Google has finally decided to modernize its popular Play Music app for today's discriminating listeners. While the service launched over a year ago, and offers a generous 20,000 songs worth of free cloud storage, Google seems to have been slow in adding features and updates to what could be a winning product.

iTunes, Amazon, 7digital, and others have offered a 'Scan and Match' music services for some time, and Google has finally decided to join the game. The company made the announcement rather unceremoniously via a post to its Google Play Google Plus page. The update should greatly improve the experience for many users.

Almost a week ago, part of Google's "Winter cleaning" involved dropping support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync on January 30, 2013. It appears Microsoft is far from happy with the controversial decision, and the company promptly retaliated by advising Gmail users to switch to Outlook for "the best email experience" across all devices.

As was the case with removing the free version of Google Apps for Business, Google's recent move is subject to criticism. But why does it matter? Google dropped the ball in Microsoft's court, as the latter uses EAS in a number of software products including Windows Phone and Windows 8/RT. The protocol allows syncing of calendars and contacts and uses push email functionality. "Killing" it leaves Microsoft customers without those features when accessing Google services.

Opera 12.12 has been released for Windows, Mac and Linux. This Norwegian cross-platform browser and email client -- also available as Opera 12.12 64-bit for Windows 64-bit platforms, is primarily a bug-fix release, with emphasis on security and stability.

It does, however, make changes to the Delete Private Data tool, promising a redesign and new option as well as fixing a potentially critical issue.

I joined Facebook on Sept. 30, 2006 -- that's four days after opening to the public. The service promised so much, and I was excited by this compelling competitor to MySpace, which let customization run amok. But within short time, my interested declined; over the years I've come to loathe Facebook, which user interface is among the worst ever, as the site increasingly clutters with distracting elements. MySpace is now clean by comparison. Far worse: Privacy settings too often change, and what's different is often lost, even if temporarily, in the grotesque layout.

Overnight, Instagram, which Facebook now owns, announced radical rights policy changes starting in mid-January. The photo-sharing service grants itself a perpetual license to use and to sell your content. No permission required. That's one policy change too many for me. On December 9, I posted to Google+ my intentions to give up Facebook on the last day of the month. I thought more to empty the account of friends, information and content but not cancel -- for sentimental reason of having joined so much earlier than most everyone else. My intentions changed. I'm done with Facebook on December 31. I'd cancel today, but want intimates -- family and close friends -- to have forewarning.

It took only one week for San Francisco motion control startup Leap Motion to attract 26,000 developers in 143 countries to its pocket-sized 3D space motion controller for PCs. Now, that number has climbed to more than 40,000.

Today, the company provided some big announcements on the progress of Leap Motion, including a new exclusive game demo, an updated SDK, and a round of 10,000 more free developer units.

If you're planning to Instagram lots of photos this holiday, think again. They might be in next year's commercial marketing -- your embarrassing candid plastered on billboards everywhere -- and you have no real say about it. Big companies use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 to keep you from sharing stuff. Instragram takes away such recourse for you, overnight announcing one of the biggest rights policy changes of the contextual cloud computing era. The photo-sharing site claims the right to sell your content, offering you absolutely no compensation for the privilege.

The change is snakey sneaky: "Instagram does not claim ownership of any Content that you post on or through the Service. Instead you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, transferable, sub-licensable, worldwide license to use the Content that you post on or through the Service", but "Instagram Content is protected by copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret and other laws, and, as between you and Instagram, Instagram owns and retains all rights in the Instagram Content and the Service". You give up your rights to ownership simply by using the service, which gives you nothing.

If you're looking for a Samsung-made Android smartphone that is bigger than the Galaxy S III yet smaller than the Galaxy Note II, fret not! On Tuesday, the South Korean manufacturer unveiled the Galaxy Grand, which slots right between the two with a 5-inch display.

