January 21 marked an important milestone for Microsoft as the Windows 10 Next chapter event took place and revealed an amazing amount of new information concerning the future of the popular OS on both desktop and portable devices. One of the things that became abundantly clear is that us tech giant is really making progress and investing in its new One Windows philosophy.

Windows 10 on smartphones and tablets will essentially share the core of the full distribution and more importantly will support a uniform app ecosystem that allows the same applications to be used seamlessly across the entire range of Windows 10-powered devices. This is all very exciting, but even though Microsoft cleared the smoke around a lot of aspects of the new OS there are still some pressing questions of availability and future devices. As we have already reported, the new OS will surely be available for the Microsoft Lumia 435, 735 and 930 and if Microsoft keeps its word, most other current Lumia devices as well. This is an admirable decision, but we can’t help that the Microsoft mobile family is severely lacking on flagship models lately. Luckily this might change pretty soon. Read more »

Just a few months after adding support for the larger displays of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Facebook has updated its Paper app for iOS to version 1.2.5, bringing improvements to Camera Roll and photo sharing, as well as faster performance.

Photos and videos are now organized by the date they were taken, making it easy for you to find what you’re looking for while selecting media to share. In addition, the updated app also introduces the ability to share photos from the new Favorites album introduced in iOS 8. Read more »

When Bill Gates stepped down as Microsoft chairman last year, he vowed to “substantially” increase the time he spends at the company, with a particular focus on “ambitious scenarios,” though he didn’t reveal what exactly he would be doing. However, in an Ask Me Anything question and answer session on Reddit yesterday, Gates revealed that he is currently working on a project dubbed Personal Agent.

“One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to,” he said. “The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model – the agent will help solve this.” Read more »

Amazon Web Services introduced secure email and calendar client for business. Dubbed WorkMail, the solution aims to take on the likes of Microsoft Exchange and Google Gmail.

WorkMail is priced at $4 per month for each user. Read more »

HTC is set to start operating its own online store in its home market of Taiwan. This has been known ever since December, when HTC North Asia President Jack Tong made the plans official. The store will officially open at 10 pm local time on February 4.

The move is said to be all about better positioning HTC to compete head-on with Chinese competitors such as Xiaomi when it comes to the sales of cheap smartphones. Read more »

Today Sony has unveiled a new music streaming service that will become available in the spring. It’s called PlayStation Music, and it will be powered by Spotify. It will be available on PS3 and PS4, as well as unnamed “Xperia smartphones and tablets”.

You may be wondering what this means for Sony’s in-house developed service called Music Unlimited. Well, nothing good as it turns out. Music Unlimited will be shut down on March 29 in all the 19 countries where it’s available. Prior to that, from February 28, all of its users with active subscriptions will get free access to the service until it closes down. Read more »

App Annie, mobile app analyzer, has published its annual report containing some curious findings. The paper, named App Annie Index:2014 Retrospective, sheds light on the mobile app trends of the year.

Chief among them is that Google is building on its lead over Apple when it comes to downloads, snatching 60% of the total number. In other words, Google Play store has registered close to 50% more app installations than the iOS App Store. Read more »

Smartphone manufacturers have always experimented with new ways of achieving exciting form-factors and design statements in their devices, but one thing has mostly remained the same – the flat panes screen. We have grown so accustomed to the standard flat surface that the constant strive has been to make it bigger and more lifelike.

This seems to be finally changing with an ever-increasing push towards curved display technology. Naturally smartphones are among the first adopters and LG is at the forefront of innovation when it comes to curved technology. After the LG G Flex 2 was unveiled at CES 2015 in became abundantly clear that the Korean manufacturer intends to further develop bendable display technology and is investing in its future. Read more »

LG Display released its financial report for the fiscal 2014 highlighting a record operating profit of $1.245 billion. That’s 16.7% more than the year before and the largest increase the LG subsidiary saw in the last six years.

The reason for the boost is a strong increase in demand of LCD panels and partly because of the deal between LG Display and Apple for the production of iPhone screens. Read more »

Meizu is moving into the home automation game with the new Lifekit system that comprises of multiple devices including a smart bulb, a scale, an air purifier, an smart A/C and a complex four-piece gadget that controls the air quality in your home.

These products are developed in partnership with Haier and Alibaba, with mostly identical hardware but will be integrated into Meizu’s Lifekit platform. Read more »

Apple has revealed that it sold its one billionth iOS device in Q4, 2014 – on November 22 to be precise. The revelation was made by CEO Tim Cook during an analysts’ call yesterday (after the company released its first-quarter earnings report), where he also said that it was a space-gray 64-gigabyte iPhone 6 Plus.

“One billion devices is an almost unfathomable milestone and we are all incredibly proud to be a part of it,” Cook said. Read more »

YouTube has revealed it has switched to using HTML5 video by default. The company had already been doing so on certain browsers, including Chrome and Safari, but will now do so even on IE 11 and the latest beta versions of Firefox.

YouTube originally relied on Adobe Flash player to support all its features and be browser independent. Flash, however, is a bit of a resource hog, and also required installing the plugin on most browsers. Read more »

Snapchat has added a new feature in the latest update of the app for iOS and Android, which is called Discover. With this, you can now access content from service such as Yahoo News, ESPN, National Geographic, MTV, Daily Mail, and Snapchat’s own network.

Snapchat has been working with media companies to be able to deliver content that fits into Snapchat’s format. With the latest update, you can now choose from any of these services, and then see the content within the app. The content appears in the form of short video clips, and you can swipe up to either see a full video, like on, say, National Geographic or MTV, or read the associated article, like on Yahoo News. Snapchat also has its channel, where you can get updates from events happening around the world, such as the current winter storm Juno happening in the western hemisphere. Read more »

Apple is well above all competitors in the field of contactless payments. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, two out of three dollars spent in such fashion come courtesy of Apple Pay.

The latest data is part of today’s record-shattering financial results for Q1 of the fiscal 2015. Read more »

The upcoming Project Spartan web browsed by Microsoft will support extensions a la Google Chrome. The development team behind the successor of Internet Explorer confirmed the news on Twitter.

Extensions will arrive to Project Spartan via a future update. Read more »