One year ago, March 6, 2012, Google renamed Android Market, and nothing is the same sense. The rebranded Google Play pushed forward a transition started in November 2011, with the broad expansion of content beyond apps. The name change also represented something bigger, shift in emphasis away from broader Android to the search giant's siloed services and brands. Google sought to imitate Apple while tackling wild Amazon.

On Play's first birthday, Google Android -- not the skinned software Amazon, HTC, LG, Samsung and others ship -- is a 98-pound weakling gone super steroids. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company sells apps, ebooks, gift cards, magazines, music, movies, TV shows and devices through the online store. There were no devices available a year ago, but now accessories, Chromebooks, smartphones and tablets. Three different computers are available, including the new and Google-branded Chromebook Pixel. Also: Two different Nexus 4 smartphones and Nexus 10 tablets and three Nexus 7 slates -- four if counting 32GB HSPA+ models twice, with different cellular SIMs.

Cloud is one of today's biggest keywords and Box is one of the top services in the game. Now the company has rolled out a series of updates to its apps for both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and added some rather cool new features for its customers on both platforms. Given that Box claims more than half a million downloads of its Windows 8 app, there is certainly a market for the service.

First off, there is a new Preview mode for documents that works without even opening the document -- a feature that was already included in the company's Android app, where Box's Simon Tan claims the service has an "average [of] more than 100,000 previews per day". The preview mode works with more than 75 file types, including Word, PowerPoint, AutoCAD, Adobe Illustrator and a lot more. This feature is coming to both platforms.

Windows apps that you run on Windows 8 are limited to the Start screen environment by default. Here you can run them in full screen, or attached to a side of the screen so that they use 1/3 or 2/3 of the screen. What you cannot do is run them in windowed mode on the desktop.

Attempts have been made in the past to bring that extra functionality to Windows 8 in the form of third-party applications. One of them, RetroUI Pro does so, but the implementation is fairly limited.

In the highly saturated U.S. smartphone market, Apple's dominance grew, while iPhone nipped upwards towards Android, for the three months ended in January, according to comScore. The analyst firm, unlike most of its competitors, measures actual subscriber share rather than number of units shipped. Like Gartner's counting actual sales, comScore gives a clearer view of real-world dynamics.

During iPhone 5's first full three months of sales, Apple's share reached 37.8 percent -- up from 36.3 percent in December and 34.3 percent in October. By comparison, second-place Samsung nudged up to 21.4 percent share, from 21 percent sequentially and 19.5 percent for the same three months. HTC, Motorola and LG followed, with respective shares of 9.7 percent, 8.6 percent and 7 percent. All three lost share from December, with LG up ever-so slightly from October. Motorola's loses strongly suggest that at Verizon, carrier with the highly-visible Droid line of smartphones, subscribers shift allegiance to other brands. Good thing Moto has a new evangelist.

The Document Foundation has released LibreOffice 4.0.1, a primarily maintenance release for its open-source office suite. Comprising word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentations, drawing and maths tools, LibreOffice 4.0.1 has one notable update, cross-platform support for its LibreOffice Impress Remote app for Android.

LibreOffice Impress Remote allows users to control Impress presentations over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi using their Android phone or tablet. Only Linux builds of LibreOffice 4.0 supported the app, but as of version 4.0.1, Windows and Mac LibreOffice users can also control presentations using the Android app.

It is the one year anniversary of Google Play store -- or at least the renaming of the Android market. Google loves to celebrate these kinds of occasions with a sale. This one is no exception, as the company has kicked off with deals on music, books, magazines, videos and, of course, apps.

Jamie Rosenberg, the vice president of Digital Content at Google Play announced the deals today, saying that "since no birthday is complete without presents, we’re celebrating with a bunch of special offers across the store on songs, TV shows, movies and books. We’re even offering a collection of games with some fun birthday surprises created by developers".

Funny how little things matter to people. Today Google announced some minor changes to profile pages on its social network, which include much bigger cover photos -- up to 2120 by 1192 pixels and displayed in 16:9 format. The search giant is rolling out this and other tweaks, gradually. If you don't see them already, you will soon.

Visually, Google+ Profiles lay out information in card-like fashion, which starkly remind of those Google Now presents on smartphones and tablets. The motif is particularly striking in new tab, Reviews, which doesn't appear in my Profile. Perhaps because I've written none.

