Articles about Messaging and Collaboration

Thanks in no small part to Facebook, Messenger is rapidly growing in popularity. On Google Play, the app reached one billion downloads earlier this month, while on Apple's App Store it leads the free apps chart for iPhones. But while it certainly benefits from being tightly linked to Facebook, the company wants to make it possible to sign up for its messaging service without a Facebook account.

When it announced this change, Facebook did not detail why it is introducing this sign up option. However, it looks like the company wants its messaging service to become more attractive for those who are not willing to join the social network but want to connect with their Facebook friends.

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Users of iOS, beware. An unfixed vulnerability has been found in the Mail app, which allows hackers to steal passwords by sending an email.

The flaw was first noticed by Ernst and Young forensic bod Jan Soucek. He has created a tool capable of generating slick iCloud password phishing emails he says exploits an unpatched bug.

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Being linked to the most-popular social network makes Messenger a very convenient messaging option, giving it a huge advantage in the long run. If you are already friends with someone on Facebook, you can quickly start a conversation with them, share photos, initiate a video chat and more. The way it is designed, you simply cannot ignore its existence, like you would any other messaging service.

Messenger is growing in popularity as new folks sign up for a Facebook account and more and more users have access to smartphones, from which, you guessed it, they want to check what their friends are doing. As a result, Messenger just joined a very exclusive club on Google Play.

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The web-based version of Skype first debuted last year, but as an invite-only service. Today however, Skype is opening it up to new and existing users in the US and UK.

To use the service just go to web.skype.com and sign in (or sign up) and you can send instant messages, and make Skype or video calls directly in your browser.

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Last week it was discovered that all it takes to crash an iPhone is a text message. Send the string of characters to an iPhone-owning friend (or foe) and boom, instant restart for them.

Skype users are beginning to discover that they’re the victims of a similar bug. As originally reported by VentureBeat, and confirmed by ourselves, sending a certain 8-character message causes Skype to crash, and receiving it results in the app crashing every time you try to sign in.

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All that it takes to mess with an iPhone user these days is a text message. Send it, and their beloved smartphone, along with its Messages app, will crash. You can do it from any phone, making this whole situation rather embarrassing for Apple.

Apple is now working on a fix for this annoying bug, which will be delivered in an upcoming iOS software update. In the meantime, however, the company has posted a workaround that should help iPhone users in case they encounter the nasty text message.

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Gmail might be the most popular email service in the world, but even the biggest players fall sometimes, and once that happens, the little guys will be there to cheer.

Server outages and crashes have happened before, and even though Gmail is generally seen as a solid, well-built and stable product, it too can crash, leaving you without all those precious emails you’ve been saving.

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Facebook has announced that its new addition to Messenger, namely video calling, has now rolled out across the globe.

The video calling capability was bolted on to Messenger on both iOS and Android at the end of last month, but obviously rolling it out to every market worldwide takes some time.

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SMS messages have been a part of our personal lives pretty much since mobile phones first became available. But what impact does texting have on our working lives?

Cloud communications provider RingCentral has released the results of a survey looking at how SMS is being used in the workplace.

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Microsoft is reportedly planning another messaging app for the iPhone, this time utilizing Outlook contacts without all of the formalities on email.

Spotted by Twitter user @h0x0d, Microsoft has named the app Flow and is preparing to launch it in the coming months. Instead of sending an email with titles and signatures, Flow will allow Outlook contacts to chat like they would on Facebook Messenger or any other messaging platform.

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Facebook said it might allow businesses to contact users through their chat app WhatsApp, Bloomberg said in a report on Tuesday.

This might be the first hint on how the social media giant plans on making money off the app that it bought for $22 billion (£14 billion).

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While Windows Phone Store is home to lots of third-party apps, you will not see a Snapchat client in there. And it is not due to a lack of effort. The company simply does not want any such offerings to be available, actively working towards eliminating each and every one.

Rudy Huyn, a well-known Windows Phone developer, has gone as far as asking Snapchat to review the code of his 6snap client to keep the app alive in Store, but the company would not budge. Also, when Snapchat CEO Evan Spegel was told that Windows Phone users want an official app, he simply replied: "didn't think anyone used those". However, Snapchat's could-not-care-less-about-Windows-Phone stance seems to have changed, as it just announced that a Windows Phone app is on the cards.

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The earthquake that struck Nepal two weeks ago has claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people, while a second has caused the death toll to rise further still. Natural disasters such as these shine a light upon the fragility of human life when faced with powerful tectonic forces.

Despite advances in earthquake prediction, it is still nearly impossible to say exactly where and when an earthquake will strike. Experts have been predicting that a huge quake would hit Nepal eventually, but when it did there was still little that anyone could do.

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Twitter today announces a number of key changes to the way its messaging system works. Until now it has only been possible to exchange a private Direct Message with another user if you both follow each other. This all changes as Twitter introduces the ability to DM anyone as long as they have the feature enabled on their account.

Just last week, Twitter announced that it will use a Dublin-based branch to handle all non-US account data but today's news is all about communication. If you're happy to receive DMs from anyone on Twitter, you can flip the switch on a setting that makes this possible.

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Microsoft has announced the official availability of the new Skype for Business client and Skype for Business Online, only a month after releasing the first product as a technical preview. Rolling out now, Skype for Business is set to quickly replace Lync, with all customers expected to be upgraded by the end of May 2015.

The client is rolling out as part of the April monthly upgrade for Office 2013, while its Online counterpart just started to make its way to Office 365 customers across the globe. However, customers who need "a little more time" to migrate over to Skype for Business Online are given the option to switch between it and Lync.

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