It's been one year since Windows 7 launched to the world, and to celebrate the passing of the year, Microsoft has released some information about the milestones Windows 7 has passed.

Most importantly among them, Microsoft announced that 240 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold worldwide, which gives it a 17% global OS market share. Microsoft communications manager Brandon LeBlanc today said Windows 7 is "the fastest selling operating system in history."

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As expected, Apple on Wednesday launched a new version of its two-year old ultraportable Macbook Air, and revealed a new, smaller version that could be described as the first Mac netbook.

The 13.3" Macbook Air has been bumped up to a 1440 x 900 display, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, Nvidia GeForce 320m graphics processor, and a total unibody aluminum design. Unlike previous versions of the Macbook Air, it has no hard drive; and has shifted over to 100% flash-based memory like the iPhone and iPad. With the shift to Flash memory, the battery life has stretched to 7 hours from the previous 5, has a 30-day standby time, and features instant-on booting.

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Inside the new MacBook Air

Today in San Francisco, Apple unveiled a new MacBook Air, updated iLife digital media suite and beta of FaceTime for the Mac. The company also previewed Mac OS X 10.7, aka "Lion," which will bring features found in iOS "Back to the Mac," playing off the title to today's media event. Apple CEO Steve Jobs shared the stage with other executives to demo the new products. Not since October 2008 has Jobs spent so little time on stage during a major Apple event. But in sharing the stage, he strongly delivered the big announcements: 11.6-inch MacBook Air, Lion and a shocker -- Apple will launch an applications store for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) within 90 days.

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There's a saying that the more you have, the more you fear losing it.

Apple's CEO made a surprise appearance during yesterday's fiscal 2010 fourth quarter earnings call. Jobs said he couldn't resist participating, given Apple's record $20.34 billion revenue. But he leveled most of his comments at competitors, and in quite defensive posture. Now why is that? Apple's iPhone blew past Wall Street estimates by as many as 3 million units. The iPad outsold Macs and, according to Gartner and IDC analysts, sucked sales away from Windows netbooks and low-cost notebooks. Apple controls the largest and most successful applications store on the planet. The company sits on a cash horde of more than $51 billion. Then there are the quarterly results, which topped consensus estimates by nearly $2 billion.

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Software company Mozilla on Tuesday unveiled its plans for Open Web App stores for distributing, selling, and managing rich Internet applications built in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Mozilla's concept is similar to the Chrome app store Google discussed when it first unveiled Chrome OS one year ago, but it is meant to use only browser-native functions that can be accessed just as easily on a PC as on a mobile device.

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LightSquared, the hybrid satellite/4G LTE network currently in development across the United States has shipped its mobile communications satellite off for its November 14 launch in Kazakhstan.

The satellite was constructed by Boeing and is named SkyTerra 1, after the satellite company that designed the network which Harbinger Capital acquired in its formation of LightSquared. It pairs with four gateway base stations on Earth and its related network of beamforming equipment.

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In a rare appearance in Apple's quarterly results call with financial analysts, CEO Steve Jobs briefly took over the call to take the offense in the cell phone debate which increasingly looks to be turning against the company. Some of his most pointed comments came over Google's claims that it is more open than iOS.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently referred to iOS as a closed platform, Jobs turned around and pointed out that no matter how open the code is itself, manufacturers and carriers still can choose to add their own proprietary code -- and even restrict certain features.

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Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced one of Redmond's major cloud supporters Ray Ozzie would be moving to a role focused on the entertainment sector before he ultimately retires. Tuesday, Microsoft followed it up with the introduction of a new cloud-based productivity suite called Office 365, which launches in limited beta today.

Office 365 combines Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online in a single cloud-based package scalable to the needs of small businesses or huge enterprises with a per-user license cost depending upon the volume of users.

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Since HP acquired Palm Inc. last April, the future of the Palm brand, and the webOS mobile operating system, have been uncertain in the eyes of the public: Would webOS make its way onto HP Slates? Would it merge with the iPaq brand?

Now, we get to see the results of HP's rescue of the formerly unprofitable, but conceptually brilliant Palm with today's debut of HP webOS 2.0 and the new Palm Pre 2.

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Patent holding company NTP has struck again, filing yet another patent infringement suit against a big tech company. This time, rather than a broad claim that encompasses multiple companies (like its suit three months ago against LG, HTC, Microsoft, Motorola, Google, and Apple; or its suit in 2007 which targeted wireless network operators) this claim is aimed squarely at Yahoo.

The complaint, filed on October 15 in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, focuses on five patents for wireless e-mail transmission that NTP used in its suit against Research in Motion (RIM) in 2001.

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I've never been too good with names
The cellar door was open, I could never stay away
I know it's probably not my place
It's either or, I'm hoping for a simple way to say
It's a shame about Ray
In the stone, under the dust
His name is still engraved
Some things need to go away
It's a shame about Ray

-- From Lemonheads song "It's a Shame About Ray"

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Ray Ozzie will be stepping down from his position as chief software architect at Microsoft, a note from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday afternoon.

Ozzie has been in an executive role at Microsoft since the Redmond company acquired Ozzie's Groove Networks in 2005. He assumed the role of Chief Technical Officer almost immediately, and then graduated to the position of Chief Software Architect approximately a year later. According to Ballmer, Ozzie will be shifting his area of focus to "the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments."

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On the other side of the pond, Google has been ramping up Chrome to enable GPU acceleration as well. Late last week, Google premiered its first acceleration code with build number 552.0 - which the company has decided to dub, for the first time, Chrome 8. (The distinctions between Chrome version numbers aren't always as discrete as everyone else's; Chrome 8 is not at all an overhaul of Chrome 7, which itself has yet to be released in a stable edition.)

Google operates two development channels, dubbed "beta" for more general public participation, and "dev" for more experimental code. Chrome has often been the fastest brand of browser in Ingenus' tests, but it achieves many of its speed gains by distributing its tasks over two processes. (I've seen it fork a third process but not use it yet.) As a result, CPU and memory utilization are often quite high, just like for any sports car that achieves greater horsepower by lowering its gas mileage.

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[Editor's Note: This was a live document starting at 4:46 p.m. EDT through the end of Apple's earnings call at 6:46 p.m.]

Apple didn't disappoint Wall Street analysts obsessed by goings on at One Infinite Loop -- delivering, after the Bell closed today, record fiscal fourth quarter and year 2010 financial results. In the days and hours before earnings disclosure, numerous blogs and news sites (this one included) mused about the role of iPad, which soared above strong Mac sales. In just two quarters, iPad has opened up a new line of business generating nearly $5 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, iPhone shipments ascended past analyst consensus by about 2.5 million units.

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In what could be potentially damaging to a company already being criticized over its privacy issues, Facebook admitted late Sunday that it had knowledge of developers passing information called user IDs within applications. The user ID is a unique set of numbers that identify users on the site.

Facebook engineer Mike Vernal said in a blog post that in most cases the company believed developers were doing this unintentionally, but regardless it was a violation of the social networking site's privacy policy. Vernal did however say the press was overblowing the situation.

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