Kiran Upadhyay

If you’re visiting any Yahoo property today, chances are you’ll see an “Upgrade to the new Firefox” link in the top-right corner of your browser window. The prompt also appears if you’re using Internet Explorer, Opera and even the new Yandex browser. However, the prompt is missing from Safari, which will surely prompt a new round of speculation about Apple’s rumored switch to Yahoo as its default search engine. Given that Firefox now uses Yahoo as its default search engine, this move doesn’t come as a huge surprise. Yahoo clearly wants as many people as possible to use Firefox — and with it its search engine (which is powered by Microsoft Bing). Firefox’s user share has dropped quite a bit over the last few years, so Mozilla has no objections to putting the Firefox logo in front of as many Yahoo users as possible. Changing the default search engine in Firefox is trivial (and Firefox recently made it even easier), but most users never bother to make the switch. The new Yahoo Searc

In October, we spotted that Amazon had quietly launched a hidden and functional app store within its main Android application which was available for download on Google Play. Now, according to new reports from varying sources, Amazon’s flagship application’s listing is no longer available via search from within Google Play, though its direct link is still live. Additionally, there’s now a newly launched application called Amazon Shopping which looks much like the original application, but no longer includes the Appstore section. The change was first spotted by German site Caschys Blog who also received a statement from Amazon which claims that this is related to a September update that brought Amazon’s Prime Instant Video to Android users. That update involved having users update to or install the newest version of the main Amazon app, then download the Amazon Instant Video Player app afterwards, in order to watch Prime Instant Video on their Android devices. Amazon has sent us t

Apple and IBM’s enterprise partnership is resulting in its first outward-facing software today, with new apps in IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS making their way to iPhones and iPads at partner enterprises. These include apps built for Citi, Air Canada, Sprint and Banorte, and they allow for various functions covering flight planning, financial advice, customer retention, government case worker support and sales assistance, to name a few. This first fruit of the IBM/Apple partnership makes it clear that the app side of the equation is going to be about providing analytics-driven, secure software that covers a range of industry verticals, and that can be tweaked to suit the needs of any particular customer organization. The list of these initial apps also includes software that focuses on the insurance industry, retail and telecommunication in addition to those listed above. The apps make up just one par of the IBM and Apple partnership, which also includes mobile device management, App

While the last time most of us thought of shingles was when we were itchy in eighth grade, Seagate has been thinking of them as a way to store data. Called Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Drives, Seagate’s new drives can store eight terabytes of data for about 3 cents a gigabyte. The catch? These are great back-up drives but they’re not very fast. At 5,900 RPM and an average read/write speed 150MB/sec you’re looking at something that’s far slower than an average SSD drive (1,800MB/sec) and even the average 7,200 RPM hard drive. Shingled drives cram more tracks onto a single platter and reduce the minuscule space between tracks. This means you can fit over a terabyte on one spinning HDD platter. Therefore these drives work best with a faster SSD drive on the front end and then these slower drives for less important storage. For example, you could stack a few for some serious fleet backup power or you could place seldom-used data files on the drive and work with fast-moving fil

Google Cardboard was the big surprise of this year’s Google I/O, and Google today announced that more than 500,000 of these extremely minimalist, phone-based virtual reality viewers have shipped since then. The early cardboard app was a lot of fun, but over the last few months, it felt like development had stalled a bit. Today, however, the company is launching an update to the cardboard app and new SDKs. It’s also showcasing some of the apps that developers have created over the last few months. These apps now also have their own dedicated collection page in Google Play and range from a Paul McCartney performance video to a 360-degree view of the Lord Of the Ring’s Shire movie set in New Zealand, with a couple of games and a Volvo-sponsored driving app thrown in for good measure. The open-source Cardboard viewer itself isn’t seeing any changes, but Google is introducing new SDKs for Android and the Unity game engine today that will make it even easier for developers to create ne

If you want further proof that Microsoft is going through a transformative phrase, you may be interested to hear that the company has jumped on the bitcoin wagon. The Redmond-based tech giant is now accepting bitcoins for buying games and other digital content on its Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox platforms, as the folks at Coindesk noticed today. Members of Reddit’s bitcoin subred noted that Microsoft appears to be working with payments firm Bitpay to make this happen. Neither Microsoft nor Bitpay have formally announced the partnership or details, but the former does have a series of instructions related to bitcoin payments within its ‘billing help’ pages. We’ve contacted both companies for further information, but did not hear back at the time of writing. There are some caveats to note, however. Customers can use bitcoin to load money into a Microsoft wallet or to create digital gift cards, but direct payments with the cryptocurrency are not supported at this time. Fina

It’s no fad. Just nine months after hitting 200 million users, Instagram now says 300 million people use its photo app every month, with 70% of them coming from outside the US. That makes Instagram officially bigger than Twitter, which had 284 million active users as of six weeks ago. Instagram’s been going strong for four years now, and despite fears that the acquisition by Facebook would screw it up, there’s now 70 million photos shared each day, and over 30 billion total. Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom says “Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community.” Between Facebook’s 1.35 billion, Messenger’s 500 million, and WhatsApp’s 600 million users, Facebook has developed a jaw dropping mobile footprint. With growth steady, Instagram is now looking to strengthen its authenticity. Soon it plans to launch verified badges for celebrities, brands, and athletes so people don’t accidentally follow parody, tribute, or look-alike accou