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If you like your security suites to be hassle-free then Kaspersky Internet Security 2013 should impress you immediately. Installation was quick and easy, no complicated options to consider and the program was up and running in under a minute on our test PC.

The simplicity continues, at least for those familiar with the 2012 interface, because apart from a few minor tweaks the suite looks and feels very much the same: a clean and clear display keeps you to-to-date with current threats, update status, licence details and more, while a scrolling toolbar provides easy access to the program’s various modules.

Third in a series. Every few years something comes along to fundamentally change how we use the World Wide Web, whether it is online video, social networking, dynamic pages or even search, itself. Last week a new technology called WeJIT was announced that looks like something small but is really something big because it extends collaboration from specialized sites like wikis to everywhere HTML is used.  WeJITS is collaboration in a persistent link.

WeJITS come from Democrasoft, a company here Santa Rosa, Calif. that is best known for Collaborize Classroom, a cloud-based service used by more than 30,000 teachers to interact with students, deliver lessons from a global peer reviewed library and even give tests. WeJITS take the best of Collaborize Classroom and place it in a single link.

The popular Google Nexus 7 tablet is now available in three new European locations: France, Germany and Spain, for a total of seven. The ASUS-made tablet is available for purchase directly from Google's own Play Store.

Only the currency has changed from the US pricing, with the 8GB Google Nexus 7 selling for EUR199, while the 16GB model will set you back EUR249.

There is lots to like in SharePoint 2013 preview. The new interface stylings, whilst inconsistent in their current form, show some nice touches. The new social features are a big improvement on what went before. SkyDrive integration is potentially very useful, and adds to what was already a very solid document management offering. But my overall feeling: SharePoint 2013 is a missed opportunity.

The new social features don’t go far enough. Microsoft all but admitted this before the beta was released, by purchasing Yammer. They are now no doubt working hard trying to integrate it with the SharePoint code base. So presumably what we have now is "SharePoint Social 1.0", a stop gap at best?

Moonchild Productions has released Pale Moon 15, the latest edition of its custom Firefox build, an important upgrade that sees the program take a new direction.

While previously the browser has focused very much on low-level JavaScript benchmarking as a measure of success, that’s now changed, the developer told us: "I’m going by (subjective) overall speed and smoothness as that is what really matters to end users".

Now that development of Thunderbird has ground to a halt, the market for alternative email clients to replace OS X mail is wide open again. One app that has proved incredibly, and increasingly, popular over the years is Postbox, which benefits from a refined interface and a fabulous turn of speed that makes it easier than ever to manage your inbox. Version 3.0.5 brings about some important updates for Mac users.

Although Postbox is available for both Mac and Windows, this time around it is Mac users who can reap the benefits of the update. The release of Mountain Lion and new ranges of Macs with Retina Displays means that there is now a flurry of activity as more and more apps are updated to take advantage of the latest display technology.

If you want to keep your online accounts safe on the Internet from all those hacking threats, phishing and malicious software, one of the best options to do so comes in the form of 2-step verification. This system adds a second layer of authentication to the sign-in or connection process to effectively protect accounts against many forms of attacks. An attacker would not only need to have access to the account username and password, but also to the security code that is generated after username and password have been entered on the sign in page.

Companies use a variety of 2-step authentication methods. PayPal for instance uses a hardware device that displays a code when you activate. Other companies like Google or Facebook may send verification codes to a registered email address, or provide you with an authentication app that you run on your mobile phone.

After a brief vacation, it’s time for another software roundup to catch up on the biggest and best releases from the last week. We’ll start by taking a look at some of the apps that have been release for mobile device.

Facebook for iOS 5.0 is a release largely concerned with improving the performance of the app with news load times being improved and a new tappable banner making it possible to load new posts without the need to refresh. Android users have Facebook for Android 1.9.8, which now includes the ability to create events and allows for faster sharing of photos.