That's the extent of the comparison between the three handsets, though. The Galaxy Grand may feature a 5-inch display, but it sports an outdated 800 by 480 resolution which is subpar when compared to high-end devices, and is actually closer to many entry level offerings on the market today. The smartphone also ships with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, aided by a fairly large 2,100mAh battery.

German enterprise software leader SAP on Tuesday unveiled a major update to its Afaria mobile device managment solution which will be released to customers on December 21.

SAP focused on three key areas for this release: applications management, ease and depth of new device integration, and of course, platform support.

For an Android manufacturer that supports the modding community, Sony sure knows how to keep customers waiting. Almost two months after the previous announcement, the Japanese corporation released an updated Android 4.1 Jelly Bean upgrade schedule for 2012 Xperia smartphones and, sadly, the news is no better this time around.

The upgrade plans for the company's newest smartphones, the Xperia T, Xperia TX and Xperia V, appear unchanged. The three devices will receive Android 4.1 Jelly Bean "during February and March" 2013, on par with the previous estimate provided by Sony just under two months ago. However, for older smartphones, customers will have to wait a little longer for the coveted upgrade.

I'll be honest, if I'm ever faced with an emergency such as my house catching alight, my first thought won't be to tweet about it. Neither will I be sending emails or texting anyone. I’ll be phoning the emergency services and speaking to someone. At least that way I’ll know the message has got through. But times change, and maybe using social media will soon become another accepted way to alert the authorities to non-life threatening situations.

The London Fire Brigade currently warns users not to rely on social media when reporting emergencies, as it doesn’t monitor its Twitter feed round the clock. However, that could soon change as the service is looking into new, smartphone-friendly ways for the public to communicate with it.

Install an application or two and the typical Windows desktop can quickly become a distracting place. There might be animated taskbar buttons, system tray notifications, desktop gadgets and more, each clamoring for your attention, and that can be a problem when you really need to focus on one particular task.

You can minimize this to a degree by turning everything off, perhaps, and maximizing your main application window. But the free CinemaDrape provides a more flexible way to focus solely on your areas of interest.

Today, Snapkeys announced the private beta launch of SnapKeys Si for Android. The private beta will allow select registered users to download the app and test it out, nearly a full year after the app first gained notoriety at CES.

One of the most brilliant things about touchscreens is their ability to support alternative methods of typing, Swype and Swiftkey for example have become very popular methods of text input, and they do not require the traditional screen pecking action to work.

Great news for British Ingress players! Google released its Field Trip app in the United States several months ago, but now the company has brought the location-based tool to the United Kingdom, following closely on the heels of other Google UK debuts like Play Music and Play Magazines. Of course, Field Trip is a bit more than just an Ingress player's best friend, as it offers numerous features to help users when they are on the move.

The Android app pops up messages based on location and displays nearby points of interest, from restaurants, to historical buildings and markers, complete with images and a brief synopsis about the significance. Users can customize the app on the go by clicking the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" buttons to help it learn personal tastes.

Apple, Google, Microsoft: everyone seems to have their own app store, these days. None of these are much help if you’re running a Windows XP, Vista or 7 system, of course, but if you’re feeling left out then there’s always Pokki, a simple framework which can help you find, install and run free apps on the Windows desktop.

The program installs quickly and easily, and is so unobtrusive you might be left wondering what’s actually changed. There should now be a Pokki icon to the right of the Start button, though. Clicking this displays the Pokki launcher, currently empty, and selecting App Store will allow you to browse its various offerings.

In a ruling that will surprise precisely no one -- not even anyone inside Apple’s camp -- U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh has denied Apple’s request for a permanent injunction against the Samsung products which were found to have infringed the Cupertino, Calif.-based corporation's patents, saying there was not enough evidence that the infringement had hurt Apple's North American sales.

In equally unsurprising news judge Koh also rejected Samsung’s request for retrial. The Korean firm had called into question the jury foreman’s impartiality after he failed to disclose he had been sued by his former employer Seagate Technology, a firm Samsung holds a stake in.