One month after Canadian smartphone pioneer Research in Motion took a $485 million charge against its unsold inventory of PlayBook tablets, the company has cut the price of all its PlayBook models to just $299.

This means the version with 16GB of storage costs the same as the one with 64GB, a pricing decision likely made to force the sale of the highest-capacity models first.

Developers David Sansome and John Maguire have launched the first stable release of their cross-platform, open-source media player. Clementine Player 1.0, which is based on version 1.4 of the Amarok media player, is designed to play both music stored on the user’s hard drive as well as provide access to a wide range of Internet radio stations.

Version 1.0 adds support for major internet music providers Spotify and Grooveshark, although premium subscriptions for each are required to use the service. Also added are support for Sky.fm and di.fm streaming radio stations, Global Search, support for playing audio CDs and more transcoder options.

Open-source defragging tool UltraDefrag 5.0 has been released. The Windows app, also available as a dedicated 64-bit build, features a completely redesigned interface and rewritten drive processing engine, which the developers claim will make it easier to implement future planned features.

UltraDefrag 5.0 also adds some new features, including a “quick optimization” option for targeting fragmented files rather than the whole drive, MFT optimization and user-defined log file creation to aid with bug reporting.

It's my annual ritual. Rather than make predictions for the new year, I arrogantly tell Companies X, Y or Z what they should do. This year, I asked colleague Ed Oswald to offer Apple resolutions, and Google's will come from you. I've got Microsoft, but, sadly, my list looks too much like last year's, and that's disturbing. If the world doesn't end for the rest of us in 2012, as Mayans predicted, it could for Microsoft, if CEO Steve Ballmer and top execs don't take the post-PC era more seriously.

In mid December 2010, I warned that "2011 will be make or break" for Microsoft. Viewed from perception, the year was more "make", as Microsoft marketing, successful BUILD conference and Xbox Kinect helped lift a long sagging image. Last year I put forth: "Perception management is a good 2011 priority for Microsoft, with no new versions of its flagship products planned for the year. The company needs to give consumers, developers and IT Pros reasons to get excited again about Microsoft software and OEM products". There, Microsoft succeeded.

You may well have entertained the thought of using your computer to create music, but knowing just where to start can be a serious stumbling block. Unless you are already a musician, the majority of the music creation titles that are available are pretty complicated to use and can be very off-putting to anybody looking to get started. To help make things a little easier for you, we’re giving away a free copy of MAGIX Music Maker 17 Silver, worth $19.95, which can be used to create impressive musical works with loops, samples and more.

As anyone who has used MAGIX software will be aware, Music Maker 17 Silver is a delightfully easy to use program, but this does not make it any the less powerful. You are provided with a computer-based four track recording studio to work with, and while four tracks may not sound like much this is a versatile tool that lends itself to experimentation, and you will find that you are able to create something truly impressive quickly and easily.

Last Friday, Microsoft published its year-end Internet Explorer statistics based on Net Applications usage tallies, and concluded that Internet Explorer 9 would have claim a 25 percent share of the Windows 7 browser market. This trend was illustrated by IE8 users upgrading to the new browser.

However, the final statistics from StatCounter and NetApplications for the month of December show that not all IE8 users are upgrading, and Internet Explorer (all versions) continues to drop as Google's Chrome browser continues to rise in large jumps across the world.

Chrome is an excellent browser, one of the best around, with plenty of essential functions and features.

Could it be better, though? Maple Studio says yes, offering their own version, CoolNovo (the browser formerly known as ChromePlus) as evidence. It’s based on the same source code, so you’ll feel at home right away and can use all your favourite Chrome extensions, but the company has then taken things further by adding new features of its own.

While cloud storage may have taken off in a big way, most backup tools are yet to catch up: if you can save your target files to anything more than an FTP server then you’re probably very lucky.

Some backup utilities are now giving you more options, though, and Duplicati is a great example, with the program supporting backups to Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Docs, Rackspace Cloud Files, WebDAV and FTP servers, as well as local and network drives. And that’s just the start of the program’s many configuration options.

Your desktop wallpaper may be something you don’t give much thought to, but whether you have chosen to stick with a stock image, or have adorned your desktop with a photograph of loved ones or a favorite place, this is an image you are going to be seeing on a daily basis. It is easy to become bored of constantly seeing the same image, and being bored is not a mood that is conducive to being productive, whatever you are meant to be doing. Kuvva is a free app that helps to alleviate the boredom by providing you with a new wallpaper every day.

This is not exactly a new idea as there are numerous wallpaper changing applications available; but Kuvva is a little different. Rather than relying on your providing a series of images that can be rotated as your desktop wallpaper, Kuvva gets its images from an online repository that is constantly updated by artists, designers and photographers. The app takes care of changing your wallpaper for you, so when you switch on your computer in the morning you can be greeted by a new and inspiring work of art.

Sony Electronics rang in 2012 with a surprising discount that may foreshadow much about the tablet market this year. Overnight I received email from a Sony spokeswoman saying the company "has permanently dropped the price of the Sony Tablet S by $100 starting today". This follows what seemed like a temporary $50 discount right before Christmas. If you paid $499.99 or $599.99 before Santa's sleigh ride, 16GB Sony S is now $399.99 and 32GB 499.99.

SonyStyle Store doesn't yet list the new pricing as permanent, merely "save $100 instantly". "On top of these savings, Sony is also currently offering (for a limited time) a store credit and five free Video Unlimited movie rentals, five free PlayStation Store game downloads and 180 days of free Music Unlimited service with the purchase of a Tablet", the spokeswoman says.

BetaNews reader-appreciation week continues with a third contest. We'd like to give one lucky reader the Google-branded, Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus. But you'll have to work for it, by, first, offering New Year's resolutions that Google should make in 2012. We're giving away a Google phone after all.

Earlier today, Colleague Ed Oslwald offered resolutions for Apple, and I'm working on my annual list for Microsoft. Google will come from you, and we ask that you make serious resolutions -- things that could improve the core business, Google products and services and relationship to customers, among others. This is your chance to tell Google execs what you want from the company this year and possibly win Galaxy Nexus in the process.

This is the first year Apple will operate without its co-founder and leader Steve Jobs. To move forward without him, what does the company need to do in the new year? While I've never fancied myself a prognosticator, I do have a few suggestions on what the Cupertino, Calif. company needs to do.

Some have to do with changing the way Apple works and does business; others require some hard decisions on Apple's product lines. Either way, 2012 will give us the first glimpse whether or not Apple can move on from its past and iconic leader.

Most programs can be relied on to act with reasonable decency when asked to remove themselves from your computer. That’s what the built-in uninstaller is for, after all, but sometimes it’s not so straightforward.

What do you do when you’ve exhausted all normal avenues for removing unwanted software from your computer? You turn to this feature -- a showcase of the best free tools for removing stubborn apps from your Windows-powered PC.

So much for Apple's voice command/response technology Siri.

Among this year's holiday presents, our family received a gift card for Italian eatery Buca di Beppo, which my daughter gladly used to go out to dinner with a friend. So last night, they're ready to drive but no one knows to where. She pulls out her iPhone 4S and speaks "directions to Buca di Beppo", which Siri can't understand and repeatedly gives meaningless results when she tries again.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer team announced on Friday that IE9 has passed both Firefox and Chrome in market share, and will soon be the number one browser among Windows 7 users according to data from Net Applications.

Though data from the month of December is not yet complete, the Internet Explorer team expects IE9 to close out the year with a quarter of the browser market as users upgrade from Internet Explorer 8.