Today the folks behind Vine, the app that lets you create six second looping videos, have announced a new venture. It’s called Vine Kids, and, like its name implies, it’s basically a special version of Vine, created just for kids.

Apparently a lot of kids were already into using the ‘normal’ Vine app, so the company thought a specialized offering for them would be an instant hit. Read more »

Slowly, but surely, we’re starting to hear more and more about this year’s Valentine’s Day offers and deals. The latest such promotion to get unearthed comes from Italy, where Microsoft is preparing a pretty sweet deal.

If you buy a Lumia 535 from February 4 to February 15, you’ll get a free Lumia 435. This is however limited to Italy, so if you’re not there, you can’t take advantage of the offer. Read more »

HTC is set to start operating its own online store in its home market of Taiwan. This has been known ever since December, when HTC North Asia President Jack Tong made the plans official. The store will officially open at 10 pm local time on February 4.

The move is said to be all about better positioning HTC to compete head-on with Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi when it comes to the sales of cheap smartphones. Read more »

Today Sony has unveiled a new music streaming service that will become available in the spring. It’s called PlayStation Music, and it will be powered by Spotify. It will be available on PS3 and PS4, as well as unnamed “Xperia smartphones and tablets”.

You may be wondering what this means for Sony’s in-house developed service called Music Unlimited. Well, nothing good as it turns out. Music Unlimited will be shut down on March 29 in all the 19 countries where it’s available. Prior to that, from February 28, all of its users with active subscriptions will get free access to the service until it closes down. Read more »

The Sygic GPS navigation app that’s apparently amassed more than 75 million users on iOS and Android is now finally available for Windows Phone too. The app will provide some interesting competition for Nokia’s own solutions, now licensed to Microsoft for use in its mobile OS.

Sygic for Windows Phone comes with “forever free” GPS use, offline maps by TomTom, points of interest, route planning, and map updates. Read more »

Motorola has just announced its Valentine’s Day promotion. If you buy from the phone maker’s website directly, you’ll be able to save as much as $140 for a purchase of at least $499.99. The details are a little bit complicated however.

It all starts on February 2 at 11 am CT. From that time and until 11:59 pm CT on the same day, you’ll be able to register for a promo code worth $140 for a $499.99 purchase, or $50 off a purchase of at least $249.99. Read more »

Back in September the big US carriers launched the Galaxy Tab S from Samsung, but all but one went for the 10.5-inch model only. The sole company to have the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 on sale was AT&T. Interestingly though, an 8.4-incher for Verizon has been certified by the FCC, so clearly the carrier nicknamed Big Red had plans to release it at some point.

That said, here we are in 2015 and Verizon hasn’t done so, which means the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 probably won’t ever get official at this carrier. Intriguingly however, someone actually managed to buy this tablet, the Verizon model, back in December. Read more »

Seemingly every new smartphone out there is bound to get the teardown treatment at some point, and the Meizu M1 Note is no exception. The handset which was unveiled late last year has been carefully dismantled in its home country.

The phone bears all, letting us get one or two (or three) glimpses into the components that make it up. The whole thing is held together by a magnesium alloy chassis which is incredibly light, weighing just 16g. Read more »

HTC started rolling out the update to Android 5.0 Lollipop for the unlocked and Developer Edition units of the One (M8) in the US a couple of weeks ago, and today the Taiwanese company has made the next important step for developers.

It’s now posted the kernel source for its particular flavor of Sense-infused Android 5.0.1 Lollipop on its specialized developer website. This release is different than Google’s Lollipop kernel source exactly because it’s for phones running HTC’s UI overlay. Read more »

Following its very detailed “briefing” about Windows 10 a couple of days ago, Microsoft has today released the January update for the Technical Preview of its next OS. This can now be downloaded from the dedicated site, and you can even get an ISO file if you so wish.

The January build comes with many new features, and probably the most important new things inside of it are Cortana and the new Xbox app. Read more »

Complying with US sanctions on Crimea and following in the footsteps of Apple, Google will soon restrict the use of some of its services in the peninsula. Late last year the US government issued a new round of sanctions to retaliate against Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and this is the direct result of that.

Google can’t collect money for services from the peninsula, nor can it make payments to anyone over there. So the company will cut off services – some that will mostly impact businesses, such as AdWords and AdSense, but also one that will have an effect on ordinary citizens too, namely the Play Store. Read more »

Xiaomi has just challenged its fans to a selfie contest over on its official forum. The Chinese company wants to see how much you love to take selfies. And to reward you, it’s offering three prizes: a Mi Box set top box, a Mi Camera Lens accessory for your smartphone, and a Mi Bunny mascot, in the 30cm iteration (which you can see in the photo below this paragraph).

All you have to do is go to this forum thread and post a selfie of you or your friends. The image should (obviously) include your face or your friends’ faces, but also things related to Xiaomi and MIUI, its Android overlay. So for example you can hold a Xiaomi product or a piece of paper on which you’ve written the company’s name. Read more »

Samsung is currently working on its next smartwatch. It will be called Orbis, and it will be round, unlike any of the Korean company’s previous offerings in this space. And today we get a pretty big list of rumored features for this wearable.

The following information reportedly comes from reliable and trustworthy sources. That said, even if everything you’ll read here was true at one point, keep in mind that gadget development plans do sometimes change, so the finished product may be different. Read more »

The much leaked Web interface for WhatsApp is now live. As you may have imagined, this allows you to use your computer to send and receive WhatsApp messages. But, true to this app’s very obvious “mobile first” mantra, the Web client is acting simply as an extension of your phone.

Thus, all the messages still actually live on your handset, they’re just shown to you on the Web as well. So your phone needs to be connected to the Internet while you’re using WhatsApp Web on your computer, keep that in mind. Read more »

The last thing Microsoft had to present to the world today has to do with augmented reality. Following a growing trend in the tech world, the company has announced its own entry into the VR headset space, which is called HoloLens. And it comes with some additional features compared to its competitors.

The HoloLens, which you can see above, has see-through holographic lenses that superimpose “holograms” onto the world that’s actually around you, combining the physical with the digital. Read more »