Skype has announced a new update today, and this one enables you to do free group video calls if you use a Windows tablet or a “2 in 1 device” (which presumably refers to convertible laptops).

You have to be running Windows 8.1 on your device, though, as Windows 8 isn’t supported. If you do qualify, however, using this feature seems to be very straightforward. Read more »

Microsoft has released a new video that show the Lumia 1020 in action, along with its various cloud services working together.

The video shows a guy trying to restore an old bike for his dad and how he uses Microsoft products to achieve that. We see the Lumia 1020, the Microsoft Surface Pro 3, OneDrive and even OneNote in action. Read more »

Microsoft’s spanking new voice assistant that premiered on Windows Phone 8.1, Cortana, predicts that Argentina has the edge over The Netherlands in today’s World Cup semi-final clash at Sao Paulo’s Arena Corinthians stadium.

If you ask Cortana on your phone which team will win in the match Cortana will do some clever behind the scenes match to tell you the most probable outcome. And for the upcoming Argentina – The Netherlands clash it thinks it’s a close call but still favoring the Argentinian side. Read more »

Google Drive is getting a new interface, and we’re not talking about apps in this particular case. Rather, the Web-based Drive is the one getting the new coat of paint. The new design has already started rolling out to users across the world.

It brings with it a new default view that uses a thumbnail grid instead of a list, a shiny big red New button that combines uploading stuff to Drive with creating new documents, and desktop-like selection tools. Read more »

Guess what – Google+ isn’t Google’s first go at a social network. Back before social networks were as popular as today, around the same time when Facebook was just getting started after Myspace paved the way, there was Orkut. The social network didn’t really leave a big mark in its 10 year tenure but has been used widely in Brazil and India.

Now that Google’s Google+, YouTube and Blogger are moving forward and luring users by the quarter Google, and Father Time, have finally caught up to Orkut. The service will be shutting down on September 30 of this year and effective today isn’t accepting new registrations. Read more »

If you are a seasoned videographer or someone who regularly uploads gaming videos on YouTube, you’d have notice that the framerate was capped at 30fps, which meant regardless of the framerate of the original video file, once uploaded the video will only playback at 30fps max on YouTube. \

That changes today. YouTube has finally introduced the option of displaying higher framerates up to 60fps, so whether it is a video shot in 48fps or a gameplay video at 60fps, they will playback in all their high framerate glory on YouTube. Read more »

Today Microsoft has decided to up the free storage allotment for its OneDrive service, matching what’s been offered by chief rival Google for a while.

Every OneDrive user will now get 15GB of free space, up from 7GB previously. What’s more, if you want to buy additional space that’s become cheaper too. Read more »

Twitter may still be growing its user count, but the growth is slowing compared to the past few years. The social network that focuses on brevity has seen growth declines in both its international as well as US-based monthly active users.

This is happening at a pretty quick pace, which means Twitter may have achieved peak growth a while back. The best growth it’s seen over the past three years was 140%, yet for the fourth quarter of 2013 that’s down to 40%. Read more »

Amazon just given you another reason to become a Prime member – a streaming music service with no ads that works offline too. The new Amazon Prime Music goes after Apple’s music streaming ambitions with Beats, Nokia’s MixRadio and independent services like Pandora and Spotify.

Prime Music works on anything from phones to desktops and doesn’t require an Internet connection – as long as you cache the songs before going offline you can listen to them all you want. Read more »

Viber has released a new version of its desktop app for Windows, OS X and Linux that puts a lot of effort and focus into stickers. The messaging company has also announced an important milestone – more than 100 million users are now using its service.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Viber stickers these are basically emoticons on steroids that are downloaded in sets – some of which are free and others cost a few bucks. Now that the new Viber for desktop is released users can dock a sticker menu alongside their conversations and even search for stickers within the app. Read more »

There’s a new update pushed to Android devices that adds some very useful features to the Hangouts messaging app.

The latest version of the app, 2.1.223, allows you to choose custom message and ringtone sounds for specific hangouts or people so that you can finally distinguish messages from one friend to another. Read more »

It’s happened to all of us – searching on Google on our mobile devices, tapping an article result and getting redirected to the website’s mobile homepage instead of the article we wanted. Well Google’s noticed and will start flagging such faulty links in its English results in the US so that we know before we tap.

But aside from leaving a comment – “May open the site’s homepage” – Google will still give you a Try anyway button if you’re eager to tread into the unknown. We hope the new feature makes its way outside of the US soon. Read more »

Apple’s Find My iPhone users in Australia have been hacked by someone or a group of people hiding behind the pseudonym Oleg Pliss (otherwise a respected software engineer and technology scientist). Some of the affected devices are put into lost mode with a message saying “device hacked”. Some users report demands of $100 sent by PayPal as ransom.

The information comes from numerous Apple users that have gone to Apple’s support forums complaining about the issue. Allegedly there were also reports from New Zealand users and one Australian currently in London. Read more »

Popular note-taking service Springpad will be shutting down on June 25, the company confirmed through a blog post. The service was created over six years ago and since then has had over 5 million users.

Once shut down, all features will stop working and the data will be deleted from their servers. Springpad is working on an export tool that will be available for users to download and migrate their data elsewhere. The company will inform users about the availability of this tool via their blog. Read more »

Some of you may not know this but Apple has a fully functional version of iWork, including Pages, Numbers and Keynote, available for free on the iCloud website for anyone with an Apple ID to use. The documents created can be accessed from any web browser or from iWork apps on iOS and OS X.

Apple has now issued an update that adds some new features and improves existing ones. One of the changes is the option to collaborate documents with up to a 100 people, which was previously limited to 50 people. Read more »