Japanese manufacturer Toshiba has revealed that its future laptops running Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10 operating system will feature a dedicated Cortana key.

The revelation was made by Jeff Barney, who is the general manager and vice president in charge of the company’s America’s PC business. He said that the key – which will be placed in the upper left area, close to the function keys – will be available on all of the company’s Windows 10 PCs, “across the board, top to bottom.” Read more »

Less than a couple of months after Xiaomi CEO revealed that the company had sold over 4 million units of the Mi Band, it is being said that worldwide shipments of the company’s only wearable tech product have crossed the 6 million mark.

According to a report from XiaomiToday, the Chinese company – which according to a recent IDC report was the second-largest wearable vendor in Q1, 2015 – is now planning to launch the next iteration of the smartband. Read more »

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has announced that it will soon launch a Netflix-like online video streaming service in the country. Dubbed TBO or Tmall Box Office, the service is expected to launched in about a couple of months.

The announcement was made by the company’s head of digital entertainment Patrick Liu, who also revealed that the service will not only bring shows from China and other countries, but will also feature original content from in-house studios. Read more »

Following other US tech giants – including Google, Twitter, and Facebook, Amazon has released its first transparency report, revealing government requests for user information it received for the period January 1, 2015, through May 31, 2015.

As per the report, the e-commerce giant received 813 subpoenas and 25 search warrants during the period, and it responded fully to only 542 and 13 of them, respectively. In addition, the company also received 13 court orders, 0-249 national security requests, 132 non-US requests, and 1 removal request. Read more »

Facebook has announced an update to the News Feed ranking algorithm that the company says will allow it to take into account the amount of time a user spends viewing a story.

“Just because someone didn’t like, comment or share a story in their News Feed doesn’t mean it wasn’t meaningful to them,” the company said. “There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it.” Read more »

Over a couple of weeks after Pebble revealed that Pebble Time will be available for pre-order to general public on June 22, the company has announced that the device’s pre-orders in the US will be exclusive to Best Buy.

“Best Buy is teaming up with us to get Pebble Time on your wrist before arriving in stores,” the company said in a blog post. “On June 22nd, customers in the US can pre-order Pebble Time exclusively at BestBuy.com.” Outside of the US, customers will be able to pre-order the smartwatch from the company’s own website. Read more »

Twitter, as we all know, places a 140-character limit on all tweets. The same limit also applies to Direct Messages (DMs). However, that was until now, as the company has announced that it’s removing the 140-character limit in DMs starting next month.

The limit will be raised to a whopping 10,000 characters, which is effectively unlimited given that it’s very rare for someone to send such a long DM. Read more »

Amid mounting concerns over slow user growth, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has decided to step down from his position effective July 1. He, however, will remain on the company’s Board of Directors.

Co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey will assume the role of interim CEO till Twitter finds a permanent replacement – the company has formed a search committee, and said it would consider both internal and external candidates. For those who aren’t aware, Dorsey also co-founded payments start-up Square. Read more »

Just a couple of weeks after there were reports that Samsung is working on a foldable-display phone – internally codenamed Project Valley or Project V, a newly published patent (No. 30-0757696) from the company has surfaced online, revealing a tablet display that could fold up to two times, effectively forming a single device.

It isn’t yet clear how the device’s display would work in its unfolded form – would all three connected screens work together to display wide-screen video, or would one of them double as a keyboard? Read more »

In an effort to make Twitter a safer place, the company has introduced a new feature that allows users to share their block lists, effectively letting others block multiple accounts all at once.

“While many users find them [Mute and Block] useful, we also recognize that some users — those who experience high volumes of unwanted interactions on Twitter — need more sophisticated tools,” the company said in a blog post. “That’s where this new feature comes in.” Read more »

Less than a year after revealing that it is working on its own driver-less car, Chinese Internet search engine company Baidu has announced that the vehicle will be launched in the second half of the ongoing year.

The announcement was made by Baidu’s senior vice president Jin Wang at the China Cloud Computing conference. Wang also said that the company will work with a third-party car manufacturer, whose name wasn’t revealed. Read more »

Facebook Messenger for Android has entered into the exclusive 1 billion+ downloads club. The news was announced by David Marcus, who leads the company’s messaging business, in a Facebook post.

If you aren’t in the know, Messenger is the company’s third app to cross the milestone – the Facebook Android app did it last year, while WhatsApp did it this year. Also, Facebook and Google are the only two companies that have apps with more than 1 billion Google Play downloads – the latter’s Google Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube apps are part of the club. Read more »

Twitter is rolling out a new feature that aims to make it easier to follow conversations that are displayed on the tweet page. The company says that the new feature will group conversations together and highlight some of the most interesting exchanges surrounding a given tweet right below it.

To decide which tweets need to be highlighted, several factors will be taken into account, like whether or not the original account has replied. Read more »

The website of the US Army – http://www.army.mil/ – has been taken down after it was defaced by hackers yesterday.

A group by the name of Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) – that supports the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – took credit for the attack, saying they left several messages on the website. Read more »

When Apple unveiled iOS 9 at its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, one of the new features that wasn’t detailed during the keynote was an app that the company claims makes it easy for you to switch from Android to iOS.

Appropriately dubbed Move to iOS, the app wirelessly and securely transfers your “contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books,” the company says. Read more »