WhatsApp, the hugely popular cross-platform instant messaging app that lets you message other users for free over the internet, is starting to charge an annual fee for its service.

It will now cost $0.99 per year for you to be able to message your friends on WhatsApp. Read more »

Drobpox is holding its first developer conference today dubbed DBX where the company’s CEO announced that the cloud storage service is now responsible for the files of 175 million users. They are syncing more than a billion files every day. Impressive, indeed.

Additionally, there are over 100,000 apps that use the Dropbox API set. More interestingly, It is getting updated with an interesting Datastore API, which will allow users to backup their application data, which means that settings, bookmarks, contacts, to-do lists and game scores can get backed up to the Dropbox cloud. Read more »

Back in February, we brought you word of Sony’s beta test for its new ‘my Xperia’ app, a service which allows you to locate a lost Xperia smartphone.

Initially, only available in select Nordic regions, my Xperia is set to come out of beta and launch globally for Xperia handsets manufactured 2012 or later, in the coming weeks. Read more »

The Apple App Store’s 5th birthday is approaching (July 10) and Apple is already preparing to throw it a big party. The PR team has started sending out App Store timeline posters to the media reps.

The poster illustrates the growth of the AppStore during these five years, including important milestones in the number of downloads, the revenue paid to developers. All key device released and best-selling apps are marked as well. Read more »

Vine has updated the iOS version of its app with several new features. First of all, there are some new camera tools such as grid mode, focus and ghost. Focus allows you to tap on the screen to focus at a particular point (usually tapping on the screen starts the recording). Ghost places a translucent overlay of your last shot on the viewfinder to make composition easier.

The other new feature is channels. There are now 15 channels that you can upload your videos to, such as comedy, music, art, cats, dogs, etc. and you can also choose to view Vines from a particular channel. Read more »

Nokia has just released HERE Maps of its latest Asha 501. Nokia promised to bring us soon its mapping service to the new Asha platform during the Asha 501 announcement event and it kept its promise.

This beta version of HERE Maps is specifically designed for devices without GPS, but still offers drive, walk and public transport directions. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy S4 Active has been around for almost two weeks now, so it was about time someone came up with a root solution for it. Fortunately, the hacker was kind enough to share his work with the rest of us, so now everyone can get superuser privileges on their IP-certified flagship.

The root tool is made by the popular hacker Geohot and is as simple as visiting a website. Read more »

Google has updated its Google Earth apps for Android and iOS. The new 7.1.1 version brings a few major improvements including Street View.

The rest of the improvements in the new Google Earth include a new left hand panel for easier browsing and switching between layers. There is also updated directions and search results. Read more »

If you’re a fan of Reddit, or memes, or the whole internet comedy via images thing then you’ve probably have or heard or used Imgur’s services. It’s the place to store all your pictures, memes, screenshots, and what not.

And now we’ve finally received an official app straight from Imgur. It’s already available for download on Google Play and is expected to launch on iOS soon, after it’s been thoroughly checked out. Read more »

When the Vine app eventually managed to waddle over to Android, it was a mere shadow of the iOS version, thanks to a buggy initial release and missing several features. Subsequent updates have made it bit more usable and now some more features have been brought over from the iOS version.

In the latest update, you now get the option to share your Vines on Facebook as well, whereas you could only do it over Twitter previously. It also adds the ability to search for users and hashtags, which was strangely missing in the previous version. Read more »

In a bid to take down Twitter and Vine, Facebook and Instagram have added a new feature on the popular mobile social network: videos. Now along with being able to upload photos, Instagram will also let you upload short videos from your phone.

After updating to the latest v4.0 of the application on iOS and Android, you will notice that there is a new button in the viewfinder mode. Tapping it brings the video recording interface. This works similar to Vine, where you press and hold the record button to record the video. You can release it as many times you want during the fifteen second span you are allotted and the app stitches the moments into one clip. As with Vine, audio is recorded as well. Read more »

The Skype video messaging service is finally out of beta and is now available to all Skype users. It is available on the desktop in Skype for Windows desktop, Windows 8, OS X and on the mobile for Skype for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. The service is currently not available on Windows Phone.

For those who don’t know, Skype video messaging lets you send short video messages over Skype. Unlike your regular video calls, the recipient of these messages need not be online when you send them and can view them whenever they log into Skype. Basically, video messaging is to video calls what SMS is to voice calls. Read more »

An upcoming mysterious Facebook event has several sources speculating that the social network might be adding video support to its Instagram platform.

Instagram, which was bought by Facebook for a cool $1 billion in cash and stock in April of 2012, has been slowly losing ground on Twitter to Vine, a popular iOS and Android app which lets you share short 6 second video clips. Read more »

Google has launched a new application for Android that will allow you to print your documents wirelessly over the cloud.

Your printer obviously needs to be connected to the internet and if it is supported it will show up in the Share menu on your Android device when you are in a webpage or viewing a document. Read more »

For most of us, apps on our smartphones or tablets are means of either entertainment or communication. We have our games, social networking apps and some other stuff that help us get through the day.

There are some people whose lives have genuinely been impacted by these apps. For them, these apps are not just means of entertainment or connectivity but help them learn, grow and function in a way that would otherwise be either impossible or very difficult. It has helped them lead a normal life. In their latest video, Apple shows us some examples where iOS devices and the apps running on them have helped change lives. Read more »