You’ll no doubt be familiar with The Innocence of Muslims, the controversial film that has angered Muslims across the Middle East, sparking riots and leading to several deaths.

It’s unlikely you’ll have actually watched it, although the more curious among you may have caught some of it on YouTube, where the film is still freely available -- provided, of course, you’re not reading this in one of the countries where Google has blocked it, specifically Libya, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Russia recently banned the film, too, which unsurprisingly also is not available to watch in Iran, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, where they’ve chosen to go a step further and block YouTube entirely.

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According to a story on the Russian Interfax news site, some Russian Christians have taken to defacing, or replacing, the logo on their Apple products because it’s "anti-Christian" and insults their faith.

While to you or I the logo just looks like a Golden Delicious that’s had a chomp taken out of one side, to some radical Orthodox Christians, including some priests, it apparently represents the original sin as described in the Bible, where Adam and Eve disobey God by noshing on some forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.

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Google’s panoramic, street-level maps feature -- recently added to its mobile web app -- received a massive upgrade today, in what Google calls its biggest Street View update ever. As well as allowing users to explore numerous new global sites of interest, Google has refreshed some 250,000 miles of roads.

Expanding and maintaining all its Street View imagery is a massive task, but Google makes it look easy, casually adding extra coverage to the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, Italy, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Macau, and doubling its number of "special collections" in a single update. Some of the highlights now available to explore include:

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Microsoft has a long history of copying Apple. Back in the early 90s, Bill Gates' company introduced features found in the Macintosh GUI into Windows 2.0, sparking a copyright infringement lawsuit (Apple's taste for litigation is nothing new). Microsoft arguably has pilfered ideas from its rival's OS ever since -- Windows’ taskbar and Aero Peek certainly share clear similarities with OS X's Dock and Exposé. When the iPod became a massive hit, Microsoft introduced the Zune. Apple stores are hugely popular, which is why we’re now seeing Microsoft Stores popping up everywhere. Surface, in a way, copies the iPad, although of course Microsoft has tried (and failed) to popularize tablets since 2002.

And yes, before I go too far into this article, I’m aware the above paragraph could be seen as troll bait, so I’ll point out that Microsoft copies from other companies too -- Google being a major example -- and Apple, in turn, has lifted ideas from Microsoft, particularly from its operating system. Big companies copy from one another, it’s a fact of life. My point, however, is when Apple does something exceptionally well, Microsoft is keen to try and follow suit.

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With the newest incarnation of Windows fast approaching, Microsoft has released a 102MB cumulative update for the "gold", or final, versions of Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, designed to make the new operating system ready for general availability. According to Steven Sinofsky’s Building Windows 8 blog post, the update improves the OS’s "performance, power management and battery efficiency, media playback, and compatibility."

You can install the 'Update for Windows 8' through the control panel and see exactly what’s been addressed in the accompanying Knowledge Base article.

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MegaCloud is a new, free-to-use cloud storage and backup service (compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Mobile) that lets you store, sync and share all your documents, photos, music, videos and more across all of your devices. Unlike some similar services, having a free account doesn’t mean being restricted in any way -- all free users get 16GB of space, divided into 8GB for storage and 8GB for backups.

Well, that’s how much ordinary, everyday free users get. But obviously, as a BetaNews reader you deserve a little extra, so MegaCloud has kindly upped the free storage on offer to 21GB (13GB for storage, plus 8GB for backups) exclusively for us, and all you need to do is click on the link below and sign up for a free account. And if that’s still not enough free space for you, you can get yet more gratis storage simply by installing a mobile app or referring friends to the service.

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QR Codes are pretty much everywhere these days, but few companies really make the most of the possibilities they offer. TagMyDoc is a great example of what can be done with them, and lets you add a QR Code to your own physical documents, directly from within Word, Excel or PowerPoint. When someone scans that code, they’ll get a full copy of the document on their device.

It saves on printing costs, and means you don’t have to worry about how many copies of a document or presentation to output for a meeting, for example, because anyone with a QR reader can get a copy of their own. It’s a great service, but TagMyDoc has just been made even more useful, as it now lets you connect to popular cloud storage services Box and Dropbox, and tag and securely share documents you store there.

