Facebook. Love it or hate it, it’s not going anywhere any time soon. In fact, Zuckerberg and his merry band of chronies are actively trying to update the social network’s web page, making photos and videos more prominent. It’s all about trying to offer a rich, multimedia experience to its users, which is probably why Facebook bought Instagram for all that money!

Google’s Maps is seen as the authority in the field of navigation, and of course, mapping, and having established a large user base already, the company is preparing to revamp the mobile arm of the service in the coming weeks and months. Following on from the new-look desktop version, Google will now be bringing the look of iOS Maps to Android, and an iPad version is also going to be hitting the App Store in the summer along with a revamp of the desktop version of Maps. More details after the break.

Hot on the heels of BlackBerry’s announcement that BBM would soon become a cross-platform experience, Google has showcased its new Hangouts messaging system, unifying iOS, Android and Chrome users all in one convenient place. This revelation makes for an exciting face-off between the major instant messaging services, and it’s fair to say, this kind of feature from Google as been a long time coming.

In amongst all of the other announcements at today’s I/O developers conference, Google has taken the wraps off its new ‘All Access’ Music service, and judging by the business model and pricing, it looks a sure-fire shot at the popular alternatives Spotify, Pandora and Rdio. More details after the break.

The Frostbite 3 engine is heavily lauded as one of the most powerful and advanced of its kind, and with the technology being the driving force behind the supreme graphics performance of Battlefield 4, it looks like a variant of the engine will soon push the boundaries of mobile gaming experience even further. EA has already indicated that the Frostbite 3 engine cannot run on the Nintendo Wii U, but the publisher remains keen to offer “true Frostbite experiences to all major mobile platforms,” and with the Frostbite webpage offering details of a project called “Frostbite Go,” we could certainly see some truly high-end gameplay on our smartphones and tablets.

If you’re of a certain age then you’ll remember one of the best games of all time, and that’s Atari’s Breakout. Based somewhat on the ever popular Pong, the idea behind Breakout was a simple one – hit a ball with your paddle and try to break as many bricks as you can.

Remember that Need for Speed movie? No, probably not, but it’s real. At least, it is now after filming finally began on the project that was announced last year.

Google not only commits a lot of time to bringing new and exciting products to the fore, but also spends a great deal of its resources and man hours updating existing services. Few of the search giant’s exports have gotten more attention than Gmail, and although many of the changes are “under the hood” and thus go unnoticed by the vast majority, some are quite obvious. Whenever an alteration is made to a service, there are always some that feel as though the rug has been pulled from under them, and if the new Gmail compose window has left you feeling somewhat lost, there is a way for you to revert back for the time being.

Facebook has just rolled out its brand new Trusted Friends feature, which will allow you to recover your account with a little help from your friends, should you find yourself inadvertently locked out. As when some folk leave their house keys with neighbors when they go on holiday and or in case of emergency, this feature will give between three and five friends access to your account should you ever forget your log in.

Skype users can now make audio and video calls from within Microsoft’s new Outlook.com email service. More details after the jump.

It’s not secret that trying to be like Iron Man would not only lead to the end of all meaningful relationships for the rest of your life, and a perchant for nearly getting killed, but unsurprisingly it also means that you’d need to have a cool $10 billion in the bank to get the whole show on the road.

There’s much made about the so called 1%. Vilified by the press and the vast majority of the United States, the 1% represent the ‘haves’, with everyone else firmly in the ‘have not’ column.

The rumor that Twitter’s eagerly anticipated music service would be dropping late last week may have turned out to be false, but today, Twitter #music is finally upon us. With many hundreds of millions of active users on its network, a concentrated music discovery service would seem the natural next step, and although still in the early stages, it will help users source new artist recommendations based on their Twitter activity. An iOS app also accompanies the launch, and although there isn’t a corresponding Android version just yet, it should hit the Google Play Store before long. Full details can be found right after the break!

Facebook only announced Facebook Home APK for Android recently, and the reviews are beginning to roll in alongside the first handset to fully support it our of the box, the HTC First, but the social network is not resting on its laurels. Instead, according to the company, it is currently working with two of the market’s biggest players about bringing Facebook Home to their platforms.

If you’re already scared of Facebook, then get ready to don your tin hats once more, because it would appear that the social network can now track what apps you use on your mobile phone. At least, that’s if you happen to use an Android phone.

When any company launches a new product, an ad campaign is just part of the process, so it should come as no surprise to see Facebook showcasing its new Facebook Home APK for Android launcher in an ad for exclusive carrier partner AT&T. What is rather surprising, however, is that the star of the “Launch Day” ad is none other than the social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who, in excitedly attempting to gee his employees up for the big launch, finds the workforce unresponsive, instead completely immersed in the experiences offered by Home. Check out the ad itself after the break.

The blogosphere has been abuzz these past few hours in anticipation for Twitter Music, which was due to launch today, April 12th. We all, quite wrongly, presumed we’d be able to give Twitter’s new audio streaming service a tryout for the very first time today, but while the site has gone live and looks ready to go, we’ll have to sit through another week of drumroll before it officially opens its doors.

Google celebrated Gmail’s ninth birthday with a nostalgic little infographic yesterday, but, not being one to rest on its laurels, the company is back with a brand new feature pertaining to the Google account in general. From now on, if your little patch of the Big G’s vast Web landscape just so happens to fall into a period of inactivity, you can decide exactly how you want your data to be handled from then on, and by whom.

It has been a rather busy past couple of months for Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. With the News Feed revamp last month followed-up swiftly by the announcement of the Facebook Home for Android launcher late last week, the social network has just begun rolling out a brand new emotion feature to some users in the United States. Having initially run some tests back in January for the feature, which makes it easy for users to divulge their feelings, it looks as though it is ready for the public’s consumption, and should begin to reach nations outside of The States before too long.

Instagram has turned into more than a mere photo sharing app over the years. Culminating in its huge sale to Facebook, Instagram has embedded itself into the digital worlds of many of us, and thanks to the recent release of an Android app, Instagram is no longer an iOS-only affair. But Instagram has managed to pull something off that most apps can only dream of – it’s left the digital world and found its way into the physical world, too.