What would the Thursday before Easter be without a good scare to keep network administrators awake at night. Perhaps IDC just mixed up the candy holidays thinking it's Halloween. Whatever, the analyst firm warns of a troubling increase in enterprise distributed denial of service attacks and promises more are coming to you.

Of course, the real motivation here is to scare businesses into exploring DDoS-protective solutions. IDC forecasts 18.2 percent growth rate in DDoS products and services through 2017, reaching $870 million. To be fair, there's little dispute about rising DDoS risks.

The Spamhaus Project just finished a rocky week of "large-scale DDoS attack". Another DDoS disrupted Wells Fargo's website this week.

Samsung Galaxy S4 fans, be prepared to use your credit cards because it's pre-order season. A number of UK carriers, including Vodafone, EE and O2 have the new Android smartphone flagship on pre-order today, while in the United States AT&T announced that prospective buyers will have to wait until next month to get their hands on a new Galaxy S4 before it hits online and brick-and-mortar stores.

AT&T revealed that the Galaxy S4 will be available for pre-order starting with April 16 for $249.99 on a two-year contract. The carrier does not specify which model will be offered, but the 32GB Galaxy S4 is a good guess judging by the price of its predecessor at launch, during pre-orders. If 16GB, the price would be $50 higher than Galaxy S3 at launch and what iPhone 5 sells for today.

I love Amazon Prime. If I had a Kindle I would probably love it even more, if that were possible. Over the past two weeks I have also come to love my new Google TV, which has taken over our living room, with control of the DirecTV DVR and apps thrown in to boot. One of those apps is Amazon and I use it quite often, keeping a string of movies and TV shows in my watch list.

Now the Google PrimeTime app for Google TV has been updated to version 1.4.3-43-79424. This innocuous little name actually comes with a huge feature update. Not only has Amazon Prime content been rolled into the service, but you can control it and Netflix and HBO GO subscriptions from within the app as well.

Apple has gone to great trouble to craft its stores and reputation. The company refers to its employees as geniuses, for goodness sake! Taking your device in for repair is alluded to as a visit to the "genius bar". It is an entire ecosystem designed to make the customer feel confident and comfortable when dealing with the company. It is also a setup that lends itself to comedy and U.K. hard cider maker Somersby saw that opportunity.

The company has produced a new one-minute TV spot that portrays the Apple Store as a bar that serves up its cider and the geniuses explain why it is so good. The ad does not so much make fun of Apple (that is what Samsung is for), but instead uses the tech company's concept as a basis for some good tongue-in-cheek humor.

Sysinternals has announced updates for Autoruns and Process Monitor, as well as the release of a new command line tool, Registry Usage.

The Autoruns tweaks are the most significant. In particular, all reports now include a timestamp for executable files, folders or Registry keys. And so if you browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the Everything view, say, you’ll now see a timestamp which tells you when that Registry key was last modified.

Whenever I want to jot down a couple of ideas for a new story, write some of my thoughts for posterity, or create a shopping list, Evernote is my favorite cloud-based note-taking app. It looks great and is available across all my devices, so I don't have to worry about forgetting important personal things when I'm on the go. Everything that I have is there, everywhere.

What I value the most is the cross-platform spread, as Evernote is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Mac OS X, Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone. And, to get me hooked some more, Evernote 3.0 just arrived on Windows Phone with a revamped home screen, improved tag lists and the ability to use shortcuts, among the most noteworthy new features.

Genie9 has released Genie Timeline 2013, the latest edition of its easy-to-use backup tool. As previously, the program is available in three editions -- Genie Timeline Free 2013, Genie Timeline Home 2013 ($39.95) and Genie Timeline Professional 2013 ($59.95) -- and all of these gain plenty of features in the new release.

This starts with the new protection level, for instance. This will immediately highlight any problems -- lots of file changes which haven’t been backed up, say, or you’ve run out of free space on the destination drive -- giving you a quick and easy view of your backup status.