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Nominum is the world’s leading provider of integrated subscriber, network and security solutions for network operators and its software currently processes over one trillion Domain Name System (DNS) queries per day from hundreds of network operators worldwide; a number that far exceeds the combined 6.5 billion searches, likes and tweets served by Google, Facebook and Twitter each day.

Its new N2 Platform and Nominum IDEAL ecosystem gathers and anonymizes this data, allowing application providers’ seamless access to it. I spoke to Nominum’s CEO, Gary Messiana, to find out more about how it works and what it means for network operators and consumers.

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Google has introduced Street View into its web app, bringing back one of the most sorely missed features lost when Apple swapped Google’s popular mapping app for its own much poorer solution in iOS 6. I’m sure you’re more than familiar with the whole sorry tale that led Apple CEO Tim Cook to issue an apology, and our own readers saying they wouldn’t be buying an iPhone 5 because of it, so I won’t dwell on the subject here.

If you followed my advice and added a shortcut to Google’s web app, you’re all set to start using Street View. Its rollout seems to be complete, so you should now have access to it, wherever you happen to live.

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You know what’s cooler than 500 million Facebook users? One billion. That’s the number of people Facebook says are now using the social network every month. It reached that magical milestone on September 14 at 12:45 PM Pacific time, so it’s probably one billion and a bit, by now.

To celebrate, Mark Zuckerberg posted a little thank you and a fact sheet about the news, which contains some interesting key metrics, including that there have so far been 140.3 billion friend connections, and over 1.13 trillion likes since that feature launched in February 2009. There are 219 billion photos currently on the site, not including deleted ones, which Facebook says totals around 46 billion.

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The way some people covet the new iPhone 5 you’d think it was made out of solid gold rather than glass and aluminum. Of course if it was available in that precious metal you’d have to pay quite a bit more than $399 for a 64GB model. Somewhere in the region of $35,411, in fact.

If you’re wondering how I arrived at that figure, the answer is that’s how much British designer Stuart sells his limited edition 18ct gold iPhone 5s for. Yes, that’s right -- targeting the "more money than sense" market, Stuart has decided to create a new solid gold chassis for the phone, hand-finishing it, and adding an apple logo made out of 53 diamonds (amounting to 1ct) for good measure.

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If you live in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, you’ll soon be able to access free WiFi through cafés, restaurants, hotels and shops, courtesy of Skype and wireless provider Wicoms.

The new WiFi network initiative, called Free Skype WiFi, will be available to all Skype users and accessed using the free Skype WiFi app. This already allows users to connect to over a million hotspots around the world, but for a fee. Users who don’t currently have a Skype account will be able to sign up on the spot by entering their email address.

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The office workplace is continually evolving. New technologies and trends -- like cloud computing and BYOD schemes -- are becoming more and more popular, but not every firm is willing to embrace the future, and many are stuck firmly in the past.

LinkedIn, the world’s largest social network for professionals, surveyed more than 7,000 members across the globe and asked them which of the current office tools and trends they expect to be extinct in five years’ time, combining the answers to produce the following top 10:

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Cloud computing is finally beginning to mature to the point where it’s an attractive proposition for an increasing number of enterprises and small businesses, but even so many firms are still very hesitant to make the move online.

A new study jointly undertaken in the second quarter of 2012 by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISACA identifies 10 key concerns perceived to limit acceptance and reduce the benefits of cloud computing. The Cloud Market Maturity study, which can be read in full here, surveyed more than 250 cloud users, providers, consultants and integrators from nearly 50 countries, and highlightes the following points as being the areas where confidence is weakest:

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Although there are downsides to the latest version of iOS 6, it’s mostly a welcome improvement, with of course the notable exception of the new maps feature that is a poor substitute for the Google app it replaced.

If you’re unhappy with the poor-quality cartography, incorrect place names and dodgy and potentially dangerous driving directions that seem to be the app’s stock-in-trade, don’t worry -- there’s a quick fix available that should tide you over until Google releases its sorely needed-new Maps application.

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