Articles about Messaging and Collaboration

Email remains one of the most popular forms of communication in the world, currently fending off the unwanted attentions of Twitter, Facebook and Skype after effortlessly swatting away the threat of SMS and the printed letter. Yet we’re increasingly happy to entrust our email to the cloud, accessing through a web browser whenever we want to stay in touch.

Whether or not your email is with a cloud-based provider like Gmail or Hotmail, there’s always room for a decent email client. And if you want something that’s simple, elegant and feature-packed, we suggest you take a closer look at eM Client 5.0.

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After using the Android and iOS counterparts, Facebook app for Windows Phone 8 feels rudimentary and out of place by comparison. Even though the interface takes some design cues from the operating system, it is not very intuitive, wastes too much screen estate and displays content in a visually unappealing way. The app would be rather nice, except 2010 has long passed.

Now Microsoft wants you to love the Facebook experience on Windows Phone 8, releasing a beta app that stands up against the Android and iOS alternatives. Gone is the infinite horizontal scrolling, now replaced by tabs that you might actually find useful. Swiping to the right reveals a tab to the left of the screen, containing a link to your profile, favorites, groups, friends, apps, settings, the usual policy information and a log-out button.

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Microsoft has released Skype for Desktop 6.5 Beta, a new preview version for Windows users. The new release is notable for introducing support for Skype Video Messaging to Windows, a feature that allows users to send pre-recorded video messages to other Skype users when offline. The feature has already landed inSkype for Mac, Skype for iOS and Skype for Android.

The new video calling feature allows users to record video messages that can be sent to other contacts, even when they’re not online, and requires that Adobe Flash already be present on the computer.

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Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of instant messaging is the sheer number of different services and clients that are available. While there has been a degree of convergence over the years, there is still a high chance that if you want to be able to communicate with all of your friends, family and colleague through instant messaging, you’re going to need to have a few clients installed. This might not be the case if you try out Miranda NG, though.

Out of the box there is support for a fairly impressive range of chat protocols -- IM, GG, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, MSN and Yahoo -- but this lit can be greatly expanded through the use of plugins. Amongst others, it is possible to add support for Facebook chat, Twitter, Skype and XFire.

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What do you do when you need to check your email? Fire up Outlook or Thunderbird? Launch Chrome and head over to the Gmail website? Having to do this throughout the day is a waste of time, and it’s a waste of time that Toasts&Tiles for Gmail aims to address. As you’d probably guess from the name, this is a Gmail client that includes support for toast notifications as well as live tiles.

With the app running constantly in the background, you will be notified whenever a new email hits your inbox. There’s no need to keep manually checking, breaking away from what you’re doing and losing your train of thought -- if there’s something you need to know about, the app will let you know.

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Microsoft has announced that it is rolling out a preview version of Skype for Outlook.com in the United Kingdom that will allow users to make audio and video calls directly from their inbox.

Available from today, Skype for Outlook.com requires a one-time download of a browser plugin for Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome. Once installed, users simply connect Skype to Outlook.com and merge their contacts.

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Twenty-sixth in a series. Windows Store app growth has slowed down a bit in the past two weeks. The overall increase dropped below 2,000 new apps in both periods. The overall app count increased by 1,877 this week to 44,355 apps in the US Windows Store. Free apps increased by 1,372 to a total of 34,802, and paid & trial apps by 505 to 9553 apps.

The Windows 8 news app received an update this week that added support for RSS feeds to it. To add an RSS feed click on the Add a source link after you have opened the news app and add the RSS URL at the top of the source field on the page that opens up. You should not expect "Google Reader"-like controls but if you follow a couple of sites, you can add them here to do so using the news app.

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Even though BlackBerry unveiled the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone in late-January, prospective customers around the world are still waiting to get their hands on the device. But if you live in the UK the handset is available today from Selfridges. The BlackBerry Q10 will also arrive next week, starting May 1, in Canada.