Pink does really make a difference. To most people a unicorn is just an imaginary creature from children's books but add the color pink into the equation and Android enthusiasts rejoice about AOKP, one of the most popular custom Android distributions. The team behind Android Open Kang Project has released a new build, a week after the last one, sporting bug fixes, new features and support for more devices.

The AOKP developers have fixed "a really nasty memory leak" which caused the popular custom Android distribution to randomly reboot. A side-effect of squashing the bug is increased speed in navigating the lockscreen. Jelly Bean MR1 Build 5 introduces support for six new devices, for a total of 28 as of the latest release.

See, if enough people complain and bloggers and journalists write enough misinformed, sensational stories, image-conscious Microsoft goes into public relations damage control. That's the case with Office 2013, which gets new licensing terms that grant you the right to move the software to another PC.

Under the old agreement, Microsoft used activation technology to bind the productivity suite to one computer. The software couldn't be transferred. The restriction comes with another nick, which isn't changed: With this version, Microsoft takes away generous multi-PC rights available with older versions. Like I expressed in late January, "Microsoft really doesn't want you to buy Office 2013" but subscribe with Office 365 instead. Nothing is changed, there. Today's concession is all PR blush.

Just as I predicted in early-February, combined, the new sweets on the block -- Jelly Bean and Ice Cream Sandwich -- surpassed the mighty Gingerbread in the Android distribution charts for early-March. Based on the number of devices accessing Google Play during the 14 days ending March 4, Gingerbread is still the most popular green droid iteration.

Almost four months after Google released Android 4.2, the latest treat in the candy jar has reached a 1.6 percent distribution level. The second Jelly Bean iteration continues to grow, if only slightly, by another 0.2 percentage points from 1.4 percent distribution level in early-February. The difference translates into a 14.28 percent increase over the course of a single month.

On Tuesday, Microsoft detailed another update addressed to Windows Azure, the software giant's cloud platform, aimed at fending off the attack from Amazon S3, Google Cloud Platform and other major competitors. One of the most noteworthy new features is support for developing native Android Apps in Windows Azure Mobile Services.

Microsoft has released the Android Client SDK (Software Development Kit) through GitHub, under the Apache 2.0 license. Windows Azure Mobile Services also features support for Android push notifications, which can be enabled by registering for Google Cloud Messaging, getting the API key and pasting it in the corresponding "Push" tab.

When Google first introduced the world to Gmail back in 2004, its 1GB of free storage space for messages seemed unbelievably generous. How times change. Since then of course, it’s upped the figure to 10GB, but for a lot of people that’s nowhere near enough. Businesses get a much more substantial 25GB through Google Apps, but even that can be restrictive -- especially if you have to send, receive and store a lot of large attachments.

Cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery firm Backupify can’t do anything about the lack of space for consumers, but it is offering a new free solution for firms. FreeSpace actively monitors the amount of space available in Google Apps Gmail accounts and makes it easy to free up as much space as you need, whenever you need it.

I knew this would happen. After battling to decide between Roku and Google TV and opting to buy the Vizio Co Star, Roku has gone and released its brand new Roku 3 box this morning, and also made me jealous of all the cool stuff the company has added into its latest set top box.

Roku's vice president of business development, Jim Funk, made the announcement this morning that the company is "excited to introduce the new, fully loaded Roku 3 -- our fastest, most powerful streaming player to-date".

Wow. You don’t mess with the EU antitrust regulators. This is something Microsoft has discovered to its cost after being landed with a 561 million euros ($731 million) fine for failing to promote a range of other browsers to Windows users in the European Union (EU).

As part of a settlement that followed an EU antitrust investigation back in 2009, Microsoft agreed to offer a Browser Choice Screen pop-up to European customers which would allow them to choose which browser they wanted to use -- rather than simply just forcing Internet Explorer on them. This followed an investigation triggered when Norwegian browser maker Opera complained that by bundling IE with Windows Microsoft was effectively killing the competition.

Berlin software developer Ashampoo GmbH has released Ashampoo WinOptimizer 10.1.0, the latest version of its Windows system optimization tool. WinOptimizer 10, which provides one-click tools for privacy, cleaning and optimizing PCs, debuts four new modules, plus a brand new user interface.

The tool, which is available as a 10-day trial by default (users can extend this by a further 30 days by registering for a free key), also comes with four updates for existing modules, enhanced Windows 8 support and user-definable favorites.