Joe Wilcox

I highly recommend two-step verification for major online accounts, even though the process sometimes is a real hassle. I've long ago applied the security measure to my Google account, but Microsoft offered no option. Hell, even Apple beat the software giant with the measure. That starts changing today.

"Over the next couple days we will roll out a major upgrade to Microsoft account, including optional two-step verification to help keep your account more secure", Eric Doerr, Microsoft Account group product manager, says. The logistics are similar to Google's -- two-step verification most places, application-specific passwords elsewhere and tool for generating authentication codes.

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Is the American Civil Liberties Union an iPhone shop, or is the organization really looking out for your best interests? I ask because the complaint filed yesterday with the Federal Trade Commission (and revealed today) is the kind of marketing Apple probably couldn't afford. This thing is a goldmine of FUD (you know, fear uncertainty and doubt) -- Christmastime good, when Santa packs the room with presents and they're all for you.

But, wait, Google gets gifted, too! Because the complaint is more about carriers dragging their bums updating Android than any fundamental security problem with the platform. The operating system has "known, exploitable security vulnerabilities for which fixes have been published by Google, but have not been distributed to consumers’ smartphones by the wireless carriers and their handset manufacturer partners", according to the legal filing.

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With what I can only presume is wry sense of humor, Netflix's Anthony Park and Mark Watson post: "Since Microsoft announced the end of life of Silverlight 5 in 2021, we need to find a replacement some time within the next 8 years". Well, hell, that ought to be enough time. "We'd like to share some progress we've made towards our goal of moving to HTML5 video".

Last month, Netflix finally brought video streaming to the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I wondered if that might be the future for everything. Sure enough, Netflix confirms.

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Now here's a head-scratcher for your coffee break. Today, Google released a new tool that allows businesses to make Chrome their default while launching legacy browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer) for apps that need them. Strange thing: Chrome is outdated every 12 weeks.

As a marketing ploy to move IT organizations that have applications demanding some version of IE, Google exacts brilliance. But the Legacy Browser Support add-on defies one of the major reasons many businesses prefer Internet Explorer: Stable releases for long periods.

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"The era of PC dominance with Windows as the single platform will be replaced with a post-PC era where Windows is one of a variety of environments that IT will need to support", Van Baker, Gartner research vice president, says. The days of Windows as the applications and device hub are over.

The implications are huge for businesses, which must adapt to something else, too. While native mobile apps are all the rage today, their future is uncertain. Gartner forecasts that by 2016, more than half of those deployed will be hybrid, and that's good for any platform favoring HTML5, including Windows.

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In case you missed the update, because I nearly did, Microsoft brings better Bing apps to Windows 8. They dropped yesterday, but I'm just getting round to them today. I love `em. The search engine is hugely underrated compared to Google, and the core services look so damn good and feel even better from a touchscreen.

In a self-aggrandizing post, the Bing team describes core apps Finance, Maps, News, Sports, Travel and Weather as "immersive vertical experiences". I so totally agree. Modern UI offers the most immersive experience on tablets, for fully-supporting apps. Microsoft claims that they "were designed from the ground up to embrace speed and touch providing you with a fast, fluid and consistent way to delve into your interests and get things done".

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Microsoft's newest and oldest supported PC operating systems share some strange similarities. Windows 8 and XP launched during times of tepid computer sales, forecasts of low adoption and initially weak sales. Neither lifted PC shipments during the launch quarter. Yet the older software went on to be such a workhorse, as much as 40 percent of the install base clings to the OS -- nearly 12 years after launch. That's the future I see. Windows 8 isn't the new Vista, as so many pundits proclaim, but the new XP.

I am quite vocal about the changing of computer eras, a position taken up before Apple started selling iPhone in early summer 2007. But the change is a process gradual at first that accelerates over time. In the case of Windows or the typical personal computer set against cloud-connected devices there can be redefinition, and, with it, renewed relevance. No one should underestimate Microsoft or ignore the past when evaluating present trends. The PC and Windows died before and resurrected.

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Back in the 1990s, I coined the phrase "cusper" -- or thought I did -- to refer to people like me who were born at the end of the Baby Boom era but didn't share the generation's values. In January 2001, I registered the .com, .net and .org variants of cusper and cuspers. For a reason. I am a Cusper. But I never properly used the domains (someday! someday!) and later let the .org variants go. This year I re-acquired cusper.org for $3.99 domain registration. Some nutcase wants $3,000 at auction for cuspers.org. Good luck.

So much aimed at Boomers doesn't apply to me, or others of my tweener generation. Amazon's new "50+ Active & Healthy Living", which opens today, is another affront. If being over 50 is a lifestyle that Boomers boast, or Amazon wants to sell them, let me out of here. I want no part of it. I don't read their kind of books or listen to their style of music or swallow vitamins like they popped pills of a more illicit type in their youth.

