Late yesterday, Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 users from all over the world can now finally take advantage of the complete photo and video backup feature offered by its smartphone operating system. This comes a tad over six months after the Windows Phone 8 release in late-October, last year. A little too late, wouldn't you agree?

Previously, users from a number of regions were constricted to use a dumbed-down backup feature that only allowed automatically upload of low-resolution pictures (no video support) straight to SkyDrive. "We just started to light this up, so be patient if you don’t see it right away. The change could take a few days to roll out around the globe", Aaron Sauvé, Microsoft senior program manager says.

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Spotify is the world’s most popular streaming music service with some 24 million active uses, around 6 million of those paying a subscription for premium services. I use Spotify all the time; it’s a great way of finding and sampling new music, and the company’s deals with major labels go a long way to legitimizing the streaming model.

Yesterday though, Spotify acted to change its website player after a Dutch developer released a Chrome extension that allowed MP3s to be downloaded from the site. Google removed the Downloadify plug-in from its site before Spotify applied the fix to the player, which now uses an encrypted format.

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Last week, Microsoft's Internet Explorer made news, but not in the way the company should like. The "browser you loved to hate"  becomes the target of a zero-day security flaw, which already is being actively exploited. Version 8 of the browser, which runs on all iterations of Windows going back to XP, is the target. Windows 8 customers are safe, as the latest operating system ships with IE 10.

The flaw allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to exploit this vulnerability and execute arbitrary code on a targeted system with the privileges of a targeted user. If the user holds elevated privileges, the attacker could completely compromise the computer targeted.

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Mobile VoIP provider Viber has broken new ground by releasingViber for Desktop 3.0 for Windows and Mac, extending its existing mobile service beyond the mobile-only Viber 3.0 app to desktops and laptops.

The new desktop build provides all the functionality currently enjoyed on the mobile app, including free voice calls, photo messaging, text chat and location-sharing with other Viber users, but also adds support for desktop-to-desktop video conferencing too.

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Launch a program, collect an email, visit a website -- just about everything you do on a PC results in some kind of change to the files on your PC. And normally the low-level details of this won’t interest you in the slightest, but there will be occasional exceptions.

Maybe you think you’ve been infected by malware, for instance. Perhaps you’re wondering what an installation program is adding to your system. Or you might just want to know why your hard drive activity light is flashing, all the time. But whatever the reason,Check5 can help, by monitoring any folders of interest and showing you, in real time, exactly how their contents are changing.

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I was with a friend recently who has a pretty exciting Internet startup company. He has raised some money and might raise more, his product is in beta and it’s good. It solves a difficult technical problem many companies are struggling with. We argued a little over the name of the product. Of course I thought my suggested name was better or certainly cleverer, but then he said, “It doesn’t matter because we’ll probably sell the company before the product ever ships. It may never appear at all.”

His company will exit almost before it enters. This is happening a lot lately and we generally think it is a good thing but it’s not.

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Some of Microsoft's greatest battles aren't being fought in the open, contentious field of constant public opinion and media coverage. If there's one thing Microsoft has always done better than the competition, it's blowing open new areas of opportunity and running with the ball on the sly. Apple and Samsung can keep their tactical flags limited to consumer electronics; Microsoft has far greater potential as a rising star in the cloud arena. The war started with its drive to push email to the cloud with Office 365, and the next leg of battle sits in the helm of Windows Azure and XaaS dominance.

If you're under the impression that we are not yet in the era of massive, prevalent 'big data', you're wildly mistaken. Our data needs are already climbing to astronomical levels, with IBM stating that 90 percent of the data in existence today was created in just the last two years. Not surprisingly, much of these growing data needs are being tossed into virtual environments whether it be on-premise in a VMWare or Hyper-V driven route, or my personal favorite: cloud-hosted virtual machines.

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During last month's fiscal third quarter 2013 earnings call, Microsoft revealed that Peter Klein would step down as chief financial officer. Today, the company announced his replacement: Amy Hood, who currently is CFO of the Business division. She assumed that role in January 2010.

