News written by Matti Robinson (April, 2015)

When Facebook last year announced it will acquire WhatsApp many sighed in frustration and went even so far as switching messengers. There was a slight rebellion behind the scenes, also fueled by the decisions concerning Facebook's own Messenger.

It seems that the move has anything but reduced the popularity of the world's most popular IM software. New figures suggest that WhatsApp has already over 800 million users and is closing fast on a billion.

The messenger platform is finding new users in a never before seen pace. In the past three months alone it has increased its user base by an incredible one hundred million.

Facebook is yet the only one to break the coveted billion user base but even its own Messenger has "only" 600 million users.

One of the more important factors to such an aggressive growth is most likely the addition of free calls to other WhatsApp users. If WhatsApp continues on this pace it'll reach the goal later this year.

Sony was infamously hacked and its secrets revealed last year. Now a few months later WikiLeaks has made the thousands of documents and hundreds of thousands of emails more accessible by creating a searchable database.

A lot of people have obviously been going through the archive and found all kinds of "new" information. In addition to highly confidential emails between the US government and Sony there's been less high profile leaks. A new one suggests that we might have our hands on an upcoming Sony flagship smartphone.

The device pictured in this article portrays close to what has been rumored of the next flagship smartphone by Sony. Xperia Z4 is expected to feature a new all-metal design, a reimagined power button with a fingerprint sensor, and a wholly updated user experience.

Even though the latter cannot be confimed from the pictures it does seem like the all-metal design is evident as is the redesigned and larger power button that might in fact have a sensor being rumored of.

These pictures seem like valid confidential Sony renders but they still can be just drafts that will never see the light of day. However it is also possible that they are in fact one of the first renders of the upcoming Z4.

GameStop has revealed that it will buy off your dusty retro gaming consoles, games, and accessories for in-store credit, reports IGN.

Beginning next week, April 25, GameStop's 250-ish stores around NYC and Birmingham will start accepting your old gaming hardware and software.

Reports say that amongst accepted systems are Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES), SEGA Genesis, PlayStation, N64, and SEGA Dreamcast. The devices will go through GameStop's refurbishing and will be resold with a warranty like the other (new) hardware.

Two months after starting the buying of retro games the stores will start reselling them. That means that you can expect to buy your own NES maybe in late May or early June.

A reserach company specializing in digital commerce, Slice Intelligence, has revealed their first date for Apple Watch purchases. The data is an estimate based on around nine thousands online customers and suggests that the Sport version of Apple Watch was the most popular as expected.

According to the data 957 000 Americans ordered an average of 1.3 Apple Watch products. 62 percent of the over one million Apple Watches were the cheaper Sport version. The average cost of the Apple Watch Sport was $382.83 and the stainless steel Apple Watch $707.04. The all around average spending was $503.83.

As much as 71 percept opted for the larger 42 mm version and the smaller 38mm case was more popular amongst the Sport byuers. The Black Sports Band was the most popular choice amongst both Apple Watch and Apple Watch Sports buyers. Just over a half of the Apple Watches were bought with the Black Sports Band.

Slice also reported that approximately 48 000 of the recently announced new Macbooks were sold. A whopping 42 percent of whom also pre-ordered an Apple Watch.

HBO's smash hit Game of Thrones returns today with season five but quite a few have already acquired the first four episodes. The first four episodes of the new season are already out on BitTorrent sites – and therefore for millions to grab.

According to TorrentFreak the episodes were downloaded over 100 000 times in the first three hours and they quickly spread to all popular BitTorrent sites. The video and the sources suggest that it was leaked from review copies sent to the press.

If there's a silver lining to this it might be that the videos are relatively low quality and the first episode will officially air in approximately 12 hours in all the 170 countries it is shown.