Social media analytics company Simply Measured released a study this week that illustrates the importance of brand presence on Facebook's photo-sharing social network Instagram. According to the survey, the nearly two- year old social network, with its 80 million users, has managed to attract the attention of 40 percent of the top 100 global brands.

Instagram’s adoption accounts for 40 percent of the Interbrand 100, which is actually the lowest in the study, but it has the most impressive adoption rate, when considering the background of the company. Instagram is currently owned by Facebook, through a $1 billion deal announced 4 months ago. The reason why a billion dollars was significant was because Instagram only had a dozen or so employees, and hadn’t generated any revenue.

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NASA's Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars on Sunday night, and almost immediately began transferring back to Earth the first images of the Martian surface. But for its reported $2.5 billion price tag, the images have a little less clarity than you might expect.

Curiosity's cameras have a maximum resolution of two megapixels. For perspective's sake, modern smartphones typically are 8MP or more. The result will be images that are sharper than those of Martian rovers past, yet lack the clarity that would be expected of a modern research craft.

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The Downloadcrew Software Store is a great place if you’re looking for a software bargain, but with so much to choose from, it can be difficult to know just where to begin. Security and tweaking is a very good place to begin, and you can save 77 percent off the MSRP when you buy AVG Premium Security Complete Bundle for just $29.95. This exclusive deal gives you everything you need to keep yourself safe online and include four great AVG products.

Everyone wants to get the best possible performance from their computer and this is something that AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [1-PC, 1-Year] could help with. For just $8.95 -- saving your 78 percent off the MSRP -- you cn tweak and optimize your system in next to no time, and there’s an even better deal availbale if you want to take care of multiple computers. AVG PC Tuneup 2012 [3-PC, 1-Year] gives you the same great tuneup options, but it can be installed on up to three computers. This could be yours for just $10.95, saving you 78 percent. AVG Internet Security 2012 Plus Bundle is another great selection of four AVG products that could be your for just $29,95 -- saving you a massive 80 percen off the usual MSRP of $149.

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Microsoft has released Windows Essentials 2012 for Windows 7 and 8 users, but drops support for Vista. The new version drops “Live” branding and features notable new capabilities and improvements to its multimedia tools, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker.

The suite also drops Windows Live Mesh for the SkyDrive file-syncing tool. In addition, it includes Mail, Messenger, Writer, Family Safety and Outlook Connector Park, all of which feature in previous releases.

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That's the question I repeatedly asked while attending San Diego Comic-Con, which wrapped up about two weeks ago. Ian Lewis' "Let’s not blindly give every latest tech marketing prophet his profit", posted here Sunday afternoon, has me thinking about phone as camera again, in context of what's good enough.

A year ago, I took to Comic-Con the Fuji X100 to shoot photos and Sony HDR-TG1 camcorder for videos. I processed and uploaded content on a Mac laptop. But July 2012, I was a month into an Apple boycott over patent bullying. I still have the devices but now use the Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook. It's plenty good enough for processing photos using cloud services to edit, but I wasn't too sure about videos and decided not even to bother. During Google I/O I shot video on Galaxy Nexus, uploading directly to YouTube. That worked out just fine.

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When you create web graphics then it’s important to keep file sizes small, as that will cut page download times and reduce your bandwidth requirements. And you probably do this already by reducing an image’s pixel size, complexity, color depth and more.

But if you use PNG files then you might also want to try PNGGauntlet, which compresses files to make them more efficient. Savings can be as much as 50 percent, yet there’s no loss in image quality -- each picture should look exactly the same.

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Amazon on Tuesday announced major updates to its Cloud Player music service that will equal and in some ways surpass Apple's iTunes Match service. Like iTunes Match, the new Amazon Cloud player service offers entire personal library cloud hosting and scan and match your entire collection of music, upgrading tunes to at least 256kbps MP3 format. All songs already in the Amazon Cloud Player will also be upgraded to 256kbps version as well.

Unlike Apple iTunes Match, Amazon Cloud Player surpasses being available on more devices. Supported platforms include Kindle fire, and Android phones or tablets with the Amazon Cloud Player. iPhone and iPad will also be supported with the help of a native Amazon Cloud player app too. There will also be support for the Roku Stream player and the popular Sonos wireless home music systems, as well as the option for playback from any modern web browser. All songs from your iTunes library are supported for backup and matching, including song purchased via iTunes.