At Selfridges, the BlackBerry Q10 is available to purchase outright for GBP579.99 which is quite expensive for any smartphone, let alone one with a QWERTY keyboard. For the money you get a 3.1-inch display with a resolution of 720 by 720 and a 330 ppi (pixels per inch) density, 8 MP back-facing camera with 1080p video recording, 16 GB of internal storage and 4G LTE cellular connectivity as the main features.

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Today, through its Beta Labs blog, Finnish maker Nokia announces a new experimental app for the Lumia Windows Phone lineup. Available only in a select number of markets, Nokia Chat for Windows Phone is designed to connect Lumia users with "friends who use Lumia, Asha, S40, and Symbian devices, and those using Yahoo! Messenger on other mobile devices and platforms".

Nokia Chat for Windows Phone is available to Lumia users in Australia, Canada, India, Nigeria, South Africa, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States. The Finnish manufacturer promises to expand availability "to more countries in the near future". So what does Nokia Chat for Windows Phone bring to the table for us Lumia users?

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Microsoft is in the process of pushing users to Outlook.com for web email services. The company purchased Hotmail back in 1997, largely ignored it, and then suddenly began updating the app right before deciding to unceremoniously replace it with Outlook.com back in July of 2012.

Now the company is in full push-mode to get users moved over and also try to woo new customers for the service. With that in mind, Microsoft has teamed up with the folks from the popular Mythbusters TV show to advertise Outlook.com and also push the brand new season of the show.

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Gmail shows little sign of becoming any less popular, but any iOS user will find that dealing with a Gmail account on an Apple device is not the most pleasant experience. Mailbox was released to help address this fact and proved so popular that newcomers were greeted by a lengthy waiting list before they could get started. The app has now been updated in a number of key areas and, perhaps most importantly, anyone is free to jump right in and get started without the need to wait on a reservation list.

This is obviously great news for people who have been waiting to try out the app, but there is also plenty for existing users to take advantage of. One of the major standout features of the app from its inception was the way in which emails could be dealt with using little more than a swipe; swipe one way to delete or mark as read, and the other way to snooze.

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Microsoft's relentless push for Outlook.com brings an app update to the enemy camp, today -- big move given that Android now represents a large portion of today's mobile market. Two weeks ago, Microsoft unleashed a major calendaring service overhaul.

The interface has been completely revamped and new features come along for the ride. As you may know, Google has pulled support for Exchange ActiveSync, but Microsoft now works around that.

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Microsoft has updated Skype for Windows Phone 8, dropping the preview label associated with the app. Among the most noteworthy improvements, the stable version of the popular voice, video and text chatting application brings a change in message notifications and a number of bug fixes meant to improve the stability and overall functionality.

Skype for Windows Phone 8, which is now at version 2.5, introduces a new default setting for message notifications. After Microsoft announced that Messenger will be dropped and replaced with Skype, message notifications for Messenger friends are now enabled straight off the bat, likely to ensure a smooth transition to the new service.

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By now you probably already know that Microsoft Messenger is going away in favor of uber-communication app Skype, which Microsoft purchased back in 2011 for a whopping $8.5 billion. The app, released back in 2003, is slowly being merged into Microsoft products. In fact, the latest iteration of Office, 365 Home Premium, comes with free Skype minutes as part of the package.

Today is that day when Messenger officially merges with Skype. Until now, users had the option, strongly urged by Microsoft, to make this move on their own. That no longer is just an option. The company sent out a warning email back on March 21.

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Twenty-third in a series. The app count in Windows Store made a huge jump this week from 35,631 apps last week to 38,113 apps, an increase of 2,482 apps in total. The majority of new apps fall once again in the free category, with 2,044 new ones released this week for a total of 29,840. Paid apps increased by 439 this week to 8,273 in total. It appears as if Windows Store is picking up pace in regards to apps releases. The chart above highlights the progression in the last five weeks.

As far as updates go: the Skype app for Windows 8 bumped up to version 1.6, adding better options to block contacts in the communication app.

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