The writing has been on the wall for quite some time now, but the deadline is finally here. Google's Gtalk service is set to be discontinued as of 16 February, and from this time users will have to use Google Hangouts or seek out an alternative.

This is not the first online service that Google has killed, and it certainly won't be the last. While Hangouts is generally regarded as a superior service, there are still diehards who will hold out until the very last minute to switch -- or they might jump ship completely in favor of something like WhatsApp.

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WhatsApp today rolled out an update to its iOS app, which along with bug fixes adds a dialer button to its text messaging service. The dialer button -- as you might imagine -- is for placing voice calls, a feature that the Facebook-owned company announced last February. Earlier this week, the same feature was spotted on the WhatsApp’s Android client, and the company also confirmed that it was beta testing it with select users.

The feature, however, doesn’t work just yet, but changes in the user interface do give us an idea of what this forthcoming feature will look like. It is evident that WhatsApp has plans to roll out the voice-calling feature to its app shortly. But why is everyone in the press writing about it? How does the addition of voice calling functionality -- something which Facebook’s Messenger, Google’s Hangouts, and Microsoft’s Skype already offer -- change things? Here’s how.

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A new update has been rolled out to WhatsApp that lets users see when the person they are talking to reads a message. The check marks that appear next to messages to indicate that a message has been successfully sent and successfully delivered now have a third indicator mode. A double blue check mark means that the message has been read.

WhatsApp took the messaging world by storm when it first appeared on the scene. Despite having been found to be one of the most insecure messaging tools out there, it remains incredibly popular with around 600 million monthly users. WhatsApp's impact was such that Facebook parted with $19 billion to buy it, and this month the service celebrates its fifth birthday.

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Secure communication is something we all crave online, particularly after Edward Snowden's NSA revelations increased public interest in privacy and security. With dozens of messaging tools to choose from, many claiming to be ultra-secure, it can be difficult to know which one to choose and which one to trust. Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published its Secure Messaging Scorecard which rates a number of apps and services according to the level of security they offer.

It's a fairly exhaustive list that includes numerous well-known names, as well as several more niche products. What is concerning, however, is that many of the most popular tools -- WhatsApp, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, SnapChat, and Facebook chat -- received very low ratings for failing to protect users and their communication data.

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