Microsoft has released Security Essentials 4.0, the latest version of its lightweight, straightforward antivirus package.

The bulk of the changes this time are under the hood. MSE’s “Automatic Remediation” now does a better job of quarantining threats on its own, for instance, no user intervention required. And Microsoft claims scanning performance and malware detection rates have both improved on the previous build.

Today after the closing bell, Apple announced fiscal 2012 second quarter results, with earnings up a staggering 94 percent year over year. But one region -- and within it a single country -- stood out for performance and closed on the United States as Apple's most important market as measured by sales.

Apple revenue to Asia-Pacific rose a staggering 114 percent to $10.15 billion. That data excludes Japan, where sales soared 91 percent. By comparison, Americas revenue topped $13.2 billion, up 41 percent year over year. During the quarter, Asia-Pacific pushed past Europe to be Apple's second most important region, as measured by revenue. In that region, China rises above all other countries.

Apple investors expressed their nervousness this week, following earnings reports from AT&T and Verizon. Carrier iPhones sales sagged from calendar fourth quarter -- and why should they not, considering the holidays and iPhone 4S launch. So the question for Apple today: How many iPhones sold during fiscal second quarter, and iPads, for that matter.

Apple shipped 5.2 million Macs, 11.8 million iPads and 35.1 million iPhones during the quarter. Analyst consensus was around 4 million, 11 million and 33.5 million, respectively. Number of iOS devices sold to date: 365 million.

Google on Tuesday finally rolled out the long-rumored Google Drive cloud storage platform to compete with the likes of Dropbox, Skydrive, Box, iCloud, and all the rest.

But let's put cloud storage competition aside for a moment. When Google Drive was announced, I was immediately reminded of a recent quote in the New York Times:

One of the most eagerly anticipated online storage services -- and one of the worst kept secrets in computing -- has finally seen the light of day. Google Drive has, at long last, been unveiled after years of rumors and speculation, working in much the same way as the likes of Dropbox and providing users with 5GB of cloud storage free of charge.

In many ways, the release of Google Drive can be seen as more of an update to Google Docs, and this is clear for Android users who will find that their Google Docs app will update and become Google Drive.

This just in from Microsoft: Windows 8 release candidate won't be the only one coming your way in less than six weeks. Expect Windows Server 2012, too. "The Windows 8 Release Preview will be publicly available in the first week of June 2012", Microsoft's Jeffrey Snover says. "We plan to deliver a release candidate of Windows Server 2012 in the same timeframe".

Windows & Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky revealed the June RC for the desktop operating system earlier today in Tokyo. Concurrent Windows Server 2012 release candidate isn't surprising given the operating systems share common code and development has tracked closely all along.

My wife and I just about collapsed laughing while watching Conan last night. Episode's highlight: Two videos -- one for IKEA's Uppleva television. Team Coco isn't waiting for the official release and offers set-up instructions now.

The other segment, featuring a video, may not be SFW. Conan O`Brien accepts viewer responses, via YouTube, about mistakes he makes during the show. Last night, he went to great lengths to get around one. Keep liquids away from your computer before watching this one.

Web album creator jAlbum has been updated to version 10.6 with a range of bug fixes and feature enhancements. Mac users can now take advantage of a native file chooser that can be used to add folders and images to an album, but there are also numerous tweaks and updates to the Windows and Linux versions of the app to take a look at.

One of the great things about jAlbum is that skins can used to create a completely unique look for your online albums, helping to avoid the risk of looking like everyone else's. This minor update includes an updated version of the Turtle skin, but most of the changes are under the hood. Translators have been hard at work providing updated text in Brazilian Portuguese, German, English, Swedish, French, Spanish, Finnish, Slovak, Polish, Slovenian, Romanian and Korean, and language information is now added to published albums.

What do sexually transmitted diseases and Mac viruses share in common? Surprisingly lots, according to security software developer Sophos. People can spread both without exhibiting symptoms, and the infection rates for "Macs carrying malware and level of Chlamydia infection amongst young people" are about the same.

Say what? That's the question asked in BetaNews group chat this morning about the seemingly strange correlation. But it makes sense to me. My colleague Tim Conneally gets it, too. He observed (after doing a little research): "One in 4 people with Chlamydia have no symptoms. They're saying it's spreading but not affecting the host". That's exactly Sophos' point. The firm found a shocking number of Macs infected with PC viruses, in a 100,000 sampling. The Macs are immune but can infect Windows PCs.

Though the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, has been available for a little more than six months, its availability has been extremely limited. Only 2.9% of Android users were running it first week of April, according to the Android Developer Dashboard.

Samsung on Tuesday released an updated list of the U.S. devices that will receive an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich, bringing its total number of devices with the operating system version up to thirteen.

While I was sleeping -- and perhaps you, too -- Microsoft announced that one more public Windows 8 test build will come before the code is gold. Right now, Windows 8 Release Preview will be available the first week of June. What? Microsoft no longer calls these things release candidates? Timing is tight, unless Windows & Windows Live president Steven Sinofsky and his team exude absolute confidence they can finalize code in time for autumn launch.

It's a narrow path from early June release candidate to August release to manufacturing to October launch, unless there are no major changes from the Consumer Preview released in February or last-minute show-stopping bugs. You can read this as sign that Windows 8 is rock-solid ready and that Sinofsky and team are absolutely certain about the operating system's readiness or that they need to stretch out the time as long as possible. The Consumer Preview came at the last possible milestone for Microsoft to ship this year, and the next one follows similar tight track.

It is only a week since Opera 12 added support for cameras, and since then two new builds have been released that push the development of the browser even further. Performance is of utmost importance for every computer user, and the latest builds of Opera Next have been improved with the implementation of hardware acceleration. Interestingly, hardware acceleration is an opt-in feature.

A new DirectX backend is available instead of OpenGL and the hardware acceleration is used to not only improve the rendering time for pages, but also boosts the speed of the user interface. In addition to the performance gains that come from the implementation of this new feature, overall performance of the browser has also been tweaked and stability problems arising from the use of plugins have been addressed.

Microsoft on Monday launched a new version of SkyDrive, bringing the cloud-file sharing service to the desktop. This move did not come without a cost -- new users will have far less space, and current users only have a "limited time" to keep the generous storage the Redmond, Wash. company provides. But more on that a bit later.

The enhancements address problems with SkyDrive's browser-based interface which irk critics and customers. With desktop integration, cloud storage becomes a drag-and drop-process.

Indeed, these are the kinds of problems we would love to have, but when they actually occur we need solutions nonetheless. So, how do you handle the issues that occur when audience demand overwhelms the infrastructure you have provisioned to serve your content?

A few years ago, my company was approached by Latin Interactive Network (LIN), a publisher of online games across Latin America, including countries like Peru, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. LIN handles several successful MMOs in these territories, including the Spanish-language version of Audition Online, a unique free-to-play dance battle game. Audition is a big favorite, and in Latin America alone, the game is now played by half a million players per month. This is welcome news for LIN, of course, but not always so welcome for Audition gamers who may be stuck using outdated and underpowered infrastructure...

Popular file storage and sharing service Dropbox on Monday announced users can now share the contents of their Dropbox via a direct link that anyone can open, even if they're not a Dropbox user.

The feature is noteworthy because it deviates slightly from the traditional Dropbox sharing model. Instead of sharing files between Dropbox users, this feature simply links to content and makes it viewable.