In the summer of 1947 an unidentified flying object reportedly crashed near Roswell, New Mexico (75 miles north-west to be exact). The "event" was classified by the United States as the crash of an experimental high-altitude weather balloon, and little was made of it at the time. That changed in 1978 when the National Enquirer ran a report of the story and the tin-foil hat crowd jumped on it.

As my friend Brian Dunning, who runs the popular Skeptoid podcast and blog reports: "Stanton Friedman, an obsessed UFO [enthusiast], started interviewing everyone he could find who was still alive who had been connected with the incident and began constructing all sorts of elaborate conspiracies". Regardless if you believe any of this or not, there is no denying it is a fun story and a major tourist draw for the city.

With privacy higher than ever on the news agenda, it is not surprising people are starting to wake up to the fact they have happily allowed all kinds of personal information about themselves to appear online. It might be too late to stem the tide, but if you are thinking about reviewing your personal privacy, one place to start might be with the apps added to various social networks.

If this idea appeals, then desktop users should install one of MyPermissions Cleaner for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, while iPhone and Android users can go with Online Privacy Shield -- once done, you are ready to start taking action to tighten privacy settings.

Opera Software made a bold move earlier this year when the company announced that it would use WebKit as its rendering engine and V8 as the JavaScript engine for all new products. Later on it revealed that it would follow Google and use the Blink Fork instead of WebKit, but that did not change the explosiveness of the move.

It took the Norwegian company five months to release the first final version of Opera for PCs that is powered by the new engines. While that seems like a long time for users who wanted to find out how the change would affect them personally, the development time is not that long.

Just a month after unveiling the first beta to the public, Opera Software has released Opera 15.0 FINAL. The latest version of the browser receives a complete reboot, sporting a different rendering engine, revamped interface and a number of new features.

The new release does not spell the end of the previous version, however, with Opera 12.15 FINAL still available (and due to receive an update shortly) for those reluctant to move on.

Let us pause for a moment to remember AltaVista. Current owner Yahoo quietly announced in a blog post at the end of last week that the once popular search engine is to close on July 8. The news was tucked away in a raft of other closure announcements. Users will be redirected to Yahoo Search.

It's hard to appreciate now that in the days before Google's algorithm made the fast indexing of large numbers of sites possible, searching the web was something of a hit and miss affair. Search engines relied on fixed indexes that were slow to update and found it hard to cope with the rapidly increasing number of sites.

The date we dreaded has rolled around -- Google Reader is scheduled to be executed at day's end. Loyal followers must make hard decisions regarding where they wish to take their business. And, in the wake of the original Google announcement, that has become increasingly difficult.

There are big names in this game, with Feedly already an established player and both AOL and Digg entering the market afterwards. I am a Feedly user since the death warrant was served, but I am less than thrilled with the experience and feel forced to begin a search for a less obtrusive alternative.

In a couple of days, Google will pull the plug on Reader, its still much beloved RSS feed reading service, leaving dedicated users seeking refuge in the arms of Feedly, AOL Reader, Digg Reader, and numerous other alternatives.

There’s sadly no chance of a last minute reprieve. When Google decides to kill a service, it kills it. The company’s history is littered with such casualties -- great and not-so great ideas that for one reason or another just didn’t connect with a large enough audience or achieve the level that Google had hoped for.

We take for granted that we can go to a search engine and get search results without pulling out a credit card. However, nothing in life is free -- including search results. When you visit most search engines, advertisements pay for your experience. While there is nothing wrong with using advertising to finance search engines, the FTC has warned that the line between advertisements and search results has become muddied. And so, it has sent a letter to Google, Bing, Yahoo plus several smaller search engine companies.

The FTC says “In recent years, the features traditional search engines use to differentiate advertising from natural search results have become less noticeable to consumers, especially for advertising located immediately above the natural results ('top ads')”. In other words, the advertisements listed on the top of the page, before the search results, can be confusing to users.

Big Brother is watching you. Or rather technology giants like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo are. The firms track their users relentlessly, and use that information to provide a tailored online experience (and maybe share it with government agencies).

Baynote, which provides personalized customer experience solutions for multi-channel retailers, has put together an interesting visual insight into what data the tech titans gather about you, how it’s collected, and what purposes it’s put to.

Google announces it is giving Google Groups an overhaul, retiring the old version and replacing it with a modern update with improved options for managing your groups as well as new moderation tools, and a mobile site.

Groups also now lets you create an inbox for collaboratively sharing, distributing, and tracking responsibilities with others.

Over the weekend, I sold my beloved Nexus 7. As BetaNews readers may be aware, the tablet has given me some trouble over the last year. I had complaints with the pre-order process and the tablet's performance. However, despite these complaints, I enjoyed the tablet very much. I definitely got my use out of it -- I used it to watch TV, read magazines and access social media like Twitter and Google+.

However, while I loved the Nexus 7, I heard rumors that a next-generation Nexus 7 was soon to be announced. And so, I sold my cherished tablet on Craigslist while it still had value -- there will likely be a fire sale once the successor is announced. I expected to take the money from the sale and put it towards a new tablet. I really wanted a Galaxy Note 8.0 but decided to wait for Google’s next Nexus tablet announcement. Waiting proved to be the right choice.

Owning a tablet is a given nowadays; it seems like almost everyone either has one or wants one. However, deciding which tablet to buy is problematic -- how can a consumer choose which tablet operating system is best? Between iOS, Android and Windows 8 you really can’t go wrong -- all three tablet-friendly operating systems are mature and stable. However, Samsung is aiming to make your decision much easier. The electronics giant announces the ATIV Q which combines Android and true Windows 8 (not RT) on the same device. To quote R. Kelly and Jay-Z, "welcome to the best of both worlds".

According to Samsung, it is "addressing consumers' desire to access Android apps on a Windows-based PC, the ATIV Q allows users to experience both Windows 8 and Android (Jelly Bean 4.2.2) on the same device. Users will not only get access to Android apps via Google Play but also be able to transfer files, to share folders and files from Windows 8 to Android, truly marrying the mobile and PC experiences".

Google is the search leader for a reason -- it has the best results. That said, its presentation can be somewhat bland, especially when compared with its closest rival Bing.

Likely recognizing that its presentation needs some pizzazz, Google announces that it has launched a new carousel view. This view shows local results for restaurants, bars and other similar establishments in a strip at the top of the results screen.

Today, Google announces that it has partnered with additional brick-and-mortar retailers to sell its Chromebooks. Walmart and Staples are being announced as immediate new partners, while select Office Depot, OfficeMax, Fry’s and TigerDirect stores will be coming later. Walmart is only carrying the Acer C7, while the other retailers will sport a mix of brands, including Acer, HP and Samsung. This is a good move for Google as it is sure to increase awareness of the company's ChromeOS and Chromebook line of computers. Currently, in the USA, Best Buy is the only physical retailer selling Chromebooks.

Google has also added new retail partners outside of the USA -- Tesco in the UK, Mediamarket and Saturn in the Netherlands, FNAC in France, Elgiganten stores in Sweden and JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman in Australia.

In the light of last week’s PRISM revelations the major tech companies have all been quick to deny that they allow the NSA direct access to their servers. But they have also said that they respond to lawful requests for data and have been revealing the numbers involved.

Apple says it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from US federal, state and local law enforcement agencies for customer data between December 1, 2012 and May 31, 2013. In its press release Apple says, "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it". Apple also says that certain types of data such as iMessage and FaceTime conversations along with Map searches and Siri requests are not retained in an identifiable form.