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Perhaps Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg are geeks of similar kind. Gates, along with buddy (and chief executive) Steve Ballmer, is known by us old-timers for a series of self-effacing videos spanning more than a decade -- many distributed internally or shown publicly at tech trade shows. Zuck is ignored -- gasp, is there a metaphor here -- in the first commercial for Facebook Home. The app is now available on Google Play.

While Zuckerberg introduces Home to Facebook employees, he is ignored by one using the Android skin. The video, which is posted to YouTube, had about 7,000 views when I peaked yesterday; the number is nearly a quarter-million today. The commercial spot is fun, festive and does what many of us wish we could do in a room: Ignore Zuck. Something so self-effacing makes him more human, too, less the geek or the privacy-invader critics call him. Put the CEO in more videos, I say.

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Say, do you use WordPress? Button down the hatches and check your patches. A new brute-force attack is underway across the Internet. We know from first-hand experience. BetaNews took some heavy fire earlier today. Hackers use a botnet to hit blogs with fast-fire log-in attempts, seeking to snag passwords. The initial objective is to add more numbers to the botnet.

Brute-force attempts aren't all that uncommon, but this one is generating a fair bit of attention, with some reports that the core botnet is 90,000 computers and growing and an escalating number of attempted logins, too. It's all a guessing game really. Attempt enough logins and some will succeed, revealing passwords.

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Yesterday, Google posted a public notice that "folks who ordered the Chromebook Pixel LTE from Google Play will start receiving them as early as Friday, April 12th". If that's you, I'd like to hear about it.

Jay Munsterman got his LTE model a day early and "it is sweet! For anyone else that prefers a Dvorak or non-qwerty keyboard: the keys pry off and reattach easily. And if you have both an ARM Chromebook and a Pixel you do end up with 1.1TB of Drive space". So much for today then. The Pixel comes with 1TB free Google Drive storage for three years.

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As a journalist, I see lots of rumor stories and so-called analyses that send shivers down my spin. I just know that someone looks to benefit from information that moves some company's stock price. I'm not an investor, knowing that any of my legitimate news stories can affect a public company's shares; it's ethical protocol, too, not to invest in companies you write about. Often manipulation is obvious, but hard to prove. So with great interest I watch BlackBerry's aggressive response to stock shattering news unleashed by an analyst firm yesterday. I make no accusations of wrongdoing. BlackBerry already has.

Shares of the Canadian smartphone and tablet maker plunged about 8 percent yesterday after reports of high BlackBerry Z10 returns. "In several cases, returns are now exceeding sales, a phenomenon we have never seen before", Detwiler Fenton claims. BlackBerry's response is swift and shows just how dramatically different is the leadership under CEO Thorsten Heins. The company asks the Securities and Exchange Commission and Ontario Securities Commission to investigate the "false and misleading report".

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Last week I asked if you would buy Samsung's newest smartphone, which goes on sale later this month. With a large enough sample size -- 1,700 responses so far -- time is come to share the results. Seventy percent say they will buy Galaxy S4, although not all immediately. Just 20 percent answer flat-out "No".

I should qualify the headline: "You likely will buy Samsung Galaxy S4, if you're not American". Over here, more people are bugaboo about iPhone. Apple had 38.9 percent smartphone subscriber share in February compared to 21.3 percent for its South Korean rival, according to comScore. Elsewhere, Samsung rules, selling more general handsets and smartphones than any other manufacturer, according to Gartner. (Woe to damn provincial Americans!)

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Well, well, perhaps Windows 8 isn't cause for all the PC market's woes, as IDC strongly stated yesterday. Gartner's first-quarter assessment is grim but no reaper. The analyst firm lays blame partly on consumers unwillingness to pay more for touchscreen models and asserts that the business market actually grows. Also, the firms released contradictory data, with Apple showing glaring and shocking differences.

Mikako Kitagawa, Gartner principal analyst, doesn't blame Windows 8: "Consumers are migrating content consumption from PCs to other connected devices, such as tablets and smartphones". The first factor pulling down PC shipments, which by Gartner estimates fell 11.2 percent globally during Q1, is tablet competition, then. Not Windows 8.

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In some alternate universe, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer slaps former Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky on the back for a job well done. The company's newest operating system is such a huge success that sagging PC shipments soared to record numbers. Our reality is something shockingly different. First-quarter declines are the worst since IDC started tabulating numbers in 1994 and surpass the worst estimates. You know things are really bad when even perennial gainer Apple sees a huge year-of-year fall off.

"At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market", Bob O'Donnell, IDC vice president, says. Holy Moley, Windows 8 slowed the market? You want to know why Ballmer booted Sinfosky out the door? O'Donnell offers chilling indictment.

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