A Windows Phone App for your Nest Thermostat

With all the phone apps available for Android and Apple phones, it can be tiresome as a Windows Phone owner to search for one and be frustrated over and over. Why do I own a Windows Phone? Well, it's a Lumia 1020, and photos are very important to me. It's great knowing that in my pocket is a camera that's as good or better than many small, portable cameras out there. I don't know if it's the Zeiss optics or the hardware.  But it's great! Here's a sample:

Hubbell Glacier July 2016

But I digress...

Nest makes a programmable thermostat that is easy to set-up, easy to use, and easy to monitor. But logging on a laptop is not as simple as opening an app on the phone, when one wants to change the temperature in the house. Perhaps you left on vacation and forgot to adjust it, perhaps you did set it on "vacation" and now you're returning home to a cold house unless you remember to log on a laptop just before you leave for home.

Using the app search on a Windows Phone with the word "Nest" yields two apps, one of which (Cozy) turns out to be a "browser wrapper" which is essentially useless. The one you want is wellNEZted which unfortunately is so far away from "Nest" the app search doesn't bring it up.
My recommendation (after having used it for a year), spring for the 99¢ and buy this app. It's what you're looking for.

 

The wellNEZted in action

 To use it just touch the "-" or "+" areas to adjust the temperature. Pressing the settings button (bottom center) allows for Home or Away, and Off or On. You can also pin the app to your home screen, where it will show you the temperature in the house, and turn red if the heater kicks on, or blue if it is off.
A well done solution.  Thank you wellNEZted.

Update: approximately 2/2017

The app writer took down the app from the Windows store. Sadly, it was a last link in a chain that moved me to a Google Pixel. And while they claim it takes better photos, in my estimation it does not. Nobody could beat the Lumia 1020.

Adding a DRM File to Zune

I wasn't sure I could do this, but...

I downloaded an audiobook from the library. It was WMA with DRM protection. That was all that was available. So I started up OverDrive, and was hoping that after I downloaded it to my Windows 7 desktop, I could transfer a working copy to my Zune.

Here's what the OverDrive application looked like after the download:

So from here you select your audiobook on the right (it will turn blue), then the "Transfer" button is active
Select Transfer (after you've plugged in your Zune but close the Zune Software on the Windows 7 machine). OverDrive will go find your Zune and then ask you about downloading.

It shows up on the Zune in a new section called "audiobooks". Wow! Terrific! And it worked!

Update (2/10/2015)
The above method will NOT work with Windows Phones--the only WMA/DRM files that will work on Windows Phones must come via the XBox Music Service.

Using the Overdrive App on Windows Phone does not support WMA/DRM files either.

Please leave a comment if you know of any other device that will play WMA/DRM files checked out from the library.