If you have Windows Phone 8 try the Me app and see if you like it.

Windows Phone 8’s Rooms is pretty neat. It’s your own private area on your phone and on your Microsoft account for the family (or friends, coworkers, etc) to be able to share and communicate together efficiently and away from social networks. My wife and I both have Windows Phones so it makes using this pretty easy and seamless. I read online somewhere that this feature is also supported by Android and iOS devices but don’t quote me on that.

Once it’s set up, you can share its calendar, photos, a notebook, and even a chat room among everyone in the family room. So if you and your loved ones need to share something really quickly and don’t want it public, you can use the family room.

My wife and I notify each other of appointments we are going to so we are both in the loop. Or we put appointments that we both need to know about and/or attend. She puts in doctor’s appointments for the kids, games, school events, etc. so I’m aware. I’ll put in golf time, or meetings I’m going to be so that she doesn’t wonder where I am if I’m supposed to be home.

We share to do lists in the notes. Shopping lists. The chat room isn’t something we use at the moment but as soon as we add more Windows Phones to our family, you can bet that’ll be another cool feature we will be using.

As I mentioned, you can have different rooms for different groups of contacts. Friends, golf buddies, business associates, team members, managers, etc. I could see how being a manager of a team of people, who are mobile but need to get information to your entire team quickly, this can make communication so much more efficient.

Microsoft Windows Phone 8 has a great family friendly feature called Kid’s Corner. Having small children and living gadgets presents some challenges when it comes to technology at home in a way that allows the kids to experience the new technology and have the peace of mind as a parent knowing that I’ve done as much as possible to protect my kids from content that they shouldn’t be seeing as well as keeping my data safe from their curious tapping and swiping of touchscreens.

Just like how you set boundaries for your kids out in the real world you want to do the same thing in the internet connected world. One way you can do that on the Microsoft Windows Phone 8 is with Kid’s Corner. I won’t go into the details of how enable it. You find out how to enable Kid’s Corner anywhere on the web.

But once you enable Kid’s Corner, it is real easy to access. Swipe left from the Lock Screen then swipe up. All you have to do enable the feature, add the apps you want your kids to access, set up a lock screen password and you’re done. You can customize the lock screen with a picture and screen title for some customization. The kids can resize and reposition their tiles in Kid's Corner as well as choose a theme color. They won’t be able to get onto the web, your email, settings, etc - basically any area or app you don't want kids to access.

So whenever your kids want to play with your Windows Phone, swipe left then up and put them in the Kid’s corner. I can’t tell you how much this has made my life easier when the kids ask me for my phone to play games. I have two, the Nokia 925 and the HTC 8x, and both have the Kid’s corner enabled. My wife has the Nokia 1020 with Kid’s Corner enabled. 

You can't set up multiple profiles like you can on the Kindle Fire's Kindle Freetime which I blogged about earlier, but for me that's ok. At least my kids can still use the Windows Phone's in our house without my wife and eye having concern about them getting into or changing things in our corners.

Thanks Microsoft!