Today, I learned that I'm no VIP in Microsoft's eyes. I didn't receive one of the invites for the May 24 Windows Phone "Mango" event in New York City. Or perhaps PR people were being pragmatic, acknowledging that I'm on the wrong coast for the event. That triviality aside, yeah, the big Windows Phone next-version -- codename "Mango" -- sneak peak comes in 15 days. I guess the MIX 11 demo wasn't enough.

Invites to the event follow buzz stemming from the Windows Phone Dev Podcast Episode 15, featuring Brandon Watson, Microsoft's director of Developer Experience. Posted yesterday, hosts Ryan and Travis Lowdermilk discuss the new features, which include:

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Google may have become heavy-handed in pressuring its Android device manufacturers to follow certain guidelines, recently released internal documents show. The documents have been released as part of a continuing lawsuit between it and Skyhook wireless over Google's insistence that Motorola use its own GPS location services.

Skyhook had originally won a contract to replace Google's location services with its own in all Motorola phones. The move apparently bothered the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, and it allegedly pressured Motorola into dropping the agreement. Skyhook then sued Google, alleging anti-competitive behavior.

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Just how are your files encrypted when you back them up online? If you're lucky, your backup provider will perform the encryption and decryption of your files on your computer, so they're already encrypted prior to being uploaded. That means the backup company can't access those files, whatever happens.

But what if your backup company, like Dropbox, performs the encryption at the server end, and then suddenly changes its terms and conditions to allow it to hand over your data to the authorities if they demand it? You could change backup provider, but that might not be practical. Instead, you need a solution that encrypts the data for you, allowing you to upload a secure, encrypted version that only you can access. One such solution is BoxCryptor.

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Spend any amount of time online and there is a high chance that some of the websites you visit track information about you. Cookies, scripts and other techniques can be used to monitor how web users behave online and to build up profiles. This may well be information you would prefer not to share, and Ghostery is a browser add-on that can be used to detect, analyze and block any tracking of your online activities.

Ghostery is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari, although the IE version is rather more limited than the version available for other browsers, and it can reveal a great deal of information about the web sites you visit. Turning the tables on the trackers, Ghostery enables you to find out exactly which companies are tracking you via the websites you visit and provides you with any opportunity to find out more about these companies.

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U.S. retail average selling prices for Macs and PCs reveal a startling, but ongoing, trend. Mac ASPs are higher and Windows PCs are lower than a year ago, according to NPD. The higher pricing also directly ties to brand, which affinity Apple has increased through its retail stores and success of products like iPod and iPhone. Today, Apple topped BrandZ's annual list of most valuable brands during 2010. "The brand increased in value by 84 percent to $153.3 billion," according to the report.

For Apple there is an integral relationship between brand and equity -- the value consumers are willing to pay to join the Apple Fan Club, which is more true for computers than any other product the company sells. The starting price for notebooks is $999 and $1,199 for desktops -- Apple unveiled new iMacs last week. Windows PCs are cheap, by comparison, selling for as little as $200. A surprising number of people are willing to pay more for Macs -- the Apple brand, really -- which shows up in average selling prices.

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Comodo Group has announced it's giving away a free one year-license of Comodo Internet Security Pro 2011, worth $49.95. Available for free download through Downloadcrew.com, Comodo Internet Security Pro 2011 includes both anti-malware and firewall software, giving users comprehensive protection against viruses, spyware and other threats.

The free one year license includes remote security and system support through Comodo's GeekBuddy service (free registration required), Comodo TrustConnect and a $500 guarantee (US residents only) for repair costs should Comodo be unable to restore your computer to a working state after infection.

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The eighth generation of console video gaming is approaching. At the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next month, Nintendo is expected to unveil the successor to the Wii, the company's now five-year old console that popularized motion-based controls.

In China, however, the generations of mainstream video game consoles have been disrupted by cultural regulations placed on the video game retailing in the late 90's. As a result, when Americans and Europeans were buying up consoles such as Xbox 360 and Wii in the tens of millions, they weren't even being sold in China.

