raushan raj

Microsoft has released a next-word predicting keyboard as an iOS app as it seeks to tap into the popularity of Apple’s mobile ecosystem in the hopes of expanding its influence in the mobile productivity space. The  Word Flow app , which was developed by Microsoft’s in-house experimental projects division,  Garage , is now live in the U.S. App Store — although it’s not yet available in Europe. Earlier this month the company had offered beta sign-ups for iOS users but it’s now flicked the switch for users in the U.S. The app was originally developed for its own smartphone platform (née Windows Phone), and has also been offered to users of its desktop product, Windows 10. As well as next word predictions, the Word Flow app offers the promise of faster texting via a swipe to type input — a la other keyboard apps like Swype. A little more novel is a one-handed typing mode that...

Some changes underway at  WhitePages.com , the company that compiles public record databases on people and businesses: it is spinning out its caller ID operations and app as a new business called  Hiya . Its free app, which helps users ID who is behind the numbers calling them, will compete against the likes of TrueCaller, but Hiya will also continue on the business track it has already been travelling: it already has some 25 million users of its services by way of deals with T-Mobile and phone giant Samsung, the company says. Whitepages in the meantime will  continue to focus on building out its people search and identity verification services. If you have followed news from WhitePages in the past — the company started as a project when founder Alex Algard was still a student at Stanford back in 1997 — you might know that WhitePages actually had an app called Hiya before: in 2011,  Hiya was an app that helped clean up your address book , similar to t...