Skype, the most popular instant messenger, has updated its application for the Windows 8 machines. The latest version of the Skype for Windows 8 now comes with contact blocking and few other tweaks to improve the overall performance.

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The all new contact blocking option allows you to control over who can contact you and gives you the ability to block contacts. Furthermore, you can also choose to remove or report a contact request as spam. Read more »

A new build of the next update to Windows 8, codenamed Windows Blue, has been leaked on the internet. Build 9364 introduces quite a few changes and improvements to the existing Windows 8 and would make living with Microsoft’s newest operating system that much more easier.

One of the changes in Blue is addition of two new sizes for the live tiles. You can now have tiny, icon sized tiles, similar to the ones introduced in Windows Phone 8, as well as a giant new square tile that is twice the size of the previous largest tile. The theme settings have also been updated, with finer control over the color of the desktop background. Read more »

Microsoft has reached an important milestone – the Windows Store now touts more than 50,000 apps available for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT.

The achievement was reached yesterday, according to the MetroStore Scanner, which at the time of writing counts 50,341 apps. Read more »

A new trojan virus by the name of Trojan.Yontoo.1 has been discovered and has been confirmed to be harmful to both OS X and Windows machines. The virus prompts you to install an adware plugin on Mac, which injects unwanted ads into Safari, Firefox and Chrome.

Symantec also found the Yontoo virus to be effective on Windows machines targeting pretty much every version of the Microsoft OS, except for Windows 8. The virus issues ads on Windows which pretend to be coming from Facebook. Read more »

According to a survey by Strategy Analytics which was gathered by data collected last fall Apple’s iCloud is the most popular cloud service in the US.

27% of those surveyed who use a cloud service have tried iCloud in US with Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive in second and third with 17& and 15% respectively. Read more »

Chromium enthusiast Francois Beaufort has pointed out a flag for the open source Chromium browser that hints at the addition of a Google Now component.

While the actual Google Now server is not yet enabled, the functionality is there and will undoubtedly be heading to the Chrome browser for Windows as well as Chrome OS, as both of those get their source code from the Chromium Project. Read more »

Popular cloud-based note taking service Evernote experienced a security breach, where the company confirms it lost information such as usernames, associated email addresses and passwords to the hackers. No data, however, was said to be lost or changed and no payment information was accessed.

Even though the passwords were encrypted, the company is not taking any chances and is requiring users to reset their password before logging in again to their accounts. The company will also be releasing updates to its apps over the next few hours to make the password change process easier. Read more »

Mozilla has released version 19 of the popular Firefox web browser. The biggest change in this update is the inclusion of a PDF reader, such as the one in Chrome. This means you no longer have to rely on something like the Adobe Reader to be able to view PDF files within the browser.

Above is what the new PDF viewer looks like. You have various options such as zoom settings and the ability to print or download the file. On the left, you can also view the pages within the file in thumbnail or list view. Read more »

The Microsoft Office 2013 and Office 365 are finally on sale. The Office 365 Home Premium is currently available for $99.99 a year as expected. For that kind of cash you get to install the software on up to five PC’s or Macs.

Office 365 is also available in a “University” version for all the college students and the variant is priced at $79.99 with a four year plan. Read more »

Just before the announcement storm from CES 2013 to hit, Dropbox has quietly launched a dedicated Modern UI app for Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT.

Designed in the familiar Windows 8 manner, the app displays tiles of files and folders from your account. It’s nicely optimized for touch-operation too. Read more »

We already saw how the Windows Phone 8 Store is doing, time to have a look at the Windows 8 store. According to MetroStore Scanner, the store for Microsoft’s new computer OS has over 35,000 apps, over 22,000 of which are available in the UK.

That’s not bad, considering that the Store had only 10,000 apps at the end of October. Read more »

Mozilla is gearing up towards the launch of its upcoming mobile OS by releasing a Firefox OS Simulator as an extension for Firefox.

The developers have also updated the browser’s Nightly channel with a release needed to allow individual private browsing tabs. Thanks to it, now you won’t have to suspend your entire browsing session just to open a single private browsing tab. Read more »

You may remember during the keynote when the MacBook Pro with the Retina display was announced, Apple briefly mentioned the Adobe Photoshop application being optimized for the new display. But as it happens, the Retina version of the application wasn’t quite ready back then.

Now, six months after the MacBook Pro was announced, Adobe has finally updated the Photoshop CS6 and the Illustrator CS6 applications for the Retina display. The update should now be available to all the legit users and will take care of all the blurry fonts and icons. Read more »

Chrome started on computers and moved to smartphones, so is it time for the smartphones to return the favor? An issue in the code repository for the Chromium project (on which the Chrome browser is based) suggests that Google Now cards are about to make their way to the desktop browser.

The issue is titled “Creating a skeleton for Google Now for Chrome implementation“, which suggests there’s more work to be done before Now hits Chrome. Read more »

Last September Apple revealed a revamped version of iTunes at the announcement event for the iPhone 5. Today, after a serious delay, the application is finally ready to download.

iTunes is the go-to multimedia player on Mac OS and thanks to the iPods and the iOS devices in recent years, it has made its way to numerous Windows computers as well. Read more »