Think steroids.

Microsoft Issues Major Update to OneNote App for Windows

Unlimited voice calls and text messaging without a contract as long as you’re on Wi-Fi? Not only does the deal sound consumer friendly, it’s pretty innovative too.

Smartphone With Wi-Fi Smarts

Most other smartphones can make Wi-Fi calls, but these typically require an app. Republic modifies the phone’s main dialer and texting functions to work over Wi-Fi whenever possible. You don’t have to do anything special to initiate a Wi-Fi call or text.

With Snapchat reportedly turning down acquisition offers in the $4 billion range, it now feels that Facebook and Google got a pretty sweet deal to purchase Instagram and Waze for approximately$1 billion apiece. Will the next wave of acquisitions start from $4 billion?

Is $4 Billion the New$1 Billion?

Snapchat says its users post about 400 million total “snaps” a day. If each individual user posts about four a day, that would mean there would be about 100 million users, Backus says. If we use our mid-tier valuation for companies like Facebook and Twitter, or $100 per user, that would put Snapchat’s value at$10 billion.

Pretty sad news. More importantly for consumers, if you’re currently shopping for an SSD, you might want to skip OCZ as it’s not obvious whether the warranties will be honored after the dust settles.

OCZ Files for Bankruptcy – Toshiba Offers to Buy the Assets

It’s sad to see OCZ going because they’ve been one of the pioneers in the consumer SSD industry. They were one of the most active companies when we started to see the first consumer SSDs in 2008/2009 but OCZ lost a ton of sales once Samsung and other major OEMs began to take the consumer SSD market seriously. It’s hard to say what ultimately killed OCZ without knowing their exact cost structure but I believe it was a combination of bad strategy (too many products and high production volumes) and engineering choices (low reliability) along with other things.

Cult of Android reports that the Retina iPad Mini loses out to Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HDX in DisplayMate’s screen comparison

“The new Google Nexus 7 has a very impressive display that uses the highest performance LCDs with Low Temperature Poly Silicon LTPS,” DisplayMate found. “The very high efficiency LTPS technology allows the new Nexus 7 display to provide a full 100 percent Color Gamut and at the same time produce the brightest Tablet display that we have measured so far in this Shoot-Out series.”

As for the Kindle Fire HDX, that was the most impressive overall. It’s the first tablet display to use “high technology Quantum Dots,” DisplayMate says, “which produce highly saturated primary colors that are similar to those produced by OLED displays.”

Steve Tappin writes on his LinkedIn blog about Tencent’s charge to overtake Facebook.

Tencent has 818 million active users on its chat client QQ and 236 million active users on its messaging app WeChat.

The surge in popularity of WeChat is not surprising. It has many features and it encourages social connection.

WeChat has neatly fused together the open approach of social networks such as Twitter, where anyone can follow anybody, and more closed networks such as Facebook, which rely on mutual friend connections. It’s growing virally through social connection and not just social media.

Here are some features that set it apart from the competition.

• Walkie-talkie mode – a push to talk feature to send voice messages

• People nearby – finding people nearby who allow themselves to be discovered

• Shake – connect to any users in the world who shake their phone at the same time

• User ID – your account is not tied to the phone number so you can chat on another device by signing into your user ID

Tencent has also engaged stars, such as Lionel Messi and LeBron James, as brand ambassadors to help push the app to the international market.