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Announced on the Microsoft Bing Community blog this morning, the team handling feature development on Bing  just rolled out a beta test of Linked Pages. After connecting through a Facebook profile, the new feature allows users to link associated pages like a LinkedIn profile, Twitter feed or personal website. This feature builds on the function launched during 2011 that allows users to bring Facebook data into the search feed. Once the URLs… Read More

Amazon has removed 5,000 e-book titles from its Kindle store after it failed to reach an agreement with distributor Independent Publishers Group (IPG) over the terms of a new contract. IPG was founded in Chicago 41 years ago and entered the e-book business in 2001. It’s the second largest independent book distributor in the US. According to a Chicago Tribune report, Amazon began to pull IPG’s titles from its e-book store at the start of this… Read More

In January, video game streaming company OnLive decided to enter the remote desktop space with “OnLive Desktop.” The service allows anyone with an iPad (and soon Android or any other computing platform) to access a Windows 7 desktop in the cloud and use it much like any computer. It comes with 2GB of cloud storage and access to Microsoft Office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. All for free. Unfortunately, it was… Read More

Is Microsoft feeling the heat? Little has held Microsoft back in its anti-Google campaigns, and in its latest effort, the Redmond company has once again stepped onto Google’s turf, YouTube, to present the sleazier and competitive side of the search giant. Last summer, Microsoft launched a multi-platform offensive against Google’s Gmail privacy with the eponymously named YouTube video, “Gmail Man.” The video depicts Google caught in the act of… Read More

We live in a post-Timeline era. The redesign of the profile page has been formally introduced and whether we like it or not, it’s here to stay. Facebook introduced Timeline back in the fall of 2011 at f8, and it quickly became clear that this would replace the profile page as we’d known it. The user backlash has been swift and lasting, and there are still stifled cries of dissent even though Facebook has taken its sweet time entirely rolling out… Read More

A new study from Nielsen’s upcoming United States Digital Consumer Report states that 29 percent of all smartphone users utilize their mobile devices to aid in shopping-related activities, whether online or in stores. Are we surprised the numbers seem relatively low even though numerous apps have been created to help consumers do everything from compare prices, scan barcodes and read product reviews with just a tap and a swipe of a finger? The… Read More

IKEA is a place of heaven for a lot of homeowners, renters and young professionals on a budget. Its furniture pieces are modestly priced and have a minimalist design that suits every kind of lifestyle. The problem with IKEA never was its pricing structure or array of furniture lineup, it's what happens when you bring the box home and realize you have to put these funky-named pieces together yourself. Do you fancy a game of real life… Read More

It's been a while since Flickr made any major changes to its user interface after social media and mobile computing became an integral part of everyday life. To combat these lifestyle shifts, Flickr is finally getting a site makeover to make the user experience more slick, seamless and mobile-friendly. The new design goes against everything we've learned in photography: less white space, more content. It seems to work for blogs like… Read More

Announced by Netflix and The Weinstein Company (TWC) in a joint press release earlier today, streaming subscribers to the Netflix service will soon get access to documentaries, foreign language films and other content from the Weinstein brothers. Under the structure of the deal, Netflix gets exclusive access to these films within one year of the theatrical release. This beats out premium cable providers like HBO and positions Netflix with… Read More

After a month in a New Zealand jail, the man behind the now defunct Megaupload file-sharing site, Kim Dotcom, has been released on bail. Dotcom was arrested by New Zealand police on January 20 following a request by the US authorities who want to speak to the German national in connection with a number of Internet piracy offenses, believed to have cost copyright holders somewhere in the region of $500 million. Up to now, Dotcom had been refused… Read More

In the two years since the boy-king of social networking Mark Zuckerberg famously declared the death of privacy, it seems Facebook users have actually become more private about sharing their personal details with strangers. In a new study released today by the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, researchers found that since 2010, the number of users that choose to hide their friend lists publicly has actually increased by a staggering… Read More

Cable giant Comcast announced today the launch of its new video streaming service, Streampix. While Streampix takes direct aim at competing services like Netflix and Hulu Plus, the service will only be available to Comcast cable subscribers. The $5-per-month service gives subscribers access to all 75,000 TV shows and movies that are currently available on Comcast's Xfinity On Demand, XfinityTV.com, and through the Xfinity TV app.… Read More

The United States government and hacktivist collective Anonymous aren't what you would call “friends.” After Anonymous' ongoing barrage of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on various .gov websites, the National Security Agency (NSA) is reportedly concerned that the hackers may soon upgrade their attacks to full-blow assaults on key US infrastructure, like the electrical grid. From the Wall Street Journal:… Read More

In the wake of Google’s Safari cookie placing, Microsoft decided to investigate whether it had fallen subject to the same privacy scam. Turns out, it had. The IE team has also accused Google of circumventing its privacy settings in order to trace users’ activity. In all the Google finger-pointing, you might assume it's been planting cookies in some devious and well-planned manner, but the cases are actually quite different — and in… Read More

With Facebook making new updates with or without our requests and Timeline looming over those who are waiting till the last second before the switch is mandated to their profiles, the social network giant is adding another technology to help confuse users even more. With its partnership to Finnish startup ThingLink, ThingLink Tabs for Facebook will allow users to create a page with interactive tags from any photo they've uploaded.… Read More