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Perhaps the question should be: "If I hold my breath waiting for Sony to answer and I die, can someone sue?" Because Sony's continued promises when PSN will be back up are like the kid who incessantly promises to clean his room and never does. Subscribers grow impatient, with the vast majority answering our poll are ready to switch to Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.

Late last month, Sony promised partial PSN restoration -- gaming, music and video services -- on May 4, a pledge repeated on May 1. It's now May 8, and PSN is still down. I checked just before posting.

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Sadly we can't feature every new and updated application, but that doesn't mean that some of the apps we haven't covered aren't worth rounding up. There are a number of interesting applications that are worth some investigation and we've rounded up some of them put live during the last week.

doPDF 7.2.363 is a powerful free tool you can use to produce a PDF from just about any Windows application. Instead of sending it to your printer, simply print to the doPDF device. Creating a PDF is the ideal way of distributing a document for download, by email or for commercial printing. Just about any printer will take a PDF as your master.

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Everything we knew about breaking news has changed.

By this point, it's generally believed that CBS News Capitol Hill Producer Jill Jackson broke the stoy of Osama bin Laden's death with one tweet at 10:32pm EST. Whether Jill scooped her own network is a question for another time, but the point is this: One tweet, retweeted by me and thousands of others, came more than an hour before the President of the United States took the podium and confirmed what we'd all read.

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Researchers from Queen's University in Ontario Canada this week unveiled a prototype of their "paperphone," a smartphone that has a flexible e-paper display instead of an LCD/TFT touchscreen.

The prototype consists of a 3.7" electrophoretic E Ink display rigged up with 2" bi-directional bend sensors so that the user interface can respond when the screen is bent. The machine was built with E Ink's Broadsheet AM300 prototyping kit, Gumstix processor and Arduino microcontroller. All of the sensor recognition takes place in a connected laptop running Cycling 74's Max 5 programming environment.

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As Sony is in the final stages of getting the PlayStation Network back online, a new threat may be emerging. People with knowledge of the IRC chat room where hackers have been congregating to discuss the attacks are discussing a new effort, CNET reported late Thursday.

This news comes amid word from Sony that it had entered "the final stages of internal testing of the new system," likely indicating PSN would be back up in a matter of days. The issue also has prompted a letter from Sony chairman and CEO Sir Howard Stringer, who reiterated that the company was working "around the clock" on the issue.

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Has it only been a week since Hulu Plus came to Xbox 360 via Xbox Live? It seems so much longer. I'm more than just a little excited about it, if you can't tell.

A friend of mine recently bought a Roku player, and I asked him what he thought about the Hulu experience. He wasn't very happy about it, citing the lack of previous seasons for some of his favorite shows -- then there is the number of commercials. I personally didn't really see those as negatives, and so when Hulu Plus finally arrived on Xbox 360 I was anxious to try it out.

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Trying to cut down on paper waste, Seattle yesterday launched the United States' first yellow pages opt-out website. The city's biggest commercial phone book distributor, Dex One, filed for a restraining order against the city the same day.

Commercial "yellow pages" phone books are almost totally irrelevant to anyone with a search engine at their fingertips, yet they are still made and distributed on a massive scale.

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The online Remember The Milk service is one of the easiest and most popular ways to keep track of shopping lists, manage a list of thing that need to be done and anything else that needs to be remembered. An iOS app has been available for some time, but now Remember The Milk 2.0.0 has been released as a universal app with vastly improved support for the iPad.

The app has been completely redesigned from scratch to come up with something that feels perfect for the iPad's larger screen. An iPad specific version of Remember The Milk has been a long time coming, but it seems as though the wait has been well worth it. This is a polished piece of software. it is something of a shame to find that no new features have been added in the transition to becoming a fully-fledged iPad app, but Remember The Milk was already leader of the pack in its field.

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