Review: DivX Stash stores Web videos for mobile viewing

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Keeping track of all the online videos you want to watch can be a challenge...especially if you're not always in front of your PC. Sometimes, you see a video while you're on your computer, but you just can't remember what or where it is by the time you launch the browser on your smartphone. Enter DivX Stash, introduced at Mobile World Congress. This free service helps you create a queue of videos that you can watch later, either on your PC or mobile device. It's a very handy tool, and one that works well—most of the time.

Once the browser add-on is installed, you'll see a "Stash It" button appear on compatible video sites.

To use DivX Stash, you start on your browser, preferably on a PC or Mac. You must log in with your Facebook account and install the browser extension or add-on to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You then surf the Web as usual. When you come across a video on a DivX Stash-supported site (including YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Funny or Die, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, College Humor, and more) , you'll see a button underneath the video that says "Stash It." Clicking this adds the video to your Stash, which you can access via the Web on your computer or via mobile apps for iOS and Android devices. I tested it on my iPhone and iPad.

From your Stash, you can click a video title and watch the video within the DivX Stash interface. DivX Stash doesn’t download and store the videos offline. It simply stores the video URL and brings it up within its own app. That means you'll need an active data connection if you're using a smartphone or tablet, and spotty service will greatly impact the quality of the video you see.

In addition to the videos you stash, DivX Stash also creates a feed of all the videos found in your Facebook feed. These are all of the videos posted by your friends and made available to you on Facebook. It's nice to have them all in one scannable list, but it's unfortunate that you cannot search the list to find a specific video you may have seen. Instead, you have to scroll through the videos, which appear with those most recently posted near the top, to find what you're looking for.

That's a minor glitch, though. What's more unfortunate is the problem I had watching videos I'd stashed from Hulu. They played back fine on my PC, but when I tried to access them using the DivX Stash app on an iPhone, I was unable to do so, and saw only an error message that the video was not available on mobile devices. The folks at Rovi Corporation say this is due to the nature of Hulu and the fact that some of their videos are only available to paid users. I was unable to watch any video from Hulu on my iPhone, though, even content that was freely available on my PC. In future versions, the DivX Stash app should direct users to the Hulu Plus app, which will allow them to watch Hulu content on their mobile phone, the company says. But that will only help users who've paid for access to Hulu Plus.

Videos that you add to your Stash are automatically added to the list that appears on your mobile phone.

While DivX Stash can't offer an easy—or free—way to watch Hulu content on your smartphone, it does offer easy access to plenty of free video sources. If you're an online video junkie looking to go mobile, DivX Stash could be your new best friend.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you must log in to use the software.

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Touch-friendly viewing of Office documents in smartphone browsers

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

Last month we introduced new touch editing experiences for Windows 8 and iOS tablets. You can read more on that here.

With this release, we'll continue to offer a view-only experience on most smartphones, but we are also making document viewing more touch-friendly in browsers on many popular smartphones. We prioritized such touch-enabled viewing so you can easily access and read Office documents on SkyDrive or Office 365 whether you're using a desktop, tablet, or smartphone browser.

In designing Office Web Apps for mobile browsers, we set out to achieve the following goals:

Touch enabled experience on all major smartphone platforms (Windows Phone 7.5 and up, iOS 5.0 and up, and Android 4.0 and up) Make good use of the limited screen real estate

Make it simple for people to read and navigate document content

Here are the basic gestures we support: 

Flick vertically to navigate through a Word documentFlick horizontally to navigate through a PowerPoint slide deckPan in any direction to navigate Excel spreadsheetsTo open the toolbar, tap the screen, then tap the toolbar indicator, and you'll see the toolbar on the side of the screen.

 

Now let's take a look at how you can interact with files from your mobile device:

 Word Viewing

To optimize reading Word docs on your mobile browser, we designed documents to reflow to achieve the best readability. Most of the document's text formatting and content types (images, SmartArt, shapes, text boxes, etc.) are preserved. 

If you need to adjust the text size further to read more easily, you can open the Font-size tab on the toolbar.

A common user scenario for working with large documents is the need to navigate to a specific page. With touch-friendly Office, users don't have to swipe repeatedly to move down page after page. Instead, users can drag the page slider on the right side to go to a specific page quickly. 

 If you see a table that flows over the edge of the screen, you can drag the table horizontally to view all of it. We take advantage of the touch capability to keep the format as close as possible to the actual table, so as not to sacrifice a good user experience. 

  

You can tap on a thumbnail image to enlarge it. 

 Excel Viewing

Excel Mobile Viewer provides high fidelity viewing of your Excel files.

 

 When a chart extends beyond the screen, users can use the Zoom function to choose a designated view for the chart, which lets you zoom in and zoom out on it.

  

 Often, there is more than one spreadsheet in a workbook. You see a list of spreadsheets on the toolbar and then tap on the one you'd like to open.

 

 You can tap on the Sort button to sort an Excel table in ascending or descending order-if the table you access already had sorting enabled.

 You can tap on "+" or "-" symbol in a Pivot table, or the Group Data view, to expand or collapse data.

 PowerPoint Viewing

We designed PowerPoint presentations to display so that they best utilize the mobile landscape. For instance, when you hold your phone vertically, the view is divided in half (we call this "split view") so that the top half displays the slide, and the lower half displays the text on the slide, including the notes. This is quite useful when you are on-the-go and want to quickly go through the content of the slide without having to pan around the slide area. 

 

If you wish to view only the slide, you can hold your phone horizontally so that only the slide image is shown.

  

To zoom, you can simply pinch on the slide no matter which view you are in.   

  

Last but not least, you can join a presentation online in your mobile browser.  Imagine that you are stuck in traffic while an important presentation at work is taking place using the latest Office Presentation Service. You can join the presentation by tapping on the link sent to your inbox. 

 Summary:

We encourage you to try out the new Office Web Apps Preview on skydrive.com or on Office 365  and preview on your mobile phone (if you are using: Windows Phone 7.5 and up/iOS 5.0 and up/Android 4.0 and up)

 We want to hear from you, please share your experience. From the toolbar, click "Give Feedback."

 We are constantly refining and improving the experience, and are actively listening to what you like and don't like.

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