We’re taking a break from coding this evening to catch up with emails from our users, but also to tell you a little more about what’s brewing in our labs.

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The latest version of the BBC Podcast Lounge has just hit the Windows Phone Marketplace and it now carries one of the most requested features: offline playback.

Users can now download single or multiple episodes for future playback directly from the programme episode section. The app also features a download area where you can view everything that’s available offline. Downloads are handled by one of the new services in Windows Phone 7.5 so even if you close the app, the download will still continue in the background and be ready for you next time you load it up.

As warned from the very start, the app has now gone paid/trial from its previous status. However as a gesture of goodwill, the app is free to upgrade for any existing user who supported us through the earlier versions. All we ask is that you tell your friends about the app and why you like it so we can spread the word to new users.

That’s all for now. We’re off to continue building some more features in for the next release.

Igneous Software

For those lucky Lumia owners out there, Nokia has decided to feature the BBC Radio Player app as part of it’s “cool stuff” section of its App Highlights software loaded onto every Lumia. We’re delighted at the exposure – Thank you Nokia!

Our lead developer (and Managing Director) Richard Castle sat down with Rich Edmonds of WPCentral to discuss his software development background, the current range of BBC apps as well as his thoughts on Windows Phone for the future.

The interview can be found here.

Our latest project had the early preview treatment over at the excellent WPCentral website. Click here to check out the video review.

We’ve been hard at work on our next project which we are pleased to reveal is a BBC podcast client. The project is in early testing, however we submitted an early preview version as an entry into Nokia’s recent AlphaLabsCC competition and we were delighted to be awarded runner up award.

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We’ve been working closely with the great guys at Fun Kids (who broadcast superb radio dedicated to young children on the UK’s DAB Digital Radio service) to bring their radio to Windows Phone.

We’re delighted to announce that the app is now live on the Marketplace and available for download here. This is unique and isn’t available in standalone format on any other mobile platform.

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The updates we talked about in our previous post are now available on the Windows Phone Marketplace! We hope you enjoy the updates.

They can be found here: Windows Phone Web Marketplace

We’ve had our heads down working on the latest update to the BBC Radio player series which makes use of yet more Mango features. Expect to find the following new features in the release planned for next week:

• Reminder function for programmes later in the schedule
• Direct links to the selected BBC programme’s website
• Better checks for playback over GSM if the option to block is set
• Ability to pin the current station to the Start screen (BBC Radio Player only)
• Addition of 16 new World Service channels including Arabic, Russian and French (BBC Radio Player only)

We’ve been watching the steady progress of our latest BBC Radio application and we are pleased to see that it is now the top paid application within the UK Marketplace’s Music + Video category and 12th overall in all categories!

To cap it all off, the application was “featured” in the Marketplace yesterday bringing further prominence to new users. We also now appear in AppFlow by Gergely Orosz.

You can find the new BBC Radio Player on the amazing new web Marketplace for Windows Phone.