Just yesterday I reported that a South Korean court had found Apple and Samsung both guilty of infringing each other’s patents, and claimed that in a good patent war no one wins. Turns out I was wrong. Big time. A few hours after that story posted, news reached us that the jury in the American leg of the global Apple vs. Samsung battle returned a verdict, and a damning one for Samsung.

After taking less than three days to deliberate the case, the jury found that Samsung copied from Apple, rejected all of Samsung’s own counter claims, and awarded the American company $1.05 billion in damages.

Music creation is now easier than ever, and while teenagers still gather together to practice in the basement, computer-based music from the bedroom continues to grow in strength. The idea behind MAGIX Music Maker 2013 is nothing new -- there are endless programs that let you use loops, samples in addition to your own recordings to create your own musical masterpieces -- but the latest version of the application gives you more tools and a better workflow than ever before.

Anyone who has used a previous version of the program will notice the redesigned interface, which can now be better customized to suit your workflow, and performance has also been improved so you can get things finished faster than ever. These changes are welcome, but the tools and options available are what really matter. The 2013 version of the program lets you work with up to 99 tracks and the sample selection has been expanded to the extent that a new search tool has been added.

In the 1983 classic movie WarGames, Matthew Broderick hacks into a top secret super-computer and comes close to initiating World War III. The global catastrophe is only avoided when the computer, "Joshua", starts playing Tic Tac Toe against itself and discovers it can’t win, coming to the inevitable conclusion that "the only winning move is not to play."

It’s a film that maybe Apple and Samsung should sit down and watch together. While the jury is still out in their current big Californian patent case, in South Korea, Samsung’s home and just one of several countries where the global lawsuit is being fought, the court has just ruled simultaneously that both firms infringed each other’s patents. And, as a result, ordered them to both pay damages, and imposed sales bans on all related products (none of which are the latest models).

Second in a series. To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question. With the public release of Windows 8 following closely around the corner, it's time to sit down and take a good look at what makes Windows 8 a worthwhile upgrade, which is why I've prepared a list of eight important Windows 8 features that shouldn't be the reason for everyone to upgrade to the latest desktop operating system from Microsoft.

Windows 8 is a mixed bag, and it's all because of its new UI -- and there's no escaping the fact that it will always be one of the most controversial features and one of the most debated "benefits" of adopting the latest version of the popular operating system. In all honestly, judging Windows 8 by its new interface alone is like judging a book by its cover, so let's dive a little deeper into the newly added features of Windows 8 and dissect the ones that do not make it a worthwhile upgrade for everyone.

The betas are over, the final bugs squashed (well, hopefully), and Kaspersky Lab has just revealed the final versions of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2013 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2013.

And while outwardly the new packages look very similar to the previous versions, explore a little further and there are some useful additions and improvements to be found.

Call it life imitating art. One of my favorite pastimes is watching technology trends catch up with popular science fiction. Whether it's smartphones and tablets presaging Star Trek's ubiquitous communicators and PADDs or iRobots and Roombas hinting at our Star Wars maintenance droid-enabled future, I enjoy connecting the dots between various technology developments to see how they point the way towards a sci-fi inspired future.

Take this week, for example. Three seemingly unrelated stories -- Microsoft patenting "life streaming", Facebook tweaking the performance of its iOS app and the announcement of a Nokia-led alliance to promote more accurate indoor location services -- may together lay the foundation for myriad fantastical future applications.

Like a lot of people I was intrigued and confused by the two stories that appeared on BetaNews yesterday regarding Microsoft’s issuing of DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) take-down notices. If you haven't already done so, you can read them here and here. While we’re waiting to find out why Microsoft asked Google to delist one of our old Windows 8 stories, it seems to have boiled down to two things. 1) Because we used an officially-sanctioned-for-editorial-use photo (which makes no sense), or 2) Because it was a negative story.

In his post concerning our DMCA notice, my colleague Joe Wilcox mused: "I wonder if the Microsoft censor police are trying to squash negative Windows 8 reaction using DMCA as a sword".