with the Metro design guidelines and offers videos across featured, movies, news and tv categories in English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu. We did not encounter any problems while watching videos inside the app, but it's more of a video browser lacking additional features such as bookmarking.…
