While windows 8 is getting ready to release on Oct 26th, Skype team shows the new windows 8 skype app. The app looks like seamlessly integrated with the OS in the People hub and provide “always on” connectivity. The new Metro UI looks cool too. Skype for Windows 8 will notify you about new calls and instant messages so you’ll always know when someone is contacting you. You’ll be able to receive voice and video calls and chats even if you’ve navigated away to another app or to the desktop, enabling you to stay more connected with your contacts whatever you’re doing.
Google+ has exploded in terms of users in the two weeks that it has been available. Though it is still invite only, it has attracted more than 10 million users. More than 1 billion items have been shared on Google+ already. Google+ added $20 billion to Google’s Market cap.
What the problem with G+ is? Too geeky. Too few females. http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/statistics . However, the ratio of M vs. F has improved from 87% male a while ago, to 74% now
Having played around with Windows Phone 7 Mango for almost a month, I’ve found the beta release to be stable and pretty functional. Following are the features which I liked the most and proved useful to me.
Call Log History.
Location checkins
Conversation view in email clients.
Batter saver
Windows Live Messenger and Facebook chat along with switching between SMS and Facebook chat.
Bind Local Scout and Music Search.
Redesigned Music and Videos hub
Improved Call screen
Now playing lock screen
IE9 with HTML5 support
Sharing links from IE to facebook and windows live.
Autofix pictures
Multitasking and background tasks
Visual Voice Mail
SMS and Mail dictation
App search
Unified Inbox
Inbuilt Twitter and Linked In support
Video Full screen Mode and Video dragging bar.
Outlook OOF setting
Task switcher
Image search
Bing Vision
Voice search
and lot more will be updated soon. Mango build is one heck of an update. Stay tuned for this fall.
Facebook announced a new feature to their site which involved video-calling and group chat in collaboration with Skype. This new feature involved giving current Facebook chat users the ability to video call their friends. They will be rolling out these features automatically over the next few weeks. If you don’t want to wait for these products, you can get it now. http://www.facebook.com/videocalling You can also create an ad-hoc group by adding more than one Facebook friend in the Facebook chat interface.
Click on the name of contact you want to chat with and then click on the Video calling icon in the chat window. You will be prompted to download a plugin for your browser. This is only a one-time process, so you will be able to video chat in the future without having to install this plugin again
The other feature announced was the ability to find people to chat with easier. Given that you have the available screen space, you can now see a ‘buddy list’ of Facebook friends. This will allow you more easily find the people you want to chat with.
Google has unveiled yet another product at google.com/takeout which allows users to export their data out of Google for all Google products they are currently using. Additionally, all the data is made available in open and portable formats so it’s really easy to import them on other services.
Google takeout works with Google buzz, Google profile, Picasa web albums, Google Contacts and Google circles while support for more products is a work in progress. Using the tool is fairly simple, head over to the Google takeout page, sign in with your Google account and choose the products for whom you want to export the data.