Fifteenth in a series. The next chapter in Robert X.Cringely's 1991 classic, Accidental Empires, looks at the real rise of Microsoft. IBM established the standard hardware, which Compaq successfully "cloned", and for which developers created software. Cringely explains how standards evolve, using vinyl records as metaphor.

It was in the clay room, a closet filled with plastic bags of gray muck at the back of Mr. Ziska’s art room, where I made my move. For the first time ever, I found myself standing alone with Nancy Wilkins, the love of my life, the girl of my dreams. She was a vision in her green and black plaid skirt and white blouse, with little flecks of clay dusted across her glasses. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, her teeth were in braces, and I was sure -- well, pretty sure -- that she was wearing a bra.

My name is Alan and I am a Temple Run Addict. I play Temple Run 1, Temple Run 2, Temple Run Brave, Temple Run Oz...I have a problem and I am here to admit it. My wife should be my steadying force, but she has a Windows Phone 8, and now I fear she may fall victim to the same affliction.

As of today she can steal the idol from that cave and attempt to outrun the apes through the jungle in Temple Run. The game, long popular on Android and iOS, has landed on Windows Phone after a long wait from customers.

¡Hola! Many of us use Google Translate, some on a daily basis. For instance, I follow a few blogs in Reader (a moment of silence please) that are published in languages that are foreign to me. For the most part it works well, but can also lead to some rather amusing results. Now you can get those same laughs from your Android phone, even when you are offline.

Today Google's product manager Minqi Jiang announces that the search giant and mobile operating system developer is "launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for 50 languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic".

If you're a Flipboard user then you need to read this. On Wednesday, Flipboard 2.0 for iOS made its way onto the App Store bringing along important new features, changes and improvements, among which is the the ability to create magazines.

Users can "collect and save content" into their own magazines by tapping on the "+" button from any item in Flipboard. To fully personalize the experience, Flipboard 2.0 allows you to name the magazine, add a description and choose whether to let other users view it or keep the new creation private. As the company says, "now everyone can be a reader and an editor".

Microsoft loves its special edition Xbox customizations. In the past we have seen such things as the Star Wars Xbox and the white Xbox to name only two. Now the game console maker is pushing out a new limited edition controller to make you feel more a part of your first-person shooter game: camouflage version of the wireless device.

Xbox Live chief Larry Hryb explains: "Today we are announcing the Xbox 360 Special Edition Camouflage Wireless Controller, which features a transforming D-pad and a unique camouflage design. The price will be $54.99 USD (ERP). In the U.S., the controller will be available exclusively at Walmart beginning in May. Outside the U.S., the controller will be available in select regions worldwide, also from May".

Tech journalists are talking about what Windows Blue will mean for the future of Windows. Actually, no matter what anyone suggests, only Microsoft really knows what it has planned for future versions. What really is important though is how changes to the operating system will affect software developers, plus businesses, and why considering this may be far more important in the long run.

In recent years we have seen the over-consumerization of computers, in particular the shift from desktop PCs to tablets and other portable devices. Everything seems to be all about mobile today. But is mobile and touch the future of computers ?

Google news, at least for some of us, recently is grim (Reader goes bye-bye). In fact, I no longer trust the search company will keep anything, while my colleague Wayne Williams dumps Google for Microsoft. Trust is essential and Google has lost it for me. Microsoft, on the other hand, is on a roll, of sorts, with its Windows Blue "leak" and now another cloud win for its Office platform.

Microsoft announces eight more government offices have adopted its Office 365 platform, further rubbing salt into the Google Docs wound. At today's CIO Summit, the company welcomes aboard: metros Kansas City and Seattle; counties Dupage and King; colleges California State University Sacramento, University of Colorado Springs and University of Miami; and San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.

Donationcoder.com has released Screenshot Captor 4.00 and Screenshot Captor Portable 4.00, brand new versions of its powerful screen-capture tool for Windows PCs.

Version 4.00 builds on features introduced last year in version 3 with the addition of support for capturing images from webcams, a new -- and dockable -- QuickCapture bar, extended Undo support and rewritten image uploader tool.