CEO Steve Ballmer describes Hood as an "instrumental leader" who helped "lead the transition to services with Office 365" and to bring strong financial results.

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If Linux is good enough for the International Space Station, why not your school computers? The developers over at openSUSE must think so, today releasing Li-f-e (Linux for Education) 12.3-1.

I confess to not being familiar enough with Linux (go ahead, beat me with a stick -- or with words in comments). But a reader complained this week about BetaNews' rather absent coverage of the open-source operating system. He's absolutely right about that. Reporters here tend to write about what they use, and we don't have a Linux lover currently on staff. Please pardon my light treatment of the news, in place of someone more qualified.

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I'll admit, I'm a sucker for subscriptions. I subscribe to receive periodic emails with the latest discounts for tech gear, car news or any other bits of useful information (well, at least to me). Maybe there's something nice out there that I want to know about. But because the emails keep coming in at different times of the day, going through each and every one would be a waste of time.

Cloud service Unroll.Me promises to solve the problem of subscription overload by allowing its users to wrap those emails into one big daily digest. Although the unsubscribe option is also available, the idea is to give folks the ability to actually make the best of the stuff that keeps coming in without, likely, losing track of vacation deals or the latest social updates.

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I'm not sure who does whom the bigger favor -- Apple or T-Mobile USA. The nation's fourth-largest carrier started selling iPhone 5 in stores April 12 (preorders a week earlier) and today reports 500,000 sold to date. T-Mobile also added 100,000 previous iPhone owners (presumably the majority from AT&T based on network types). The carrier also sells iPhone 4 and 4S but kept the big news to the 5.

Half-million new iPhones sales is just what Apple needs, too, with the U.S. smartphone market rapidly saturating. Apple is the country's leader, with 39 percent subscriber share in March, according to comScore. Samsung follows with 21.7 percent share. T-Mobile's contribution is sure to lift iPhone against rivals, when April numbers release.

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On Wednesday, Finnish smartphone manufacturer Nokia released two updates for its Chat and Ringtone Maker Windows Phone apps. The changelog lists minor improvements rather than significant enhancements, focusing on expanding the list of supported markets and media formats, respectively.

Nokia Chat for Windows Phone, which comes with Yahoo Messenger integration, is now also available for those in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Finland, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Spain and Venezuela. The text messaging service still doesn't allow users to log in using a Yahoo Messenger handle, so if you plan on using the app to chat you will have to add the necessary contacts manually.

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Some critics (and, oh, there are many) claim Windows 8 is out of this world -- or not meant for it. That Microsoft reached for the stars but fell to earth. How right they may be. The operating system won't achieve escape velocity anytime soon, and an older version is about to burn up on reentry.

The International Space Station, better known as the ISS, runs on Windows, but that is changing. Launched in 1998, the orbiting home, which circles the earth at an altitude of just over 400 kilometers (it varies), is home to a team of astronauts who depend on, not only supplies from home, but also a computer system that keeps everything running smoothly. That computer system is moving to Linux.

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Your PC is packed with applications, and you need to be able to launch them at speed. So of course you might start by creating a few shortcuts, and either dropping them on your desktop, and pinning them to the taskbar. It’s simple, and straightforward – but of course it can also quickly become very messy.

If you’d prefer a clean desktop, then, you might be interested in DeskIntegrator’s approach. This compact free tool adds applications to the desktop context menu, and launching them becomes as easy as right-clicking the desktop, and choosing whatever you need from the list.

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How are you feeling? If you don't have time to lie on the couch and work through your issues you can now turn to your Android phone to measure your emotional state. Cambridge University researchers have developed an app that combines smartphone data with user perceptions in order to track happiness.

The EmotionSense app collects sensor information from the phone about where you are, how noisy the environment is, and who you’re communicating with. It then combines this data with your answers to questions about how you’re feeling in order to work out your emotional state.

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