In a major update to its privacy policy and the addition of "Search Plus Your World", Google has managed to attain the consensus from the tech-enthused world that it is way beyond the innocent baby days of "don’t be evil". Matt Honan of Gizmodo signalled the privacy shift as the end of Google’s "don’t be evil" promise, which the company built its business on, and Sarah Lacy of Pando Daily shared similar sentiments, though hers was related to the Search Plus Your World outcry.

In a nutshell, one of the biggest sore points that people are having with Google’s new privacy policy is the fact that it permits the search giant to utilize your basic profile information and extend it across your identities when using your other Google services. These changes aren't so much evil, but adaptation to our merging online and offline identities.

Hacktivist group Anonymous has released an audio recording of a January 17 conference call which it claims includes members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the UK's Scotland Yard discussing their latest anti-hacking efforts. We've embedded the 17-minute long clip above.

The participants in the conference call talk about Anonymous, LulzSec, Antisec, CSL Security and other black hat security groups, the evidence they have against such groups, and their progress in arresting suspects.

iPhone's remarkable fourth-quarter surge -- 37 million units -- lifted the handset ahead of the two previous smartphone leaders, according to Canalys. For full year 2011, Apple shipped 93.1 million smartphones, compared to Samsung's 91.9 million and Nokia's 77.3 million. Nokia, the company that invented the smartphone, has bled share since iPhone launched nearly 5 years ago, but artery versus vein since announcing the switch to Windows Phone from Symbian in February 2011.

Apple's climb to the top followed October's iPhone 4S launch and availability of older 3GS and 4 models for free and $99, respectively. Samsung shipped 35.3 million smartphones in Q4, behind Apple, while Nokia shipped 19.6 million -- a stunning 31 percent decline. By comparison, iPhone shipments surged 128.1 percent for the quarter and 96 percent for the year.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's Vice President of Engineering for the Android mobile platform, revealed on Thursday that the Android Market has secretly had a system in place named "Bouncer" to scan apps for malicious code.

"Bouncer" was running in secret for most of 2011, and Lockheimer says that the period between the first and second halves of 2011 showed a 40% decrease in the number of potentially-malicious downloads from Android Market.

Following on from the release of Firefox 10 FINAL, Mozilla has updated its developmental branches to versions 11 (Beta), 12 (Aurora/UX) and 13 (Nightly) respectively.

As always, the rapid release cycle -- a new version of Firefox ships every six weeks -- means that changes aren’t as radical as you might expect considering the regular version number jumps. However, the latest batch of updates hints that some major updates are heading Firefox’s way over the next few months. Get a head’s up on what’s coming and discover which build is best for your personal needs with our updated guide to what the future holds in store for Firefox.

Just weeks ago the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists giddily posted about how iPhone had reversed Androids' gains. But new data from comScore shows that, in the United States at least, Android is doing just fine, despite iPhone's remarkable fourth-quarter sales surge (more than 37 million units).

As measured by smartphone OS among cellular subscribers 13 and older, Android share grew to 47.3 percent at the end of December from 44.8 percent three months earlier. During the same time period, iPhone/iOS rose 2.2 points to 29.6 percent share. More broadly, for all handsets, Apple was the only manufacturer to gain share during fourth quarter -- up 2.2 points to 12.4 percent, or twice free-falling Research in Motion. Samsung firmly held its lead, 25.3 percent, which is the same as end of September.

Your system is misbehaving, and you think there’s a good chance it’s been infected by malware, but your antivirus package isn’t raising any alerts. So what do you do next?

One option is to install the trial version of Security Task Manager. This can display all your running processes and rate their potential risk -- all based purely on behavior and code analysis, no signature files are required, and so it may highlight dangerous processes which other tools miss.

Hard drives, memory card readers, DVDs and Blu-rays, network drives, removable disks and more: even a budget PC can have a host of storage options available at any one time. If you find you have trouble managing these with Explorer, though, then the free, portable Drive Manager has plenty of tools to help.

These start by presenting the key drive basics on a single opening screen, so just about everything you might need is available at a glance. There’s the drive volume name and type, for instance; network path; file system; capacity and space free; vendor or product name (useful for identifying which USB drive you’ve connected), and more.

Are you ready to pay for Facebook? You just may. Analyst Foad Fadaghi of Telsyte, an Australian technology research firm, tells news.com.au that premium accounts are an option to increase revenues.

As I argued on Wednesday, Facebook now must answer to shareholders. Being a public company is a completely different world from life as a private company. Fadaghi also expects Facebook to make advertising more invasive, as investors demand better performance. Ain't that grand?

Less than three months ago, a beta version of Skype was unveiled that boasted a number of new features. The latest update to the popular VoIP tool sees the software jumping straight to version 5.8, finalizing some of the features found in the beta and adding a couple more for good measure. There are a number of highlights to Skype 5.8, and there is a great deal to investigate if you have not been keeping track of the beta versions of the software.

Conducting video chats has for too long been a blocky, stuttering affair, plagued with poor quality footage -- not just in Skype, but in general -- but support for full HD video-calling, assuming you have a suitable camera and a fast enough internet connection, means that this is set to change for Skype users. Video calls are great not only for personal Skype chats, but also for business meetings, and in the same vein the new group screen sharing is an interesting new addition. If you have a Skype Premium account, during the course of a group chat you can now share your entire desktop or just a single application window.

Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, takes a slightly different approach to social content organization and management, and includes a couple of new APIs to let application developers surface social network data.

If you've got ICS running on your phone already, you have probably already noticed the "People" application, Android's revamped contacts system that unifies different social networks and methods of communication under a single profile, allowing information to be more centrally located on a user's phone and shared out when needed.

What does Windows 8 really look like under the hood? Is Metro a totally new direction for the Windows API? What does this really mean for software development?

As a programmer I like to know how things work under the hood. I am also a decent backyard mechanic, and I look at automobiles the same way. People who work on cars may have spent years learning how a gas engine works, but what happens when they finally have to work on a hybrid? The difference between a gas engine and a hybrid engine are like night and day. I believe we are seeing something similiar with Windows too!

Move over, iMovie, some serious competition moved on to iPad, today. Avid Studio for iPad is now available -- $4.99 for a limited time. Avid was the big name in filmmaking, long before Apple stormed the market with its pro and amateur products. Apple reigns king on iPad and the Mac. Can Avid provide some needed tablet competition?

By the specs and feature list, Avid Studio for iPad appeals. The app can directly capture video, use multiple content sources on the tablet (e.g., audio, photos and video), generate motion titles and graphics, precisely trim content, create picture-in-picture effects and much more. That's all while taking advantage of iPad's touchscreen. For people using Avid's PC software, there's an app exporter available, too.

"Conan" offers yet another timely spoof, here about Apple's problem with working conditions at factories in China. People have called for boycotts, others claim Apple is no worse than other high-tech companies using the same facilities. Seems like everyone has an opinion about what's really an old story.

Satire is a dish best served cold, and Team Coco packs on the ice.

Amazon's fourth quarter results missed targets, despite strong sales of the Kindle Fire. It is these users that will begin to pad the company's earnings, however, validating Amazon's strategy of selling Fire at a very low margin and then making up the profit through entertainment content sales.

Amazon saw its profits plummet, reporting net income of $177 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. This was down sharply from a year earlier, when the retailer reported income of $416 million. Revenue was up 35 percent however, to $17.4 billion.