In the News

Microsoft is now bringing back the Messaging Everywhere feature with Windows 10 Insider Preview build 14926. The update to Skype Preview allows users to send and receive text messages from their phone, via Skype app. To make use of this new feature, Insiders will have to set Skype Preview as their primary SMS via the app’s settings. Microsoft plans to bring the SMS relay service to the public in the coming months as well as some new features and improvements such as the ability to hide conversations, add contact button, and support for Skype URIs.

Windows smartphone users can rejoice as a new update has been rolled out for the beta version of WhatsApp. A shortcut for camera has been added, making it easier to send images and videos. Windows users can download the beta version of WhatsApp from the Windows Store as it had recently been made available for download.

With the PlayStation 4 Pro announcement last week, the cat’s finally out of the bag: both Sony and Microsoft have broken the traditional console cycle and opted instead to release incremental, mid-cycle refreshes. The interesting thing here is that despite adoption rates for 4K displays that remain relatively low both manufacturers are firmly positioning their new platforms as 4K consoles. Super sampling, anti-aliasing and higher frame rates are major plus-points, but at the end of the day, nothing that won’t run on the PS4 or Xbox One will run on the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio because of brand positioning policies.

Ubisoft is indeed working on an Assassin’s Creed remaster and expects to ship it by November 15, 2016. Ubisoft is planning to remaster Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood and Revelations. The remastered games will not include any multiplayer mode, but they will include all single-player expansions. Ubisoft says that they’re also throwing in Assassin’s Creed Embers and the three-part Assassin’s Creed Lineage as well, which flesh out Ezio’s back story.

Microsoft released an update to the Insider program and Skype Preview for PC and Mobile that allows you to send and receive SMS messages directly from your PC or Windows Phone. To be clear, this is different from just sending text messages through Skype’s paid service. Instead, it’s sending messages through your phone, via your PC, much like Apple’s Continuity or Pushbullet on Android.

In what is considered to be a major victory for traditional phone companies, the European Commission recommended more strict and tight privacy and security for services like Facebook-owned message service WhatsApp and Microsoft’s Skype. Proposed by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the demand is part of a package of reforms, which includes a promise to provide free WiFi in European towns by 2020.

Microsoft, who bought SwiftKey a while ago, have now updated the algorithm to support “neural networks.” That’s a fancy way of saying that SwiftKey now understands context. As Microsoft explains, if you’re typing “let’s meet at the,” SwiftKey would only look at “at the” and predict “time” or “moment”, or words of that nature. The updated algorithm (the neural network) will look at your sentence as a whole and figure out what you’re trying to say.

A new report points out that Microsoft is rebranding the Health app to Microsoft Band app. A report in Thurrott, points out that the name change is already made available for Android and Windows Phone, and the rebranding changes will be coming soon to iOS. The Android update notes also suggest bug fixes along with the name change from Health app to Band app. This news comes in the backdrop of a series of reports around the future of Microsoft’s fitness trackers.

The organization with the largest number of contributors to open-source projects over the past year on GitHub is, surprisingly, Microsoft. Fully 16,419 contributors affiliated with Microsoft worked on open-source GitHub projects during the past 12 months, GitHub said, ahead of 15,682 from Facebook, 14,059 from Docker and 12,841 from Angular.

Microsoft is finally willing to admit that users don’t have to go online or to a Microsoft Priority Store to buy Xbox One consoles and games. Department store chain Landmark has been stocking and selling the Xbox One along with Xbox One exclusive games for the better part of two weeks. “We periodically evaluate our channel strategy for all our products, our distributor has expanded the retail presence for Xbox One a few months ago to cover physical retail stores,” reads the response from Microsoft India in an email to Gadgets 360.