microsoft news

If asking digital assistants to play music, answer questions, read stories, and tell jokes,tu on lights, lock doors is your thing, then Amazon Echo(3rd Gen) is definitely a great product and in many...

Snapchat has now aped an Instagram feature for once, rather than the latter.The firm has introduced Giphy integration (via The Verge), into the app, a...

After a brief beta testing period, Larry Hryb has aounced that party chat is now available through the Xbox app on Android and iOS mobile devices.As...

Facebook has left no stones untued when it comes to copying features from Snapchat. Now it looks like the social media giant is rolling out a new feature for Instagram which is again a copy from Snapchat. The new feature will notify users if someone is taking screenshots of their stories.The new feature will send a popup saying the other person will be notified that you have taken the screenshot. If you thought this was the end of it then you’re wrong. Instagram will send notification if you take a screenshot of a photo someone sent you in private message. The app will send a notification saying that the other user has taken a screenshot of the photo you sent them. Both of the features are s...

Snap is finally expanding to the desktop web from mobile, kinda sorta.The first step towards that appears to be a web-app for viewing stories on Snap maps. Much like when one is using the actual app, it only shows stories that you or your friends choose to post to the local story feed. You’ll be unable to see any of your friends snaps on there if you’re a current Snapchat user, and it’d be useless if that was your intention.Of course, it’s more likely that Snapchat intends non-users to use this app to view popular local stories, like say a concert nearby, or a festival in a park. If users find the concept of stories attractive, they’ll be more likely to download the app itself and give Snap ...

Snap has been struggling over the past year with Facebook caibalizing its core product with the powerand cumulative billion dollar strong userbases of Instagram and WhatsApp, but signs are emerging that the company’s fortunes are on the way up.The firm issued a redesign toattract more users and stem the haemorrhage, rolling it out to a limited group over the last 3 months., with a wider roll-out this week.While the redesign has been paed by many users, the firm expected the adjustment period. In a speech given to Snap shareholders earlier this week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said “As expected, it will take time for our community to get used to the changes, but overall, we are pleased with the in...

Facebook is testing a new story maps feature, akin to Snapchat’s own snap maps feature.For the uninformed, Snap maps showcase the locations of Snapchat users relative to their chosen friends on a map. It also allows users to see popular stories around them. If there was an event, for instance, users would be able to view snaps shared from that location to Snapchat’s ‘Our Story’ remotely.Facebook seems to be moving towards that path, with an option to share your stories to “world” being tested. This would probably let you share your stories with the world much like Snapchat’s ‘Our Story’, and then show up whenever someone checks our your geographic location.NEW: Facebook is testing a Snapchat...

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has been fighting stalling growth as Facebook-backed competitors Instagram and Messenger steal its best features.One of Snapchat’s best-receivedfeatures was Stories, which was rapidly copied by Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp. Till now you had to be a fellow Snapchat user to share your Snapchat Story, and given that the Snapchat user base is much smaller than the nearly billion Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users, it meant you could reach more people by publishing your story on those platforms, making Snapchat’s insular system, previously a positive, now a negative.Now according to a report by Cheddar, Snapchat is looking to open up stories with a ...

Back in 2016, Microsoft acquired a game streaming and broadcasting service Beam which was later renamed to Mixer. Microsoft has since taken huge steps to integrate Mixer into Windows 10 by introducing an option to stream directly using Game Bar and no extra software. This indeed was a positive step since gamers had to use multiple applications to stream the gameplay on different websites or social media.This, however, meant that Microsoft didn’t plan to release Mixer app for Windows 10 since the streaming capabilities were embedded into the Game Bar. The company did eventually release the app for Android and iOS but left Windows 10 users to use the website. Now an independent developer took ...

Update:Larry Hryb has officially aounced the new feature. You can sign-up for the iOS Xbox beta app here. It is still available on Android devices as well.The newest beta of the Xbox app on Android today introduces the party chat to your mobile device. It appears Microsoft is testing this feature to allow you to interact with your Xbox party similar to how it’s done on the Nintendo Switch (via Engadget).Microsoft has not officially aounced this new feature, but it’s safe to say it should be releasing for everyone eventually seeing as people have spotted it on the app’s page. If anything, the company is certainly looking into the ability and is interested in testing it out. While many critici...

