A day after revealing Microsoft's plans to bring its ribbon interface to Windows Explorer and a new Welcome Screen, Microsoft bloggers Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera have now said the Redmond company plans to ship its own PDF reader with Windows 8, as well as a redesigned and 'immersive' version of its Internet Explorer browser.

Windows 8 is currently in pre-beta form, and is not expected to be released for another two years. While it's unclear whether these leaks are truly that, based on copies of the software obtained by either blogger or more likely part of a controlled leak by Microsoft itself, the posts have provided an intriguing glimpse into the possible future of the Windows platform.

Political unrest quite literally turned Hotspot Shield into an international success story overnight.

During the Egyptian uprisings against deposed president Hosni Mubarak in January and February, AnchorFree's Hotspot Shield software went from 100,000 users in Egypt to over a million over a single 24 hour period. Egyptians found they could use the desktop VPN freeware to obscure their IP addresses and access locally censored services such as Facebook and Twitter.

The NASDAQ on Tuesday announced that it had changed the weighting of stocks in its NASDAQ 100 index, a move that seemed to affect Apple and Microsoft the most. The changes were necessary due to the fact that the index had not been realigned in quite some time amid the rapidly changing nature of the tech landscape.

For example, before the realignment Apple had a market value that is 46 percent larger than Microsoft, but a weight in the NASDAQ that was some six times as large. Following the realignment, the weight difference has been reduced to about the same as its market value, the apparent intention of the stock index.

The web design market is packed with tools that promise to help you quickly build a website, even if you're a design novice. But while ease of use is great, the end results are more important still: and the dull, static HTML templates you get with many of these packages won't impress anyone at all.

The cross-platform MAGIX Website Maker 5 takes a different approach, by allowing you to create animated Flash-based sites, which you can then customize with a host of animated and dynamic components: music and video players, photo galleries, contact forms, guestbooks, embedded YouTube videos or Google maps and many more.

If you've heard less Verizon iPhone users complain about their phones dropping calls than AT&T ones, that's probably rooted in some semblance of fact. The latest survey from ChangeWave Research shows that AT&T iPhone customers are three times more likely to drop a call than those with a Verizon iPhone.

4.8 percent of those on AT&T had experienced a drop call in the past 90 days, versus only 1.8 percent on Verizon. While the latter model has not been out for the full three months that the survey period covers, the numbers do match up fairly close with that of dropped call percentages across all devices.

Radian is an app launcher to replace the Start menu that operates in quite a unique way. Rather than relying on a the usual system of menus and sub-menus, this launcher takes the form of a segmented circle whose sections can be customised to house shortcuts to the programs and documents you use most frequently.

Just like the Start menu, Radian can be accessed from any app, and it can be called up using either the mouse or keyboard shortcuts. The segmented circle is divided into four main sections  -- upper, lower, left and right, and these different sections can be used to keep different types of shortcuts grouped together.

Antivirus software maker Symantec said Tuesday that attacks increased some 93 percent from 2009 to 2010, with a staggering 286 million new threats reported last year alone. An increase in the number of attacks on enterprise systems was noted, as well as the use of social networks as an attack vector.

The firm also noted that there was an increase in attacks using vulnerabilities within the Java framework, as well as the beginning of a shift towards exploits aimed at mobile devices. While many of these attacks come in the form of malicious apps aimed at stealing personal information, Symantec said attackers were beginning to find and exploit security vulnerabilities.

Texas Instruments Monday announced it will be acquiring National Semiconductor in an all-cash transaction totaling about $6.5 billion.

National, once called "The King of Analog" has faced declining sales for four years, and had to significantly scale back its production during the recent recession, which meant closing down chipmaking facilities in both China and the United States, and shifting production to its three remaining plants.

Today, Gartner piped in on the fierce debate about media tablet platforms, by giving huge nod to Apple. Uh-oh, so much for Android 3.0 "Honeycomb." The message is intended for CIOs, whom the analyst firm also encouraged to begin supporting media tablets now.

"Fundamentally, the market battle will not hinge on features and specifications; on the fit and finish of a given device; or even on a device at all," David Willis, Gartner research director, says in a statement. "The platform that will prevail will have a strong supporting ecosystem of developers producing a wide range of applications. And in this area, Apple is far ahead of any competition."

I'm going to try. Would you like to join me?

Google has come under increased scrutiny for being a monopolist -- heck, I've lobbed accusations, too. In December, the European Commission opened an "antitrust investigation into allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search." Google sure seems to offer lots of necessary services that businesses or consumers seemingly can't do without. Or can they?

Lawsuits filed against the Federal Communications Commission by both Verizon and MetroPCS earlier this year over its new net neutrality rules were dismissed by an appeals court on Monday. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the lawsuits had been filed too early.

Both wireless companies seemingly had hoped to make the issue about protection of rights to its respective spectrum holdings, but judges appeared to lean on rules surrounding how FCC regulations can be challenged. Legal action can only be filed in the 30 days following the publishing of the policies in the Federal Register.

Microsoft's ribbon interface was considered a pretty drastic change when it debuted as part of Office 2007 five years ago. Its inclusion helped to bring more of the program's features into the forefront however, many of which users apparently didn't even know existed.

This same concept is about to make it into the Windows 8 Explorer interface, according to pre-beta builds seen by Windows bloggers Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera. The ribbon appears set to become a Windows UI staple if Microsoft decides to move forward.

You can back up just about every aspect of your computing life, but what about the positioning and layout of your desktop icons? If you have everything neatly laid out exactly the way you want, it can be frustrating finding that the layout has changed. This typically occurs when temporarily lowering the desktop resolution (such as when entering Safe mode).

If this behaviour irks you, or you want to be able to switch between different layouts (perhaps you share your computer with a friend who has a nasty habit of moving desktops around the screen), then the answer to your problem lies with a handy little freeware tool called DesktopOK.

The rumors are true. AT&T has raised iPhone prices by 50 bucks for people who don't yet qualify for subsidized pricing. It's foreshadowing. Just wait until AT&T gets its grubby, greedy hands on T-Mobile subscribers. Can you say "price hikes" post merger?

OK, so the news really is much worse. The price increases apply to other smartphones, too. But I specifically checked on iPhone using my AT&T Wireless account manager this morning. Sure enough, the 32GB iPhone 4 is now $549, up from $499, for example. There's also $150-more pricing when opting for one-year contracts on some smartphones.

Bankrupt Canadian telecommunications company Nortel Networks Corp. has selected Google as the stalking horse bidder in the auction for the company's vast and highly valuable patent portfolio.

Nortel first went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2009 and has been selling off its assets since that time. In 2009, the company sold off its Enterprise Solutions Business and shares of Nortel Government Solutions and DiamondWare to Avaya for $900 million; and its CDMA and LTE Access businesses went to Ericsson for $1.13 billion.