Later this year, November 22nd to be exact, part two of The Hunger Games, titled The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, will hit the big screen. Microsoft's Internet Explorer team has partnered with Lionsgate to set up a new IE-optimized website for the sequel to the blockbuster movie with the hope of not only getting you excited about the film but also about the "browser you loved to hate".

The Hunger Games Explorer launches on the heels of the MTV Movie Awards which premiered the trailer. Microsoft's Roger Capriotti says "with the global launch of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire trailer, fans can now visit The Hunger Games Explorer to be immersed in this world, track every development of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, including tweets, exclusive images and videos, and then share their thoughts and excitement with others around the world creating a global conversation".

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Even though Google has yet to release an official Google Maps app for Windows Phone, third party developers already offer a number of competent alternatives. One of the most popular ones, and my personal favorite, is gMaps which comes with a comprehensive feature set and, bar its name, could even pass as the real deal.

Today, DreamTeam Mobile, the team of developers behind gMaps, announced a new update to the popular Google Maps client. The app now touts further improvements for Driver Mode, Latitude and Street View. Let's go through each, one by one, and see what changed.

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The VHS is about to celebrate its 57th birthday, and in honor of that milestone, Google has added a new tape mode to some of the videos on YouTube.

Although it’s not widely available at the moment, a few clips have a tape icon under them which, when clicked, makes the videos look as if they are playing on a VHS recorder.

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There are lots of questions concerning Windows 8 -- does Microsoft need to make changes to it? Is the OS responsible for the death of the PC? How many copies has it actually sold? And last Friday financial-services company The Motley Fool asked the question in my headline, which I know a lot of people have been pondering too -- is Windows 8 Microsoft's biggest failure ever?

Like all tech firms, the software giant has had its fair share of hits and misses. Microsoft isn’t the greatest risk taker out there, but it does make gambles occasionally that don’t pay off and it has experienced some major flops over the years. People talk about Vista, but there have been plenty of other past disasters, including Windows Me, Microsoft Bob, Zune, Kin… But is Windows 8 its worst catastrophe to date?

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Popular cross-platform, open-source VLC Media Player 2.0.6 has been released, focussing on fixing a number of regressions introduced in previous builds since its initial 2.0 release. The update also adds support for Matroska v4 files, tweaks the user interface on the OS X build and implements a new compiler for the Windows version.

VLC Media Player offers support for all major video and audio formats, and also supports playback from DVDs and unencrypted Blu-ray discs, making it an excellent choice for systems, including Windows XP and 8, where native support for video disc playback is missing.

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Windows 8 is not the direct cause for poor PC sales, and to suggest this is simply sensationalism. True, the operating system received cool reception from some people, but most  don't realize that Microsoft had little choice to do what it did. The company distributed the first Preview during the BUILD developer conference in autumn 2011, and I immediately recognized what was going on. Windows 8 is all about touch and mobile. Mobile touch devices are replacing computers among many consumers. Microsoft likely saw this and had to do something. That something is Windows 8. I discuss this consumerization of the PC market in my late-March BetaNews story.

What some people fail to appreciate is that a PC is more than a consumer device. Windows is more than a mobile operating system. It is very complex, designed for heavy-duty work. Microsoft had one of two choices: Create a totally new operating system for mobile and leave Windows as is; merge a mobile operating system into Windows so it is a hybrid. That the company chose the latter is ingenious, but risky. Likely we won't know until years from now whether or not Microsoft wisely, but it is a noble undertaking nonetheless.

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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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Back on March 28th Ouya president Julie Uhram announced the tiny Android-based gaming console started shipping, but only to backers of the Kickstarter project. Additional details were added such as a software update which would be run upon first boot up and that the device would officially hit retail stores on June 4th.

As we have seen around the web, some have already received their boxes, but what if you did not get in on the Kickstarter ground floor, but instead placed a pre-order when those went live back in August of 2012? I happen to fall in that category and so I inquired about the timeframe and received a response from Ouya's Carmelo Martinez.

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Already well known for its easy-to-use iOS and Android photo editing apps, Fotor has just entered the desktop market with the release of the free Fotor 1.0.0 for Desktop and Mac.

And while the program is relatively simple, oriented more to quick optimizations rather than complex edits, it’s also very easy to use, and has more than enough functionality to justify a download.

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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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Facebook Home, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on April 4, and leaked as three APK files shortly after, today officially hit the Google Play store and the HTC First, announced at the same event, can officially be ordered through AT&T. The social network today pushes out a new launch page designed to make a splash with its live background of endless video.

The Google Play app describes itself as "the mobile experience that puts your friends at the heart of your phone". It essentially functions in the same way as any other launcher app for Android, bringing Facebook front and center on your homepage. From the moment you unlock your device you will be bombarded with a steady stream of photos, posts from friends and notifications of all sorts -- it's like a full-screen Windows 8 Live Tile totally dedicated to Facebook.

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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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Unlike iOS, Android devices can be very easily customized without the need to jailbreak or root them. This means that there is an ever-growing market in third-party launchers that enable phone and tablet users to try out a variety of new ways to access the apps they have installed on their device. While cosmetically different and packed out with a range of extra features, most launcher are generally fairly similar, but this same cannot be said of Everything.me which adapts itself according to what you are doing and where you are.

The idea is simple. Launching apps and accessing information is now seen as being the same thing. Looking for a recipe you have stored in an app you use? Type ‘recipe’ and a list of corresponding apps will show up. In addition to this, you’ll also be shown a list of related websites so you can check out other recipes online. Breaking down, or at least blurring, the barriers between local apps and online services is an interesting approach.

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Oracle has released VirtualBox 4.2.12, a maintenance update for its cross-platform, open-source virtualisation tool. A large number of fixes and updates have been applied, including dynamic support for multi-monitor setups via the Windows Additions.

There are also a notable number of GUI fixes concentrating on improving multi-screen support, including one that stops a crash when changing visual mode, and another that ensures OS X hosts display the correct menu bar in each machine window.

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Twenty-fourth in a series. Welcome to another greatest Windows 8 apps of the week. I'd like to use the introduction this week to address Windows Store issues that are getting out of hand. First, an increasing number of unofficial apps for popular services get released to Windows Store. You find Gmail, IMDB or Wikipedia apps that look and feel like official apps. The issue here is not trademark violations, at least not for end users, but potential security and privacy issues associated with those apps.

One of the apps, Gmail Touch, is no longer listed in the store. It is not clear if Microsoft, Google or another party is responsible for the removal of the app or why.

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