Earlier this year, Twitter added support for tweeting with 280 characters to their platform, rolling out updates to iOS and Android apps to support this feature.While the Windows 10 Twitter app has yet to be updated with support for 280 characters on either PCs or Mobile (Ok, no one expected that), one of our favourite Windows apps Fenice for Twitter has already incorporated the feature.Fenice also now offers support for Microsoft’s fluent design, allowing users to customise just how they fluent they want the app to be and offering a dark theme as well as a light theme.While it isn’t the best Twitter app out there for power-users of the social platform, Tweeten and Tweetdeck are arguably con...

Google recently added an anti-virus to Chrome, now the firm is expanding the apps ability to interact with other third-party software on your Windows PC.“Roughly two-thirds of Windows Chrome users have other applications on their machines that interact with Chrome, such as accessibility or antivirus software. In the past, this software needed to inject code in Chrome in order to function properly; unfortunately, users with software that injects code into Windows Chrome are 15% more likely to experience crashes.” Chromium’s Chris Hamilton explains.What this means is that some software you may have installed on your system may inadvertently cause Chrome to crash, either by design or due to uni...

Popular cross-platform Twitter client Tweeten has been updated to version 4.2.1 with a number of improvements, including more convenient Gif search.The changelog notes the following new features:GIF Search: Now you can directly upload GIFs to Tweeten without needing to save them to your device and manually upload to your tweets. Thanks to https://github.com/eramdam/BetterTweetDeck.Flexible Columns: Reset all of your column sizes, and bring them back to their original size with a single click.Flexible Columns: You can now input any width for each column on Tweeten’s Flexible Columns feature from the Settings page. This means you can now have a column that’s only 50 pixels wide or a column tha...

You can imagine the Opera development team, enveloped by blue smoke and hopped up on microdosing, trying to brainstorm ways to make their browser more popular, and then having the eureka moment. Snapchat! Stickers! Emojis!And this was bo Opera 49 beta, the only browser with a built-in screenshot function which will not just capture the page but also lets you add personalizations such as shapes, ...

LinkedIn started rolling its video sharing platform back in August. The company is today launching a new feature for its video platform, which will allow users to display location-based filters to their videos as badges. The feature is a lot like Snapchat’s filters which lets users add different badges depending on their current location.For LinkedIn, the feature is slightly different. Instead of ...

As far as we know Harman Kardon is still set to release the Invoke smart speaker, powered by Cortana, this holiday season, but besides the aounced feature list we have had little view into how useful the gadget will be.Now some more detail has leaked regarding the device, courtesy of their Uservoice account, which dates from a Friends & Family trial Microsoft is ruing to test the speaker in th...

The good news just keeps on dropping today. Just as Larry Hryb aounced that numerous Halo games would be backward compatible today, Brad Rossetti said that third-party webcam support was now available to Alpha Xbox Insiders. In a post on Mixer, Microsoft said:“Starting today, support for USB webcams on Xbox One arrives for Xbox Insiders (Preview Alpha Ring)—including the ability to plug in and u...

Unigram, the third-party Telegram client for Windows 10 devices picked up a major update over the weekend. The app has been recently approved by Telegram as a third-party app on its website, which now lists Unigram as one of the unofficial apps. The app’s official chael on Telegram (@unigram) has also received a verified badge from the company. In terms of the new update, it brings a couple of ...

If you want the top-of-the-line Surface Laptop Microsoft has now opened pre-orders for the Intel Core i7, 16GB and 1TB SSD versionin Platinum only, for shipment in the3rd October. Priced at $2,699 in the United States and £2,699 with tax in the UK, it’sa bitmore than $1000 more than the8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD version, whichis currentlyon pre-order in Graphite Gold, Cobalt Blue andBurgundy fo...

Believe it or not, Microsoft actually builds a really good SMS client for Android. The company’s Garage lab built a good-looking and smart app for SMS that you probably never heard of. It’s called SMS Organizer, and it’s been receiving some major updates over the past few weeks. There’s a big catch with the app though: it’s only available in India. SMS Organizer has been redesigned from the groun...