Music-streaming company Spotify is now offering a 3-month subscription of its Premium service for a total of just 99 cents. The offer is only available to new subscribers in the US.

Needless to say, after the three-month period, you’ll be charged the normal rates – $9.99 a month. For those who aren’t in the know, Spotify Premium lets you stream ad-free music, with unlimited skips, and even download and listen to your tunes offline. Read more »

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested two men for allegedly breaking into accounts of some Photobucket users and selling off access to their private information without authorization.

According to the US Justice Department, 39-year-old Brandon Bourret from Colorado Springs, and 26-year-old Athanasios Andrianakis from Sunnyvale (California) developed, marketed, and sold a software application, dubbed Photofucket, which allowed viewers to circumvent the website’s privacy settings and hence enabled them access to users’ private and password-protected information. Read more »

Spotify, the popular music-streaming company, is planning to venture into the online-video business, according to a report by Wall Street Journal.

The Swedish company is currently looking for partnerships, and has even approached companies that create content for YouTube, the report notes, adding that the video service will be available to both subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Read more »

Yahoo!-owned photo-sharing service Flickr just rolled out a complete design overhaul of its service for web, desktop, and mobile. The new Flickr also includes new features to make the experience more than just a cosmetic facelift.

New unified search is one major improvement in the new design, which makes image search fast and intuitive. Read more »

Dropbox has updated its iOS app to version 3.9, bringing in a new Recents tab that lists all the recently used files, as well as the ability to add comments on files. In addition, the company has also announced that in the next few weeks it’ll add the ability to create Microsoft Office docs (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files) right from within the app – this feature will be available in a separate update.

“The best part, though, is how these features work together,” the cloud storage company said in a blog post. “For example, when you’re meeting with a client to brainstorm ideas for an upcoming project, you can use the Recents tab on your iPhone or iPad to quickly pull up your last project for reference. Then you can create a Word doc to take notes as you discuss. After the meeting, you can @mention your client in a comment, so they have the notes and can add anything you’ve missed. Then when you get back to your desk, you can turn that Word doc into a full project plan.” Read more »

Microsoft is planning to migrate all Outlook.com users to Office 365 sometime this year, according to a report from The Verge. The company says that the move will allow it to align its Office 365, Exchange, and Outlook platforms, and provide a consistent experience.

As per the report, while the Outlook.com name isn’t going anywhere, the email service will be powered by the Office 365 technology (without the subscription benefits of Office 365). Read more »

In the future, Microsoft’s Office apps will get their own third party apps – running inside them across platforms, so on Windows but also on iOS and in the Web versions of the Office suite. This has been revealed today during Microsoft’s Build conference.

An Uber app running inside Outlook was demoed, as evidenced by the shot above. The Uber app or add-in doesn’t seem to intrude very much into the main Outlook workspace, but it will allow you to easily schedule rides from your calendar appointments. Read more »

BitTorrent, the company behind the technology of the same name that allows for peer-to-peer transfer of files, has laid off a significant number of its employees in the US, according to a Buzzfeed report.

As per the report, the company has sacked about 40 of its approximately 150 domestic employees. Those who were laid off said the step was taken as BitTorrent is streamlining its resources to focus more on Sync, a peer-to-peer storage service based on the company’s file-sharing technology. Read more »

You can now easily send directions from your desktop to your Android smartphone. Google added the nifty functionality to its desktop search.

Activating the feature is as easy as it gets. Read more »

Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, which aims to bring affordable Internet to the 5 billion people in the world who otherwise can’t access it, has already benefited 800 million people in nine countries, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

“We’ve now made free basic Internet services available to more than 800 million people in nine countries, including just in this quarter, launching in India, Colombia, Ghana, Guatemala, and the Philippines,” Zuckerberg revealed during the company’s Q1 earnings call, adding that over 7 million people, who weren’t connected to the Internet before, now get online using Internet.org. “And this year, we expect to connect even more people,” he said. Read more »

Google rolled out an update to its search engine, which boosts the ranking of mobile-friendly pages. The update affects search rankings only on mobile devices in all languages.

Mobile searchers will now find it easier to find high-quality pages that don’t require tapping or zooming. Read more »

Google has announced that YouTube apps running on select devices manufactured in 2012 and earlier will no longer be supported after this month. These devices include Sony TVs & Blu-ray Discs, Panasonic TVs & Blu-ray Discs, older iOS devices, and devices running older versions of Google TV.

“As we upgrade the YouTube Data API to bring more features, we’ll begin shutting down the old version on April 20, 2015. This will result in the current YouTube app not working on certain device models from 2012 and older,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in a blog post. The upgrade also affects the 2nd gen Apple TV. Read more »

There is no doubt that Google is the undisputed king of the online search market, but it looks like Bing is slowly and steadily capturing market share, at least in the US. According to latest numbers from research firm comScore, Microsoft’s search engine has captured 20.1% of the US desktop search market, which means that it now powers 1 in every 5 desktop searches in the country.

As expected, Google is at the top with 64.4% market share, while Yahoo, ASK and AOL round-up the top five with 12.7, 1.8, and 1.1% market share respectively. “In total, 18.9 billion explicit core searches were conducted in March, with Google Sites ranking first with 12.1 billion (up 11%), followed by Microsoft Sites with 3.8 billion (up 12%),” the research firm said. Read more »

Every year, search giant Google comes up with something special for April Fools Day, and this year was no exception, with the company’s website coming out reversed. However, what’s different this year was that the prank inadvertently broke the website’s security.

“The prank compromised the site’s own security by omitting a crucial header that makes it vulnerable to user interface redressing attack, such as click-jacking,” said UK research firm Netcraft, which was the first to discover the vulnerability. Read more »

Google has said that its Project Loon, which involves beaming 4G mobile Internet from helium-filled balloons, is close to launching thousands of balloons. The project has been underway for a couple of years now.

“We’re getting close to the point where we can roll out thousands of balloons,” said project leader Mike Cassidy, adding that such a number is necessary to deliver reliable Internet access to users in remote areas where no other means to connect to the Internet are available. Read more »