Skype calling on Outlook.com available for North America and UK users

Great news for Outlook.com and Skype users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and France: you now have the ability to make Skype video calls from Outlook. Your Skype contacts are going to appear grouped within your Outlook contact list. You just need to install a plugin before you can video call someone. The browsers supported include Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. 

Source: Outlook Blog

YouTube 5.0 for Android brings card UI, picture-in-picture viewing, and more

New YouTube 5.0 UI (top), old YouTube UI (bottom)

YouTube is rolling out an update for its Android users that will have you easily scrolling through the new navigation menu, flip through videos quicker with the new card user-interface, and multitask while watching videos with the new picture-in-picture option. You just need to swipe the video down (or tap on the check mark in the upper left corner) to minimize the video you’re watching while you browse YouTube and you can close the minimized video quickly by swiping it to the left. It isn’t a system-wide option (meaning it doesn’t work outside of YouTube) but it is a start.

Source: Phandroid

Bell TV app goes live

Have those popular live or on-demand channels stream right into your tablets and smartphones with Bell’s new Bell TV app at no extra charge. Bell Fibe TV users can even stop and resume on-demand programming between their televisions at home and their mobile devices. The Bell TV app also adds the Bell Mobile TV service, which allows users to watch TV anywhere over Bell’s high-speed wireless network or over Wi-Fi. Up to 10 hours of Mobile TV connectivity is available for a lot of Bell Mobility rate plans or it can come as a $5 a month add-on that has no effect on the data usage in a customer’s plan.

The Bell TV app is available for the Android, BB10, and iOS devices. You can find out more about what channels are available and other information over here.

Microsoft retiring Zune Marketplace on Aug. 22

Joining the impending demise of Microsoft Points, the Zune Marketplace is also going to be retired by August 22. Microsoft posted a FAQ on the Xbox site talking about the upcoming changes and encourages its users to use up their remaining points as there would be no use for them past the 22^nd. For future service, Microsoft wants users to turn to Xbox Music and Video.