Wayne Williams

The Raspberry Pi has been at the top of my ten year old nephew's Christmas list for months now, and every time he comes to visit he asks me to power up the Model B I bought back in March, and of course I’m more than happy to do so -- any excuse.

The super-affordable uncased ARM GNU/Linux computer has been enjoying huge success since it launched in 2012, selling a million units in its first year (see the Q&A we ran with the Raspberry Pi Foundation’s Liz Upton following that milestone) and we reported sales had hit 1.75 million a little over a month ago, so it’s impressive to hear that the British-made board has just smashed through the two million mark.

I recently upgraded my already fast PC, adding a large Kingston SSD, Intel Core i7 Processor, and new motherboard, and additionally boosted the amount of DDR3 RAM to 16GB. Unfortunately, my new super-speedy system could be out of date as soon as next month -- well the memory and motherboard elements of it at least.

Memory specialist Crucial has DDR4 listed on its website, along with a nifty infographic (embedded below) to tell you more about the next generation memory. According the information on the site, the faster RAM is coming out late in 2013, which means -- as we're running out of months -- it should be available some time in December.

Yesterday I wrote a story in which I said Surface vs iPad shows how little Microsoft and Apple have really changed. The catalyst was a blog post in which Microsoft went into technical details on the improvements it’s made to the newest iteration of Surface. Something I said Apple would never do.

Today, Microsoft again shows how it’s targeting more technical users with a new blog post titled Geek out with Surface and win! The opening paragraph sums up, for me, the sort of people who the new Surface is now being primarily aimed at.

It took Microsoft a while to persuade Facebook to produce an official app for Windows 8, but having finally got the social network onboard, the software giant is looking to tighten the ties further still.

The newly announced Facebook Login APIs on Windows 8/8.1 and Windows Phone 8 will allow developers to create apps that can access a user’s Facebook profile, and make it possible to share content, and post comments in-app, and also find friends to play games with. Make no mistake, with more than one billion people using Facebook to connect and share, this is a hugely important development for Microsoft.

If you’re looking for a new tablet, laptop, 2-in-1 device or all-in-one system you might want to take a look at Intel’s new Holiday Buying Guide. The chipmaker has put together a 20-page PDF brochure featuring products from the likes of ASUS, Dell, Lenovo, Sony, HP, and Samsung.

Divided into sections, starting with 2-in-1 Devices, the guide tells you a bit about that particular type of system, and then presents a selection of shiny new hardware vying for your attention (and hard earned cash) this holiday season.

I own an iPad, and despite not rushing to buy a Surface, I actually quite like Microsoft's slate. A couple of days a week I work on my iPad (mostly remote accessing my PC via Parallels Access) and it's not a great experience. I know I'd get a lot more done if I was using a Surface Pro 2 instead, but Apple's tablet is far better in other areas, so for me it wins on balance.

Yesterday, on the Surface blog there was an article headed "What's new in Surface Pro 2". It was a detailed look at what Microsoft has done to improve the latest generation of its slate and I found it fascinating. Partly because it was an interesting read, but also because it was the sort of thing Apple would never do.

Two days ago IDC released its latest Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker report, showing growth for both Android and Windows Phone and drops for iOS and BlackBerry.

Today Gartner provides details on worldwide mobile phone sales to end users, with the big news being that smartphones accounted for 55 percent of all mobile phone sales in the third quarter of 2013.

ComputerSupport.com has unveiled its next generation cloud hosting platform ITAnyWhere Cloud. The product is based around the latest Microsoft and Citrix software, and runs completely in the AWS cloud, utilizing multi-region EC2, S3, RDS and other services.

The new version of the cloud service offers small businesses the ability to host all of their productivity applications -- web or Windows-based -- in the cloud, and access them from any device, any time. The solution will help medical and financial organizations achieve instant compliance with HIPAA, FINRA and other US regulations. The goal with this version is to improve how quickly the applications are delivered, add the ability for users self-service, and enable better mobile access.

There’s not long to go now until Microsoft’s next generation console is released, and the software giant is continuing to push the many non-gaming things you’ll be able to do with it. The latest update covers SkyDrive, with a new video showing how the cloud storage integration works.

As the description accompanying the video says, "SkyDrive on Xbox One provides a seamless way to enjoy your photos and videos, or those shared with you, on the big screen. The app also takes advantage of exclusive Xbox One features: You can open photo albums from channels in the OneGuide, play music alongside your slide show with Xbox Music, and control the whole app with gestures and voice, courtesy of Kinect".

Microsoft is actively looking for a new CEO to replace Steve Ballmer, and one of the potential candidates is Stephen Elop. In an interesting story published earlier today, Bloomberg, citing several unnamed sources, claims that the former boss of Nokia would introduce sweeping changes to Microsoft should he get picked for the top job.

Just what sort of changes? Bloomberg says Elop would release Microsoft Office on the iPad and Android tablets, consider killing off Bing and even potentially offload the Xbox division, in an effort to give the software giant more focus.

When Google announced it was changing the comments system for YouTube, users should have been thrilled, after all that aspect of the site has been in need of an overhaul for a very long time. The update Google created adds "smarter" sorting, and "meaningful" conversations, allows comments to be moderated, and for the most part the change just makes things look tidier.

The problem with the new system is you need to have a Google+ account to post a comment, and YouTube users aren’t happy with that. An inevitable petition calling for Google to change the comment settings on YouTube back to their original form was duly launched and has received over 40,000 signatures in 24 hours.

The battle between Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 is set to begin later this month. At BetaNews we’re still split as to which console we think is best, leading to some spirited debates in the newsroom.

To try and persuade potential buyers to choose the Xbox One, and get pre-orderers even more excited, Microsoft has released a 12-minute video showing exactly what it’s like to use its new console, and frankly it looks amazing.

Microsoft has announced the new Nokia Lumia 1520 is available for preorder through the Microsoft Store and at all US Microsoft retail store locations from today. The device officially goes on sale on 22 November.

As an incentive, customers who preorder the product will receive a $50 Microsoft Store app card, a $20 app card provided by Nokia, a free flip cover valued at $39.99 (while stocks last), and a free download of Halo: Spartan Assault for Windows Phone. It’s a US-only offer.

Big data is now massively important to many organizations. The more data -- both structured and unstructured -- that firms can access and analyze, the better their insight and decision making processes can become, and that in turn can lead to better performance, improved efficiencies, and reduced risk.

Kapow Software has created an attractive new infographic that provides an overview of the different avenues and channels that big data is pulled from. These data pools include archives, docs, media, data storage, social media, business apps, the public web, and sensor data.

When reporting on PC shipments, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be bad news these days. However, the latest PC shipment news from Gartner can’t really be described as bad, more like out and out disastrous.

Shipments in Western Europe totaled 11.9 million units in the third quarter of 2013, a decline of 12.8 percent from the same period in 2012. The drop relates to all PC segments. Mobile and desktop shipments fell by 14.5 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively. PC shipments in the professional PC market shrank by 8.3 percent, and the consumer PC market plummeted by 17.1 percent. Tablets, naturally, are to blame, although Windows 8 and 8.1 have a part to play in the collapse too.