Google has been working on reducing the load times for websites. The company already serves more streamlined version of search results when you are on a slower connection but wants to do that for web pages as well.

For this they started a new program that compresses websites when you are on a slow connection. This is supposed to load websites 4x faster, consume 80% less data, and because of these two things, increases website traffic by 50%. Read more »

Following other US tech giants – including Google, Twitter, and Facebook, Amazon has released its first transparency report, revealing government requests for user information it received for the period January 1, 2015, through May 31, 2015.

As per the report, the e-commerce giant received 813 subpoenas and 25 search warrants during the period, and it responded fully to only 542 and 13 of them, respectively. In addition, the company also received 13 court orders, 0-249 national security requests, 132 non-US requests, and 1 removal request. Read more »

If you used Chrome on Windows and then on Mac, you’d notice there is a sea of difference between the two. While it is arguably the best browser to use on Windows, on OS X it feels like a bloated mess that just burns through your battery at an astonishing rate for no good reason.

It seems Google is well aware of this issue, so it is working on improving the efficiency of the OS X version. In a Google+ post, Google engineer clarified on a few things the company is doing to improve battery life on Mac. Read more »

Facebook has announced an update to the News Feed ranking algorithm that the company says will allow it to take into account the amount of time a user spends viewing a story.

“Just because someone didn’t like, comment or share a story in their News Feed doesn’t mean it wasn’t meaningful to them,” the company said. “There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it.” Read more »

Over a couple of weeks after Pebble revealed that Pebble Time will be available for pre-order to general public on June 22, the company has announced that the device’s pre-orders in the US will be exclusive to Best Buy.

“Best Buy is teaming up with us to get Pebble Time on your wrist before arriving in stores,” the company said in a blog post. “On June 22nd, customers in the US can pre-order Pebble Time exclusively at BestBuy.com.” Outside of the US, customers will be able to pre-order the smartwatch from the company’s own website. Read more »

Google released an online tool to help you choose the right Android smartphone for you. The solution is available via the search giant’s Android homepage.

The entire process features a nice graphical interface and is quite fun. Read more »

Sony has put up a new promotional website for its recently launched Xperia M4 Aqua smartphone. That said, this is anything but a normal such venture. It’s called “Dirty Phones”, and focuses on, well, how dirty phones can be. Literally, that is.

First, the company scares you with words such as the ones you can read in the image above. It claims that there are about 25,000 germs per square inch on the average touchscreen phone. Furthermore, according to “research”, 92% of handsets have bacteria on them, while ‘just’ 82% of hands can boast the same thing. 16% of hands and phones unfortunately have E.coli, a bacteria found in feces. Read more »

The rumors were true, as it turns out. After it didn’t manage to purchase Twitch last year (which eventually got grabbed by Amazon), Google is launching a competing service. It’s called YouTube Gaming (and not YouTube Live as previously leaked), and it will become available “this summer”. YouTube Gaming will first be offered in the US and UK.

It will come with a new website and app, which will feature gaming-related videos and live streams, powered by what Google calls “the biggest community of gamers on the web”. Read more »

Hot on the heels of its Android app grabbing more than 1 billion downloads, Facebook Messenger has now passed 700 million monthly active users. The previous such milestone was reached in March, when Messenger had 600 million monthly active users. And before that, in November of last year, the app boasted 500 million monthly active users.

The information comes straight from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, who revealed the new figure at an investor meeting. The discrepancy in the numbers (compared to the 1 billion installs on Android alone) obviously comes from the fact that not all the people who installed Facebook Messenger are using it on a monthly basis. Read more »

After a few leaks and some teasing, Samsung made the limited edition Iron Man themed Galaxy S6 edge official back in May. It went on sale last month in the company’s native South Korea, and now it’s also become available in China.

That’s where one person paid a whopping $91,635 for one such smartphone. The individual shelled out that amount following an auction for the unit, which was held by JD.com, one of China’s biggest online retailers. The auction went up to $91,635 after 92,429 bids. Read more »

Twitter, as we all know, places a 140-character limit on all tweets. The same limit also applies to Direct Messages (DMs). However, that was until now, as the company has announced that it’s removing the 140-character limit in DMs starting next month.

The limit will be raised to a whopping 10,000 characters, which is effectively unlimited given that it’s very rare for someone to send such a long DM. Read more »

Amid mounting concerns over slow user growth, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has decided to step down from his position effective July 1. He, however, will remain on the company’s Board of Directors.

Co-founder and Chairman Jack Dorsey will assume the role of interim CEO till Twitter finds a permanent replacement – the company has formed a search committee, and said it would consider both internal and external candidates. For those who aren’t aware, Dorsey also co-founded payments start-up Square. Read more »

Just a couple of weeks after there were reports that Samsung is working on a foldable-display phone – internally codenamed Project Valley or Project V, a newly published patent (No. 30-0757696) from the company has surfaced online, revealing a tablet display that could fold up to two times, effectively forming a single device.

It isn’t yet clear how the device’s display would work in its unfolded form – would all three connected screens work together to display wide-screen video, or would one of them double as a keyboard? Read more »

Google Slides for iOS and Android received a major update. The new version of the productivity app now supports Chromecast and AirPlay, thus making it easy for users to present on just about any screen with no wires.

Once you begin casting the presentation on a compatible device, the screen of your smartphone or tablet acts like a companion. Read more »

Microsoft announced today it is going to retire the modern version of the Skype app for Windows. As Windows 10 launch comes closer it makes sense for Microsoft to unify the user experience across its core apps.

As part of this process Microsoft has been working to optimize its desktop app equally well for touch and for mouse/keyboard input. Those efforts basically rendered the modern Skype app obsolete. Read more »