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The Apple TV hobby just got one more service to add to its collection. Starting today Hulu, the ad-supported on-demand streaming video service, announced that its for-fee subscription offering is now available via a quick software update on the Apple TV.  Hulu Plus joins Netflix as strictly streaming service available on the set-top box.

Hulu and its owners, Disney, Comcast and News Corp., had little choice but to get Hulu Plus onto Apple TV as soon as possible. With Apple’s new Mountain Lion update, anyone with an Apple TV could already  use the the new Airplay feature to “mirror” the free version of Hulu's website video onto their TVs. The basic website version of Hulu though does not offer features like a deeper content library and HD streaming.

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If you are living in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Bhutan, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iran, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritius, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, or Vietnam and want to watch the London Olympics today I’m told your only choice is YouTube.  Ten events are available at any time through the International Olympic Committee (IOC) YouTube channel.

Of course 60 live channels are available in the USA through youtube.com/nbcolympics, but I think the international story is more compelling by far because it brings live competition to places where it was never available before.

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Launch the average painting tool and you’re generally confronted with a stack of options covering brushes and color, outlines, fills and more. Which is fine, sometimes, but if you just want to be creative then all this functionality can get in your way.

Freehand Painter is, well, simpler. Much simpler. Launch the program and you can start drawing right away, with your finger if you like (you can use a mouse as well, but it’s designed for a touch-sensitive screen). And any other tweaks you might want to make will only take a moment.

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Another day, another tech product launch, and all those numbers that go with it. We just love numbers, don’t we? And generally the bigger the better. (Except in cases where they’re supposed to be small, obviously.)

The numbers in hardware and software specs are useful tools, and it’s true that bigger numbers are often better. But those same numbers carry hidden dangers, too, and, like a burger that’s too big to be good for you,  that extra dollop of cream on your cake -- or the Italian town of San Gimignano, where each family just had to build a tower taller than all the others -  we can become addicted to the figures without thinking about what they all really means.  So let’s not blindly give every latest marketing prophet his profit, but consider our own health first.

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It’s the end of another month and the end of another busy week of software releases. If you’ve been too caught up with other things to keep an eye on the titles that have been hitting the download servers over the past seven days, this roundup will bring you up to speed.

Tomahawk 0.5.5 is a social media player that enables you to play your local music collection as well as tracks from the web, and also enables you to browse through the collections of your friends. If you’re keen to share your musical taste with your friends, look no further than ON AIR 4.0.0.834, which will automatically update your Skype status with the track you are currently listening to.

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London-based Petr Nejedly has released the first stable version of his DLNA media server app for Windows, Mac and Linux. Serviio 1.0 exits beta by introducing both free and Pro versions, with all functionality present during the beta testing kept free as promised by the author.

Serviio 1.0, which can be installed on Linux-based NAS drives as well as PC and Mac, allows users to stream video, music and photos from the host device to any other DLNA-ready device, including Smart TVs, mobile devices and other computers.

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If you are a music fan, you’ll undoubtedly have an extensive collection of MP3s and other music files on your hard drive. It is also likely that you listen to music on Spotify and Sound Cloud, and perhaps watch the occasional music video on YouTube. Tomahawk is a music player that enables you to access all of this and more in one handy application but there is a social focus to the player that opens up some interesting options.

Software that broadcasts information about the music you are listening to is nothing new, but this is a feature that you will find in Tomahawk. The program will scour your hard drives for music files and create a library for you. As you listen to your collection, Tomahawk enables you to view artist information and discover related artists that you may be interested in. This is all well and good, but it is the social aspect of Tomahawk that is especially interesting.

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Most people are keen to share their unquestionably excellent musical taste with everyone they know, and what better way to go about it than through a chat client. ON AIR is a plugin for Skype that enables you to share details of the music you are currently listening to by having your Skype status message automatically changed whenever a new track plays.

As well as track information, your Skype status can also be customized through the use of text, links and emotions. The plugin includes an extensive history section that keeps a record of all of the tracks you have been listening to.

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