Google has rolled out the updated design of the website to everyone. The redesign is only focused on improved product pages more than anything else.

If you click on any item on the website now, you will be greeted by a narrow view that looks almost like someone copy pasted the Google Play app UI on to the web page. The narrow column wastes quite a bit of space on the side. Read more »

Flipkart, India’s largest online retailer, is reportedly gearing up for a huge business change. The e-tailer is planning to shut down its website altogether and follow an app-only business model. This should happen this September and is sure to stir things up in the country’s online commerce segment. The announcement was made by Punit Soni, the company’s CEO at a staff meeting, so it is pretty much official.

As you can imagine, this is a well thought out move and definitely not void of logic. Flipkart has estimated that about 75% of its entire traffic comes from mobile devices, so it doesn’t make much sense to support and invest in a traditional website anymore. The company’s second site Myntra actually already went down the same route in May 2015. The fashion-centric market reported similar numbers prior to the shift – 80 percent of traffic and 70% of purchases were via mobile app. Read more »

Microsoft has rebranded the Xbox Music service in Windows to Groove. Groove will come by default as part of Windows 10 when it launches later this month.

Other than the rebranding, there is not a lot new about the service. You can either stream from the 40 million song library or upload your own to OneDrive, which can be then accessed from anywhere, with Android and iOS apps arriving in future. Read more »

According to internal memos obtained by 9to5Mac, Apple Pay will launch in the United Kingdom on July 14. The Cupertino giant announced its place to bring Apple Pay in the UK during this year’s WWDC.

Apple has reportedly informed its UK retail employees that its payment service will become available on the above mentioned date. Read more »

The Russian parliament passed a controversial Internet privacy law yesterday that makes it mandatory for Internet search engines to remove certain search results about a person at their request.

Under the new legislation – which seeks to emulate EU’s right to be forgotten law – a person can request online search engines like Google to remove search results related to them that they deem are incorrect, no longer relevant, or illegal. Read more »

reddit is in a state of turmoil after firing of one of the employees for unknown reasons. The employee, Victoria Taylor (u/chooter), was coordinator of AMA and sort of the company PR for engaging with celebrities for their AMA. This has caused several of the subreddits to go private as a protest.

After her sudden firing yesterday, several of the subreddits who were about to organize AMAs came under distress as Taylor was their only point of contacts with the people doing the AMAs and without her they couldn’t proceed. Other than disrupting activities, Taylor was also well-loved in the community and pretty much the reason why any of the AMAs took place and were a success. Read more »

MasterCard will soon start testing a new feature that will require users to just take a selfie to get their online purchases approved. The experiment will begin this fall, and will involve 500 customers. If everything goes well, the feature will be launched publicly sometime after that.

You’ll be required to download the MasterCard phone app to use the feature. They way it works is: after you pay for something, you’ll see an authorization pop-up containing various options. Just choose the facial recognition option, stare at the device, and then blink to snap a photo of yourself – that’s it. Read more »

Media Streaming Company Plex has announced that the server hosting its forums and blog has been compromised by hackers, who managed to gain access to IP addresses, private messages, email addresses, and encrypted forum passwords.

It is, however, being claimed that only forum members are affected. Plex said that credit card and other payment data is complete safe as it is not stored on any of the company’s servers. Read more »

Sony announced today its own crowdfunding platform called First Flight. It looks a lot like Kickstarter, but isn’t just another replica. In fact First Flight has entirely different concept – it’s Sony’s hope to repair some of its struggling businesses.

Sony PlayStation 4 might be doing great, but we can’t say the same for the Xperia lineup which has become somewhat of a run-of-the-mill job. With First Flight Sony will be able to achieve to major things free of charge – learn the interest towards certain product ahead of re;ease and cut its losses in case of poor market reception for a given product. Read more »

YouTube is working hard retain its dominance in the online multimedia realm. And while a lot of that has to do with engaging audiences and encouraging creativity and content-creators, maintaining a technical edge is equally important. Innovations on the PC front are now way past high-definition content, with resolutions of 4K and beyond already available, as well as frame rates up to 60fps.

Dealing with mobile devices, however, presents a whole new set of challenges for YouTube, along with new possibilities to explore, like offline playback for example. Still, it is only a matter of time before our increasingly-powerful mobile tech gets access to proper high-definition content as well. Today, YouTube has made another step in this direction. The company’s Android and iOS apps now have 60fps content at 720p and 1080p resolutions. Read more »

Just a few months after it was announced, the peer-to-peer payments feature of Facebook’s Messenger app is now available to everyone in the United States.

The news was announced by David Marcus, who leads the company’s messaging business. “Add your Debit Card and pay anyone on Messenger in a few taps. Money goes straight from your checking account to the recipient’s checking account. Easy and safe,” he said. Read more »

Amazon’s revolutionary one-hour delivery service has finally landed in Europe. But, before you rush over to order new socks and make Amazon race your washing machine, there are quite a few notes to be made. Prime Now did indeed launch in the UK, but with a rather modest start. Not only is the service limited to London only, but also to just a few areas within the city. More are sure to come soon, but currently you need to check whether your post code is covered.

And even if you are among the select few who get to experience online shopping within the hour, outside the US, there are still some restrictions. Naturally, the service is only available to Amazon Prime users and is not a free service. Deliveries will set you back £6.99, but if that is too steep for you, the “sluggish” two-hour or same-day shipping option is free with a Prime account. Read more »

Last year there was a big rise in the number of rail crossing accidents in the US, and the authorities are working with Google to try and do something about it. Namely, you will soon find all of the railroad crossings in the US inside Google Maps.

We’re talking about around 215,000 crossings in total, of which 130,000 are public and 85,000 are private. Not only will you be able to see each railroad crossing placed on the map inside Google’s app, but you’ll also be notified when one’s approaching if you’re in navigation mode. Read more »

Facebook has launched a new feature that allows you to easily find and share Web links on the social network. Dubbed Add a Link, the feature is currently only available for iPhone users, but will eventually launch on Android and the company’s Messenger app as well.

“Now, whenever you want to share a specific web link in your posts, just tap the new link icon, type in a few keywords to search for a link from our index of posts, and share it,” the company said. So effectively, the feature makes sure that users won’t have to leave the Facebook app when searching for Web links. Read more »

Just over a year after it hit the 300 million milestone, US-based cloud storage company Dropbox has announced that it now has more than 400 million registered users worldwide. However, the company did not disclose how many of them are monthly active users.

“Today, 400 million people around the world are using Dropbox. They sync 1.2 billion files every day, create over 100,000 new shared folders and links every hour, and make 4,000 edits every second,” the company said in a blog post. “They launch startups, create award-winning documentaries, and build their dream homes.” Read more »